"Passions" vs "special interests"

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That explains a lot. When you first showed up, I thought you might be a troll. But I try not to be too quick to judge, plus I have a really hard time recognizing real trolls versus people who have difficulties phrasing things versus people with other qualities that lead me to misinterpret them. So I waited to see where you were going to go with things. It appears that what I was seeing was not trolling (and I apologize for even suggesting that you might have been, but that is honestly what I was wondering) but rather the effects of very mild asperger's.

It would explain why so often it seems to me that you sort of get what it is like to be me but at the same time totally miss the mark on aspects (compared to many others who describe their view of the world and it feels as if they could be describing me instead of themselves, it is so similar to my own experience.) You are at a different level of AS than I am. Before realizing that, it looked to me almost as if you had read up on AS and were pretending to be one of us so you could poke at us but now I see that you are not pretending, you are just in a very different place on the spectrum than I am (and I am at a very different place in the spectrum than others I know. But somehow it was easier for me to recognize when someone is more deeply affected by asperger's than it was for me to recognize when someone is more lightly affected -- possibly because I have/had a self-image predicated on my asperger's being "quite mild" so it was harder for me to see and recognize milder asperger's.) (And there is a chance that my asperger's is not "quïte mild" since the effects it has had in my life have been quite strong. It's hard for me to objectively know how I compare to the rest of the world.)

Thank you for sharing that about yourself -- it helps me to understand you, myself, and the spectrum a little better. And I do apologize for mis-reading you before, even if I kept that to myself. I feel bad about it anyway, especially now that I see how wrong I was.

You are very welcome. New users who immediately jump into the fray are often accused of being trolls since they ignore the established social consensus existing on all forums, but I simply didn't want to wait like three years before making any posts.

I call mine obsessions, because that's what they are, but...
My obsessions/special interests/passions or whatever you want to call them, are very obsessive, take up a lot of my spare time, do almost seem compulsary to me in that I've got to persue them whenever I get the urge and it can seem rather repetitive and one track minded to the usual person, yet they are more of a passion than just a cold hard obsession. The usual "more rote than meaning" phrase to describe an aspie's special interests don't really apply to me, I don't just collect a bunch of facts like a fact collecting machine. My obsessions do have a lot of meaning and often involve concepts and stuff, I do get passionate about certain issues involving my obsessions. For example, if someone were to go and buy a pet marmoset monkey (which is quite common unfortunatly) I would tell them off for it without any care how my tone came across, I disagree with it so I would let my contempt be known.
So my obsessions are also passions, and not just compulsive fact collecting that is often the image that is brought to mind when aspie "special interests" are mentioned.

Actually, that's as strong as my special interests are. The ones intense enough to last two weeks or less (for some reason, for me the more intense they are the shorter they last) will mean I spend every waking moment thinking about it and usually don't get enough sleep because I'm learning about/doing it.

As long as their intentions aren't dergatory, it dosen't bother me what people call my special intrest/obsession/passion or whatever with meerkats.

As far as I am concerned...

Passion
Obsession
Focus
Special Interest
Devotion

...are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same.

Any of them are a problem if, and only if, they interfere with normal daily functioning. Otherwise, it's healthy.

I honestly don't give a RIP about any of the negative connotations associated with any of these terms.

This is an example of euphemism treadmill - the expression "special interests" is itself largely an attempt to avoid the negative connotations of "restricted and repetitive behavior and interests".

When I was a kid I was far more obsessed with things and I was quite happy. These special interests could go on for years! But now I am older and I feel like I've learned too much about the things which once interested me. Now I only seem to get mini obsessions, lasting from a few days to a few months. I wonder if this happens to any other older Aspies.