"Odd One Out" Interests

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With one exception my interests are all related to natural history / earth sciences. The same interests tend to come round again and again every few years. I don't know precisely which one will turn up next but I know it will be one of my former interests or something very closely related.

Except every so often the odd one out turns up. The odd one out being rally motorsport. I have no idea why I am interested in this when it doesn't have any connection to my other interests. I'm not really interested in motorsports in general, and although I like driving, I'm not really a car fanatic, unless the cars concerned are rally cars.

I spent years trying to suppress my interest in rally on the basis that it doesn't fit with my other interests but I have just decided to go with the flow now. Although it isn't exactly environmentally friendly (to put it mildly), it isn't going to go away just because I stop taking an interest in it, and I have come to the conclusion that trying to suppress an interest is potentially damaging to me.

Does anyone else have any "odd one out" interests?

The only thing I can think of that kind of sticks out is shoes. Not that I know much about them, or collect them, or have any interest in style, really. More that I have had some serious foot problems throughout my life, and never seem to be able to find shoes that fit me. I've been meaning to learn to make them for a long time, just haven't gotten around to it yet.
That's probably the oddest one of my interests. Although it does sort of fit with the pattern.

I try to keep current on off-road suspension, but couldn't name a current rally driver. My interests have little consistency. When I'm with my spiritual friends, I'm the only one who can fix stuff, and when I'm with my techie friends, I'm the only one who meditates. Hilarity sometimes ensues. These days, it's mostly engineering and social sciences. I am sometimes entertained by the antics of adventurous millionaires, even though I wish they wouldn't do that stuff at such a grand scale. A very gentle artist I know went to shoot guns with his brother, and came back all goggle-eyed and happy.

I have had periods of intense fixation with pop music idols, when I'm not even into commercial pop music at all. The strongest time this happened was with Taylor Swift and I don't even listen to her music. Every now and then it will happen with yet another pop idol, but since I'm interested in other things that are much more rewarding to me personally, I try to rationalise with myself that the time I spend researching about those pop idols, is time I don't spend with my other (truly rewarding) special interests. I guess for me there is a difference between useless fixation (pop idol interest) and other special interests of mine (UFOs, space and astronomy, animals, gender), in that the fixation keeps me hooked and gives me anxiety when I spend too much time on it

Virtually all of my interests have some connection to history, literature, animals and sports, especially tennis. I wouldn't consider any of my interests particularly odd for a female, just very focused and unusual in intensity. The only particularly odd interest recently has been learning the Serbian language, but that isn't odd considering there is a tie in with other interests, such as history, languages and-yes, tennis. I'm not a fan of Djokovic, but I did like Ana Ivanovic and Janko Tipsarevic.

Medical and mental health topics are also an interest of mine, particularly Autism Spectrum conditions.

I've never thought to group my special interests into categories like that, so it would be hard to say in my case. I don't think I could categorize them. When I'm obsessed with something, it's usually all-encompassing. For example, my main interest last year was radio. Indulging in it could entail anything. Listening to the radio, reading about radio science or its history, looking at radios, taking them apart, organizing parts, sketching and labeling them. Even watching shows where the characters used radio in some form was satisfactory (to be honest, I derive great pleasure just from typing or saying the word "radio"). I could go on and on. But the point is, I couldn't limit radio to a historical, scientific, or cultural interest, etc. It was just radio. Well, maybe it could be called a technological interest. It would be my only one, though, so I'd have to say that I only have unique interests. Horses, radio, the Confederacy, a random person who used to live in my town...Yeah, I can't see any connections.

Not a special interest but I would say that my "odd one out" obsessions these days involve a fear of losing personal items such as my purse, keys and cellphone. I get panic attacks just thinking about it.

^
I have trouble with that too, though the sense of panic isn't very physical and it only slightly interferes with my life. I guess it's more of a psych symptom than a special interest though. I'm sure most people find the prospect of losing important cards, documents, keys etc. a scary thought, and take some pains to keep them safe, but with me it's more like a morbid fear, compulsively checking whether or not these things are still in my pockets. Could be called mild OCD, there's a disproportionate sense of urgency, and if I start to feel too rattled it can cause me to make sudden, clumsy movements as I hastily try to reassure myself that the credit card that has never fallen out of my pocket hasn't just done so. My fix is to work at talking myself down if it happens, asking myself if it's really the crisis I imagine it to be, have I ever lost one of those before, did I live, that sort of thing. But I've always been prone to anxiety and I don't expect it'll ever go completely.

Well, I think we don't actually choose our special interests.

They choose us

A lot of my interests have nothing to do with each other. So I can’t really say any have been the odd one out. They all are the odd one out in a way.

digital audio restoration.
finding bits of images online and modifying them to produce different images.
nutritional supplements that fight inflammation.

All my past and present special interests are nerdy and studious, such as computer graphics, law, R programming, and etc., except: back in 2014, I was crazy about cycling. I don't mean watching cycling (I'm never interested in watching sports), but actually riding my bike. I've never been so athletic, but after that special interest faded away, I no longer have much motivation to exercise.