Being unable to focus on things when out in public

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It's like I don't seem to ever be concentrating on where I'm going and nothing around me interests me apart from my special interests. Yet my ears are open all the time during the whole day. I find myself getting lost in my thoughts but yet hearing everything at the same time, where NTs seem to have more of a selective view around them. If an NT woman goes shopping, she can block out everything else around her and focus on the clothes and show all her enthusiasm on what she wants to look for, and notices bargains in supermarkets and can notice things in shop windows, etc. If an NT was to look for someone, he or she can focus on everyone's faces and can usually spot the person he or she was looking for, without getting too lost in their thoughts and wondering about like a lost Jew and missing the person he or she was meant to be looking for. But me, it's like I'm too busy worrying about everything around me (the noises and the crowds) but at the same time not taking heed in anything around me, if that makes any sense.

This is an Aspie thing, or an anxiety thing, or an ADD thing, or what? Who else here experiences this sort of thing?

I do this all the time. Today for some reason the intercom announcements at the store were shouting at me, it did remind me to put in my ear plugs and then I felt much better.

Going out in public seems to remind me of arcade style ("old school") video games wherein pattern recognition and visual acuity is key (and hence they can be memorized I surmise). Most information seems to derive from somewhere and all the details can be perceived within some other - more interesting context - which may or may not necessarily be correct (but could always be cross-referenced).

So in conclusion, I wear sunglasses in public.

My family are going to have a meal in a pub one day next week, and I've got my volunteer job to go to, but the bus stop is right outside this pub where they're going to be eating, and my mum said, ''if we're still in there when you get off the bus, we will call you.'' I panicked and said, ''but I don't always hear you. I hear somebody shouting something, but my name's the type that gets carried off in the wind and I don't seem to register that somebody's calling me.'' And my brother said, ''why don't you just peep your head around the door to see if we're in there?'' And I said, ''uhh....mum's idea was better.''

I said that because I know full well that if I peeped my head round the door, they would probably be sitting right in front of me and I would not see them, or I would look in one direction first and they would be in the other direction waving and calling, and I know that somebody would comment on me being so slow with thing kind of thing. Usually other people can just walk into somewhere and can somehow see in all directions at once and so will spot the people they want to see straight away without looking daft or anything.

I do so much better if I go out (grocery shopping, etc.) if I have my headphones in and can block out a lot of the auditory stimuli. Sometimes I also wear my sunglasses to block out some of the visual stimuli.