Interests switching rapidly

Post Reply New Topic

Some days I want to draft a building, another taking photos, another with making matte paintings in photoshop, or some days wanting to fly. IS there anyway for me to be normal and just like one thing? It's making me having a hard time at finding a job & surviving college..

I recommend you spend some time trying new hobbies since changing college majros is expensive.

You could be having an existential crisis and are just trying to find something you like and would do as a career. Best way to find out is to try to do something new and trust your initial feelings of doubt, boredom, etc.

If that doesn't work you could list off why you might be interested in these careers and compare them to what you truly want in a career. Having concrete and visual lists really helps.

Another possibility is to think of careers and do Freudian free association. I recommend writing down the first 15 things that you can think of when you hear "career" (and post on here if you want an interpretation.) Essentially, the first 5 or 7 will be what you show the rest of the world. Everything afterwards will be your genuine thoughts and emotions regarding it.

My suspicion is you may have been forced into college by parents too soon though.

I recommend you spend some time trying new hobbies since changing college majros is expensive.

You could be having an existential crisis and are just trying to find something you like and would do as a career. Best way to find out is to try to do something new and trust your initial feelings of doubt, boredom, etc.

If that doesn't work you could list off why you might be interested in these careers and compare them to what you truly want in a career. Having concrete and visual lists really helps.

Another possibility is to think of careers and do Freudian free association. I recommend writing down the first 15 things that you can think of when you hear "career" (and post on here if you want an interpretation.) Essentially, the first 5 or 7 will be what you show the rest of the world. Everything afterwards will be your genuine thoughts and emotions regarding it.

My suspicion is you may have been forced into college by parents too soon though.

I do this all the time, but I've integrated it into my life.

i go through regular changes of interest. there is only one or two interests that have stayed constant in my life - the rest come and go.

i have AS and ADHD so thats probably got something to do with it.

You seem to be a very visual person. Perhaps you can combine your interests in a certain way? So take pictures of old buildings and then drawing a design for reconstructing the building (if that makes sense?).

It's fine to have different hobbies. I imagine the only reason it may seem unusual is that many Aspies focus intently on one area of interest. But no-one is going to berate you for enjoying many things.

I too have a hard time narrowing my interests down to one thing. This causes problems in that it's hard to follow a single career and get really good at that one thing. On the other hand, since I easily switch from one interest to another, I am very flexible in my job and when one kind of work isn't needed, I just switch to another. The result is I don't get laid off because I am not needed.

What I find frustrating about this approach is that I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. I'm a pretty good photographer. I can write well if I apply myself. I have a good general knowledge of many aspects of computer graphics and can do a little bit of everything in the field. But I don't stand out as really exceptional in any of these areas. If I could simply narrow my interests and work hard at only one subject, I could probably become quite good. But I get bored or frustrated and I wander off to do something entirely different on a regular basis.

My guess is that this is just a deep part of our personalities and I don't have much hope that it can be changed. The best approach is to try to find a way to make this approach to different interests work for you. In my case, I work for a very small company that doesn't need a full time computer animator but has a use for someone who can do some computer animation, some photography, some photo retouching, some web design etc. I am sometimes criticized for not being as good as others in any particular field, but there are very few people who have the range of skills I have. I think that's how you have to promote yourself when looking for work. And you should think about how you can integrate your numerous interests into a kind of work that brings together different fields of study rather than becoming an expert at a single field.

And in answer to The_Perfect_Storm, here is the wikipedia definition