Special Interest as our Identity

Post Reply New Topic

Anyone else feel that their special interest is their Identity. They are their special interest. They are dinosaurs, Doctor Who, or anime. Anyone else feel so entwined with their special interests that they want to change their name to something either having to do with their special interest or the special interest itself? Such as calling yourself Holmes. We are unique in our attachment to an interest/s and I was just wondering if anyone is connected in this way.

All the time, haha. Especially TV shows and movies.

I have several interests (genealogy/history, world religion, natural science, probably a few others but those are the main ones, religion especially) and I've considered changing my name to reflect them several times.

my screen name (which is also my email and my tumblr address, between the three easily the majority of my social interaction by a substantial margin) is also an allusion to one of my interests in terms of the other. (it's the chemical formula for the variety of Jade prized in ancient China. I'm a geology student and the big theme of my religion interest, which is my main one, is that the dharmic religious family is superior to the abrahamic religious family - I see East Asian Buddhism as the epitome of cultivated humanity.)

Yes. My special interest is my career, my schoolwork, my hobbies, my life, even my personal identity, because what I happen to be studying is entwined with my ethnicity and religious views, as well as cultural preferences.

I live and breathe my special interests. I like it that way.

In that case call me 'The Master.'

My interests do become my identity. I tried to explain this in an ADHD forum.
I basically live for my sci-fi trilogy. There is nothing more important to life than this, except whenever ABC iView puts up the next episode of Doctor, which counts as research.
I display my collections as 'trophies' of those interests. It's hard to explain but it's like a photo album. You show it to people or just look over it to reminisce. All the items in my bedroom from the bookshelf to telescope to Stargate display to the MASSIVE Doctor Who collection, tells people who I am. Even the clothes on display, the objects I toss on my table for easy reach, the iPad on the charger on my bedside table, the music playing - it's all a part of me. Even the odd cat snoozing on the bed.

OK, I went way overboard there. These interests form an identity and help me build an understanding and interact with the world that I find so confusing and alien.

For years I've been dressing like Harry Potter, in Muggle clothes, but now it's a mixture of geeky Teefury t-shirts (one that is a HP shirt and 6 others are Doctor Who). I wear specific clothes that make me feel like Col Sheppard from Stargate Atlantis.

Every couple of months or so I'll get really intense into Doctor Who, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, Star Trek, Physics, Astronomy, the Air Force, Harry Potter (the video games only), Ender's Game (I even started talking like the cadets), and those will become my world. I'll talk like (or just use words like), dress like, and to other people completely obsess over.

These days it's all about my novel. I created my own alternate Earth (Australia really), put in a secret base, some space battles and a lot of cool advanced tech. But there's a lot about living with high functioning autism in there and struggling with friendships, the work environment and other such things. I wrote my own language, of colour.
I make up my own names and words combining Latin with some other language, usually Welsh or Sanskrit. I've even given myself a nickname my shortening my whole title: Shadro. It's my pretentious artist's signature.
This world feels so real to me I confuse the characters for other characters in sci-fi and feel just like the main character, which is great because I want to live in the story. People tell me just write it all out and edit later but that way I won't get to experience the story.
As far as I'm convinced this world I'm in now is the alternate reality and these flashes in my mind are memories of the world I was taken from, and I've got to work out how to get back. Hey, there's a story in that.

Although I've been playing video games lately and my imagination keeps seeing everything as a 3rd person RPG. I get pretty influenced by my interests that quickly.

Yes my fantasy worlds and the novels they are derived from are do become my identity, what defines me the most......absolutely. I very much related to the the original post......wanting to change your name to reflect the special interest....as a kid I used to try to make people call me the names of characters in books I was pretending to be.

Oh yeah, I've done this one plenty.

My central interest is gaming, and I tend to use names related to that. I'm also into anime conventions and cosplay (the act of dressing up as a character you like, usually done at these events), and I absolutely love dressing up as characters I like (and by "like", I mean "obsess over") even if those characters are the opposite gender. The characters I choose tend to represent the way I want to be in some way or other, and thus tend to have similarities among them.


As for my screen-name and avatar here, "Misery" is one in a long list of names taken from games to use in various places online. This one really stuck though, for a couple of reasons. While I like doing the cosplay of various characters, I can almost never match their actual personality. The character Misery though, her personality matches mine really well, and I just liked her to begin with, so I've been sticking with that name. It also helps that at every forum I go to, sooner or later I'll get someone saying "you know, that name really fits you", haha.

Anyone thought about changing their name legally, especially if that name is connected with a special interest that will never go away or lessen.

I'm a car guy. I feel no reason to hide that fact as it is something I really enjoy and that lets me socialize better. At first, I was a more typical musclecar guy who belonged to the tribe of Chevy. However, my first car was an AMC so I became a very frustrated AMC guy. As an adult however, I like anything practical and well constructed that works. It can be a 4x4, a drag car, a good all-rounder or even a super fuel efficient hypermiler so long as it is built to reach a specific engineering goal. As such, my taste dose not really include wild custom stuff or cars with ridiculously large wheels stuffed under them.

I do try to make cars that look good and I do all of my own paint and body work as well as most of my own welding. However, my style tends to be conservative and clean rather than heavily modified. I do eliminate superfluous trim from my cars but don't do heavy modifications to the body that scream not stock. My cars just look "right" and have changes that are not readily apparent to the uninitiated, and that's just the way I like it.

My special interest is Buddhism, but my
practice is to cultivate non-identification.

When does a special interest in this context
become a mindful experience?........
Well, I guess when one is not holding ones
breath, or being attached.

Having Mindfulness as a special interest
as well as as having AS makes life very
interesting.

Electronics. People know I like them, so they constantly ask me questions about their phones and crap.

Anyone become Pavlov's dog when they see, hear, taste, read, or feel their special interest?

I am not sure. I love art and music but I cant play instruments, I dont sing often and my musical interests are usually very geared towards musical movies such as singing in the rain and the court jester and newer ones like repo the genetic opera and burlesque.

I also like fantasy, so I have a really large data bank of fantasy related information from authors like anne rice, laurell k hamilton and jayne castle.

I also like history, but I think that hobby has ran its course.

My general interests branch out, so that my current hobbies seem to be very diverse but in reality they are not. Like my current obsession with Dragon Age Origins. It stems for the fantasy setting and because I like to systematically beat every quest with different classes and races in a variety of combination.

I am going to school for business . .. completely unrelated but easy that is why do not want to pursue a masters degree on business.

Being able to speak Finnish is a major part of my identity. I have thought often of legally taking a Finnish name. Not to replace my original name, but as a middle name.

I love anthropomorphized Cars, and anything to do with them...I also like classic Cars, too, and last summer, I even created a "carsona" for myself - Lil' Pink Coupe. So, I guess in a way, my special interest in Cars serves as an identity for me.

When I was a kid, I lived in anthropomorphic worlds that greatly shaped who I was and my preferences for things. I would not be interested in books, movies, etc involving people, instead preferring stories with "walking talking animals". I also had a wide variety of imaginary friends (one of my main special interests as a kid), which were mostly animals and variations of people I already knew...these were an important part of my life, and everyone who knew me knew of them.