Special Interests

I don't mind calling an obsession an obsession if it occupies every waking hour of my day, though it seems to be increasingly un-PC and now we talk about 'special interests.' All that aside, what's everyone interested in?

For me as a child it was dinosaurs, then Ancient Egypt and then Pokemon, in that order.

  • Senor said:
    I already don't feel too constrained to always acting the part.

    Glad to hear it....we can’t spend all our lives huddled under a rock, feeling inadequate as we don’t fit in 

  • They tell me I had an obsession with dinosaurs. but for the life of me I can remember it only being little more than a passing fad, and these days I couldn't really care less about the subject. I've only ever watched a few boring minutes of Jurassic Park, for instance. And the map and railway obsessions are somewhat diluted by not living in a country where such obsessions can be easily indulged. Part of the fun of being a map fanatic is actually visiting the places you find on maps and hiking through them.

    Hopefully, my current obsession with self-identification will also eventually morph into something more like bucking the trend of my own identification. I already don't feel too constrained to always acting the part.

  • Mine was wildlife 

  • As a child I was obsessed with Dinosaurs and sharks both of which I am still fascinated by

    In more recent years I started researching my family tree and the history or Britain and also became very interested in Cryptozoology (Bigfoot, Nessie etc) not that I believe in them 

  • trapped in that contradiction of logically realising that fitting in is not going to happen....but emotionally feeling the need to

  • Self identification is important.....fitting in less so...we have to jump through some hoops in life and abide my certain rules etc....even if it just to stay legal... Slight smile

  • My latest interest as senior moment said” self identification” and Ellie “escape” from the tedium of reality and the pointless task of trying to fit in.

    I would raise my hand,,,,,but still researching the subject!

    xxx()()()

  • Technology and games tech as my job.....current,y my special interest is escape........a thought experiment.....hands up if you can guess how that is going to work out! Lol

  • Funny, harmless and interesting I expect!

  • Another special interest if late has of course been self-identification, and then figuring ways to get it verified. I should add that all along I faced the prospect that my own self-identification alone might have to suffice. And in future I might have to accept that the DSM might change significantly

  • Hello Spotty, yes they were the 'workhorse' sort of German submarine during world war ll. I could provide more detail...! I don't really know what happened but I watched a great film called Das Boot and really got involved in reading and film etc.I've even got a nice little airfix model of one somewhere. I'm laughing whilst writing this, it just seems so funny now!

  • I have always thought working at a heritage railway must be really rewarding.  I like tinkering and fixing old machinery and one of my partners friends helps to restore old trains.  Seems like a great thing to do and it's something I would like to look at later in life.

  • Rail enthusiast - volunteer at a heritage railway in fact. In a minority in that community (although the balance is changing) in that I prefer diesel and electric to steam.

  • Fuchsia said:
    Class Vll C U Boots

    What are they??

  • Reading other peoples diaries - spent years of my life reading the writer James Boswell's diaries, Pepys etc. And piano playing was great, all those repetetive scales and arpeggios. Also Class Vll C U Boots - not sure what that was about but I ended up knowing a heck of a lot about them!

  • Glad I found this thread as I was going to post something similar.

    I find I have a few key interests that remain long-term with a few short term intense ones that vary.

    Long-term interests are:

     - rabbits

     - collecting and analysing personal data (weight, steps, miles covered etc.)

     - motorbikes and cars

     - nutrition and food

    Current short term ones are:

     - planners

     - architecture

     - All music by Gary Numan

     - search engine optimisation

     - environmental technology (wind farms, solar, smart grids) although this is becoming more of a long-term interest

    Does anyone else find they have short term very intense 'obsessions/interests' in particular things?  For me these can last anything from a couple of weeks to months, but I find I have to know everything about it and completely exhaust it before I can move on to the next interest.

  • A rather cliched special interest for one on the spectrum: Maps. It started when I was very ill during early childhood, when an elderly neighbor felt that I needed something to take my mind off my rather lengthy recuperation, He used to draw pictorial maps of local countryside and even imaginary places. It was very therapeutic.And I started to draw my own maps. It probably helped me to begin conversing with more than one word at a time. Now it took a very long time to fit that obsession together with a diagnosis, but it was one of those things that made self-identification rather obvious. Yep, I'm afraid I also have another special interest which is rather classic:steam railways - but it is a bit less obsessional than maps. Hardly surprising when there a steam railway in clear view. I note, however, that I'm not really obsessional enough about it to be a true railnut. I probably wouldn't bore the pants off Bill Bryson if he was unfortunate enough to sit next to me on a train. I rarely even travel by train these days. Nevertheless, my even deeper special interest could probably be best described as railways on maps - past, present and future, with more recent slight digressions into Google Streetview and archived maps online.

  • As a teenager, it was the weather.  I kept detailed daily records of the temperature, measured rain water in the garden and even copied the pressure charts from the TV into my books.

    Ten years later I threw away all the books as rubbish.