what is your relationship with your past interests?

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if your interests change over time (example music>electronix hacking>breeding seahorses>gardening) do you feel avoident of your old interests once you put them down for a while. I still haven't cleared out all of the now long empty fish tanks, in part because I miss the joy that it brought me, but I also have not real resolve to set them back up. Silmilarly I used to play guitar for several hours everyday, I will occasionally pick it back up but its like it just doesn't feel right anymore. I still have piles of dissasembled controllers with various switches and such soldered on to tangles of wireing that intertwine with each other in much the same mannor as the tangle of morning glories that now recieve my attention.

It can be quite frustrating, particularly as you read of other aspies who have had just one or two unchanging obsessions (ie are simply the biggest expert on X that there is on the planet, which is marketable to employers) where I tend to pick up something new and get to be very good at, far better than the avererage, but not quite a master. Often this leads me to become frustrated with the interest and put it down. I have to chalk some of that up to a sense of perfectionism (I produced more than 100 electronic music pieces, various house/breaks/d&b/weird experimental stuff like John Cage, mind You I have only 2 finnished pieces, this is because I lost all of the files except the final mixes so I couldn't keep messing with them)

don't really know where I was going with all this anymore, but feel free to try and keep this thread going somewhere

I miss my Legos.

My interests vary too much from time to time for me to tell.

I stay on friendly terms with my past interests because my involvement is cyclical and I never know when I might take them up again. As most of my interests involve some degree of collecting, this can be quite space consuming, but I have never thrown out everything connected with a cold interest because that would be like throwing out a piece of myself. The best I can do is cull from a collection things that are second rate.

My interests change over time. I have never really had an interest that was a "skill", most of them have been "things".

When I was eight, my special interest was the planets. This was pretty much the strongest interest. I'm sixteen now, so it's been eight years since I had that interest. I find that I still enjoy talking about the planets, but don't have the same extreme interest in them as I did when I was younger. This is about the same with all my interests.

For anyone who is interested, here is my interest timeline:

2-5.5 years old: Winnie the Pooh

5.5-6.5 years old: School

Summer of 2001: (6.5 years old) Radio Stations

Fall of 2001: Storeys of the House

7 years old: Tape Recorders

8-9: Ferries

9-9.5: Roller Coasters (not the physics of them)

9.5-10: Great Big Sea (band)

10-11: Roller Coasters

11-13: Great Big Sea

13-14.5: Jian Ghomeshi (radio host)

14.5-15.5: Great Big Sea

Spring/Summer of 2010: My teacher/transit/Toy Story

15.5-present: Great Big Sea

Much the same for me, although I guess I tend to be more of a social studies nerd.

And sometimes it is kind of sad because it didn't work out, and esp if it did not lead to the kind of social connections I was hoping for. For example, one interest of mine was academic ethics, particularly a theory called 'utilitarianism,' particularly motive utilitarianism and taking it further and continuing to develop it. But there are no jobs in the field, literally almost not until someone retires. And the field is rife with oneupsmanship, misplaced machoism, all of that.

When I worked for H&R Block (unethical company, need to disclose third-party bank cross-collection to client) and afterward, I got good at taxes. And it's not all hard logic. Believe it or not, a lot of it is feel and texture, recognizing that a situation feels somewhat different and then looking it up and coming at it from different directions (at least multiple fresh looks). And being satisfied with an answer that is good enough and perhaps taking a series of medium steps and medium risks, rather than one big step all at once. I studied education tax credits, and I studied rules for tax shelters and what's called 'material participation.' Now, what I really got good at was Earned Income Credit. I wrote some stuff on the Internet. I have personal experience working with a variety of clients, and I've read some papers and one academic books on the subject. And I was intense about it. I used my aspie skills. I really feel that when I was on the top of the subject, maybe only a couple of hundred people in the country understood EIC as well as I did. Maybe someone who's been a longtime Congressional staffer, who's worked with the subject, also might understand it as well, or sure, perhaps even better.

I've thought about going into taxes. Except clients judge by outcome, understandably so. If they get audited, you've done a bad job. If they don't, at least an okay job. If you get them a big refund, then a good job. That kind of thing. And accounting firms, from what I gather, mainly want people who can go fast. The focus is not on high quality work.

I sometimes cycle back to my interests. And at times feel I am now looking at it partially as an outsider and can explain it better.

In some ways, I might be kind of a generalist, which might lend itself to such activities as:
journalist,
entrepreneur,
teacher,
researcher (esp. what to research)

I also like the idea of having several projects going at the same time.

I look back on all of my old interests fondly. They each have a special place in my heart and I am grateful that I had them to help me cope with the various trials and tribulations in my life.

Some of them - particularly those I had when I was a preteen - cause me to become painfully nostalgic, and I find myself longing to return to the period of time in my life when I obsessed over them. Other past interests are a source of mild embarrassment for me, though that has more to do with how I indulged in the interests rather than the interests themselves.

There are some special interests that have stayed me. Those interests include The Kinks and Swinging London along with Routemasters. I also still get excited about watching the Olympics on TV after 27 years.

Other obsessions like the ones about the US and bodily functions are the ones that I'd rather forget.

The only interests that I've always had have been science (astronomy and physics) and building things. That's not to say that I don't still enjoy my other previous interests, it just seems that I don't get the same level of enjoyment out of them, and they just sort of become like hobbies. Usually, the stronger an interest is, the shorter it will last.