Some questions about special interests

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Do you have different special interests now than you did when you were a child?

I've added some, and had some go down to just normal interests. Some are the same as I was young (like say, all of math), and some are new.

As a whole my special interests have mostly been within a few categories - mathematics, animals, and fantasy books/series. However, that doesn't include the history and culture of Finland, which is one I picked up a few years ago (because my grandmother died).

How often do your special interests change?

I've not found any patterns. Partially because I never really fully lose them. However, since wikipedia came around its been easier to start the process of adding them.

Do you remember everything you used to know about childhood special interest(s)?

Not everything, but a rather huge amount. When I was in 3rd grade, I had a special interest in The Hobbit. In 10th grade, I was able to mentally recite the entire first chapter of the book still, at least if I had something to prompt me a tiny bit, even if said thing was in a different language than I was reciting in.

Are your special interests expressed through vast quantities of gathered knowledge, or very small extremely specific areas?

Vast quantities of gathered knowledge mostly.

In my case, I have only ever had three "obsessive" special interests, and they are all still with me at various levels.

From age toddler, I have been interested in electronics; particularly TV and radio. I took a radio apart when I was 3, and could barely use a screwdriver, but I had to know how it could talk, when there was nobody in there. Obviously at that age, I wasn't ready for the technical explanation, but I had to understand it so desperately, that I started reading electronics theory and TV & repair books by the time I was 8 or 9, and had a job at a TV repair shop when I was 13 after school a few days a week. This is still a main special interest at age 44, but it's no longer a career due to changing economy and our "throw away" society for electronic goods. I still like to drag home broken old TVs, to repair them for the fun of it.

From about the same age (toddlerhood), I was fascinated with storm sirens (or Civil Defense/air raid sirens) as we called them during the Cold War. I would start counting the days from the last-Friday-of-the-month, for the next siren test day. Guess what happened as soon as I lived in a place where I could have my own siren? Of course I had to get hold of a few of them, and restore them. My first one came from Milwaukee, and I wanted it so badly, that my wife and I got in the truck and drove 4,000 miles round trip to get it. After I did a good workover on it, I installed it at the house, and I sound it every last-Friday-of-the-month, which takes me back to childhood and looking forward to hearing it. Bizarre enough for you?

The third special interest is another weird one, but not quite as weird as the sirens... I decided I need to have a fleet of Diesel-powered cars that everybody else in the USA hated, and that haven't been sold here in 30 years. I'm up to about 15 of them, and although it's costly to maintain, it's one of the things I live for . We even bought another house in order to get enough garages to store them safely, and at least the cost of that is mitigated by renting out the house, and just keeping the garages. I would never want a bunch of junk, so if I get tired of one of them, I'll sell it to another Diesel nut, and I take pride in keeping all of my cars in showroom condition (a lot of work!! !). I get really sad when I see other people who "collect" cars, and just tow them home and let them sit rusting with expired tags, and cause them to become junk. I tow them home, and make them perfect, which takes about 2 or 3 years each, but that's the whole fun of it.

Charles

Do you have different special interests now than you did when you were a child?

I have one main special interest that has stayed the same since I was about 5 years old, and that's military history. This one never, ever goes away in general but I do go through phases of different areas of history and wars/battles that I'm interested in and flit between the different periods and wars depending on what piques my interest at any particular time. I'm currently having an upsurge in my interest int he Vietnam War and just coming out of a phase on the Battle of Stalingrad.

Besides my main special interests I get caught up in many various secondary interests that just seem to pop up from nowhere and obsess me from between and few days to months at a time. With these intersts I know that my time is limited with them so I tend to get very obsessed and immersed in them to the total exclusion of everything else because I know I only have a short period of time to learn as much as possible before my interst int he subject fades (usually when I've got my head around the most difficult aspects). Some of my recent secondary interests include astronomy, quantum physics, epigenetics and economics and evolutionary biology. Some of these are ongoing but on the backburner until my interest in them intensifies again, as I know it will in time. Thank Amazon for the Kindle!! !
How often do your special interests change?

My secondary interests change at random depending on whtever catches my eye, which can be really frustrating but I can usually run with my main interest and one secondary interest at the saem time. I would say my secondary interests usually lasts from a few very intense weeks and then something else comes along, although it may somehow be related to the other iterest which is then on the wane.

Do you remember everything you used to know about childhood special interest(s)?

With my main interest, I remember most things, particularly information relating the formations, regiments, numbers of combabtants, casualties and the dates involved etc, but with my secondary interests I seem to be willing to let go with most of the stuff I learn, although I will retain a working knowledge which is probably beyond that of the normal layman and I can always jump back to it to refresh my memory pretty quickly.

Are your special interests expressed through vast quantities of gathered knowledge, or very small extremely specific areas?

A bit of both really, but my main special interest is definitely expressed with vast quanitities of knowledge I've hoarded over the years and which I constantly keep topped up!

@ Declension - I totally agree with you on Wikipedia. I find it a wonderful way to get basic information on new interests that keeps me ticking over until I can get my hands on more detailed sources of information. Wikipedia is the bane of my marriage some days. My wife hates it when I get into something on there as I just shut out the outside world and immerse myself completely. I'm trying to get greater control over this at present but I'm fighting a losing battle there at the moment I try to keep it to when my wife is out but Wiki definitey takes up a lot of my spare time when my interest in something is building up.

"Do you have different special interests now than you did when you were a child?"

Yes, by and large I have found that what used to be my main interests as a child have become secondary interests to me in adult-hood, or will sometimes completely drop off my radar in favor of other, new secondary/primary interests, which I may have for months or years before they once again do their little shuffle dance. As a child I read voraciously, primarily books considered classic literature, or non-fiction books on ancient history and politics. In the 3rd grade I had a 9th grade reading level, and so on. Now I find that while my primary interests are still politics and history, I go about gathering information on these subjects in a different way (primarily online), and that these primary interests can be subsumed for weeks or months by other, smaller interests, like psychology and Homestuck and Skyrim.

"How often do your special interests change?"

I more or less answered that one already in the paragraph above. Some interests will hold me for years while others, what I call my 'smaller interests', may change every few months. I might listen to the same song or artist over and over for weeks, or read the same books, and then go for months without touching them because a different smaller interest has taken over.

"Do you remember everything you used to know about childhood special interests?"

I remember a great deal, and the more intense the interest was for me as a child the easier it is to recall factual information on the topic.

"Are your special interests expressed through vast quantities of gathered knowledge, or very small extremely specific areas?"

Definitely the former rather than the later. I remember specific facts about specific areas of interest, but the areas themselves are quite broad - from information on authors and books to song origins to psychology factoids and historical information and political developments... The list is extensive, but the knowledge itself is specific. My brain just sort of picks up interesting information and then never wants to put it down.

Do you have different special interests now than you did when you were a child?
Yes, as a child I had the same sort of pattern of obsessions. I would focus intensely on something for a few weeks or months and then move onto something else, the one common factor was that it was always something I could collect...stamps,coins,comics.

How often do your special interests change?
At the moment I don't have a major obsession, I used to be obsessed with fishkeeping,that was my entire life for 4 years, I focused on just that. Then I moved on to hair extensions, dyes, dreads...anything to do with creating very different very colourful hair(about 6 months of intense focus then still obsessed but not as focused for the next year)...then a cosmetics company(intense focus for about a year and a half, and a further year and a half of obsession but not as focused).

Right now my obsessions can last days or weeks or months but as I said I don't have a major one right now. Last week I decided to buy a tablet, all I did all day every day(from Monday-Thursday) was research tablets, compare prices, talk to my dad about it (his lifelong obsession is computers / technology), read reviews, watched reviews, read the manuals, before finally buying one, I now have absolutely no focus on tablets, I'm still excited about getting one(it should arrive today) but I'm not as focused on it. In the past 3 months I've done the exact same thing with a skincare brand called liz earle, playstaion consoles and games and monster high toys for my daughter. Over the summer all I did all day every day was write a book, I had to be reminded to eat, wash, interact with people etc. I was researching character names for days on end, calculating whether it was possible to go from point A to point B in 7 hours based on how fast a car could travel compared to super human speed. I spent around 8 hours working out the timetable for a high school student in the book to ensure that there would be no contradictions in her schedule. I also had to read up about the american schooling system, what grades related to what age etc etc, that has been my most intense obsession in the past year.

Do you remember everything you used to know about childhood special interest(s)?
Not a thing, as a new obsession starts the old one is pushed out of my brain. I could probably tell you a bit about fishkeeping, particularly aquatic dwarf frogs though as that was a long obsession and fairly recent.

Are your special interests expressed through vast quantities of gathered knowledge, or very small extremely specific areas?
Both depending on what my obsession is.

Do you have different special interests now than you did when you were a child?
When I was a kid I was fascinated by baseball and football cards. I didn't care about the games I just liked the statistics on the back. I started collecting them when I was around 7 and by the time I was 8 I had around 3000 cards from the 40's - early 70s. I also had more current ones but the older ones were my favorites. There wasn't very much serious card collecting back then so I could ride my bike to garage sales and pick up cards cheap. I discovered I could make money by raking leaves and mowing lawns so I did that to get money for the cards. I also went around the neighborhood twice on Halloween and collected a ton of candy. I didn't eat any of the candy. I waited 2 weeks after Halloween, when the other kids had eaten all of their candy and were having sugar withdrawals, then I sold mine to them on the play ground at recess. I was like a 3rd grade drug dealer but my product was sugar Naturally I used the money to buy more cards. When I was around 9 my mother threw my cards away because she felt I was spending too much time on them and not enough playing with the other kids. I don't collect cards anymore but it was all about the statistics anyway. I've had a lot of interests but most of them involved statistics in one way or another. I love to compare things.

How often do your special interests change?

Several years for major ones and some have come and gone in cycles.

Do you remember everything you used to know about childhood special interest(s)?


I don't remember everything but I remember a lot.
Are your special interests expressed through vast quantities of gathered knowledge, or very small extremely specific areas?

Both. One of my enduring obsessions has been with music. I like an unusually broad range of music genres but I like specific things in the genres. I have a collection of over 10,000 songs. Most of them are from live shows, which I prefer over studio recordings. But what I do is collect as many versions as I can of songs that I particularly like. But the song has to sound good to me or I won't listen to it more than once. Sometime I really like a certain artist and I will collect every song and performance recording no matter how obscure. I've spent many hours a day for weeks looking for particular performances that I've read or hear about. I'm not very active in music right now but it's something that's been cyclical most of my life. 2-3 years on, 2-3 off.

My latest interest is learning everything about autism. I'm not looking for a cure, I just find it fascinating. Fortunately one thing I've always enjoyed is reading research studies and legal documents.

My intrests vairy
there are a few that change. For months or years i will be obsessed with super mario for example then the legend of zelda and then maybe a certian movie and then maybe super mario again and then maybe a cartoon ........ etc