CockneyRebel wrote:
I haven't spoken to my parents about my special interests since I was 11.
Me neither.
In fact, I had never spoken about anyone about it in real life. Why? Because I really really like to keep it to myself.
Somehow it helps that it looked socially acceptable. Special interests that I had as a young child were a little weird. Those I had at later years doesn't seem to be out of place.
Not even in college when I used to hoard and collect all shades of ballpoint ink pens; and only that. No gel pens, no sign pens -- only ordinary ink and thus even lower quality ones gets collected since it gives off subtle difference of shades and degree of colors.
Even as a notebook page of what happens if I try and blend 2 different ink colors.
I wonder if I still have those... I'm sure it wasn't thrown away yet somewhere...
As for my longest special interest, it was because my hands got easily tired, something about it's nerves.
Nothing so serious, but repeatedly crocheting in knife grip made my right pinkie so tense, it's almost as painful as carpal tunnel like pain when I used to play online games for several hours straight. It wasn't as bad now despite using the mouse for almost just as long but still.
I hadn't able to complete my stim wallets.
Like, sure, there's the body but none have zippers save for ones I already given away. It's still on a storage somewhere.
As for my tools, I'm fairly sure I gave it away amongst many, many things that I had tried to unclutter.
You know what? I kept failing as uncluttering that it's utterly frustrating.
It's like becoming my mom with clothes. Ugh.

And I really, really hate that.
Maybe that's my red flag from the beginning of why I do not tell my parents about my special interests, amongst other reasoning like showing it off without my consent. I utterly hate that habit passed down onto me.
I don't care even if my boss is doing it, too -- I utterly hate it.
I really missed having a real special interest.
It's been over 6-7+ years.

Screw my full time job that never made me learn ways I wanted.
...
See? See what I told you?
YAP!
Is special interest, well, my special interest?
NO!
If that's the case, I'd be researching about the nature and underlying mechanisms about that, or collecting names of special interests of other people, or something else entirely like obsessing about having one.