Special Interests: How Long Does It Take...?

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Well, for me it usually goes this way:

Throughout the years, I've been infrequently exposed to what later became my most enduring special interests. During these exposures, I never got interested in the said topics. However, they still made a lasting impression on me, either because I've found them pleasurable, intriguing or even unpleasant (!) At the time, I had other special interests going on.

Then, at some point in my life, it only takes one renewed exposure and I'm suddenly hooked. I suddenly perceive the whole subject in a different light. And I totally fall in love with it. I'm usually not aware it happens. It takes me a few days to a few weeks to become aware of what's going on. It also takes a few days/weeks (rarely months) for this enamored feeling to reach its maximum level of intensity. Those days and weeks are a very romantic time, when I'm fascinated with the novelty of the interest, I'm discovering it. Then, when my obsession has reached its peak intensity, I enter into a very euphoric stage of my life. I think about the special interest constantly, I talk about it all the time, I read about it, engage in activities related to it, write about it and even dream about it. Nothing else in the world makes me happier than my special interest. If I can't indulge in it, I get depressed, as if withdrawing from a drug. By this time, people around me are usually already fed up with my interest...

If it's a major interest, it can last for years on end. If it's a minor one, it can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Sometimes, it develops or extends into another similar or related interest. I've turned my interest in psychology into a career, I'm volunteering for an LGBT NGO due to my interest in the gay community and I've volunteered at a local rehab center out of my interest in psychoactive drugs. I've also written extensively about these and other interests. I need to make them part of my life, else life doesn't seem that much worth living...

Then the time will come when a new interest will make me fall in love with it. But... once an interest, always an interest. E.g. when I was 7 years old, I developed a special interest with dinosaurs. Now I'm 25 and I recently got very obsessed with a TV series about prehistoric mass extinctions, mostly because it featured 3D animations with dinosaurs. Also, my first ever special interest was about cats. Guess what, cats still make my heart melt like nothing else in this whole wide world...

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Probably 75% Aspie, 25% NT... and 100% ADHD

Aspie-quiz results:
Aspie score: 138 of 200 / NT score: 78 of 200 => Very likely an Aspie.