special interest issues

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Imagine you’ve found your calling. You’ve found that one thing that you know you were meant to do. You’re ready to invest as much time and money and energy as is necessary to accomplish this. Maybe you have an idea for a novel or other work of art, or a video game you’re ready to design and program all on your own. Maybe you want to study and learn everything there is to know about a certain topic, so you can become an expert and use your knowledge to change the world. Anything, really, that takes time and dedication. You’ve found it, and you’re ready. And you tell your friends and family.

And they roll their eyes.

Or maybe they laugh, or just change the subject. But no one takes you seriously. None of them has any respect for or understanding of your passion. They think it’s just a passing phase, and tell you as much. Just another of your little interests that you’ll forget about before long.

You’re hurt. You’re offended. You’re indignant. How dare they? What right do they have to judge you? What makes them think they know anything about it? Sure, maybe you’ve had some interests in the past that faded with time, but this is different! This is completely new, completely amazing, and nothing you’ve ever encountered before could even come close.

So, to hell with them. You get to work. You pour your soul into this. You’re going to change the world this time, they’ll all see. You spend every waking moment on it, and lie awake in bed at night picturing the success you’re sure to find before too long.

And then one day you look at it and think, I’m a little burnt out. I’ve spent every spare second on this for the past few weeks and I need a break. I’ll do it tomorrow.

And then the next day you think, damn, I’m really tired. Tomorrow for sure, start fresh.

And then a few days later you realize you haven’t even thought about it for a while.

And then a week later you decide it’s taking up space and you clean it up and pack it away, carefully remembering where you put it so that you can find it when you have the time and energy to work again.

And then one day you’re cleaning out your storage and you stumble upon a graveyard of unfinished projects. You feel excruciating pangs of nostalgic shame for each and every one of them. You can remember, quite clearly now, just now passionately you felt about each one. You can still see yourself in your mind’s eye, pouring all of your energy into each of them. You can remember the excitement of knowing that you had finally found it, finally found your calling, your true purpose in life, visualizing the finished product and knowing it would be ready soon. You try to tell yourself that you’ll finish them all eventually, but even you know that’s not true. Why are you lying to yourself?

And then someone asks you with a smirk on their face how that project of yours is coming along. Will it be finished soon? Or was that just last year’s obsession?

And you get angry, but mostly at yourself. Because you know they’re right.

And then, one day, you find your calling, and it really feels different this time. You can do it. You’ll finish this one. You’ll never give up. This time it’s for real.

But deep down inside, you know that’s not true. You know, finally know for sure, that one day you will wake up and this incredible thing that’s so important to you now will be suddenly meaningless. Every ounce of energy you put into it will be wasted. It’s a guarantee. It will go in the graveyard with all the other projects you swore you’d finish but never did.

But you can’t let that feeling take over. Because then you’re stuck wondering if there’s any point to anything at all, if you should ever bother trying, if your life is worth a damn. And you can’t start thinking that way or your whole world will fall apart.

So you get to work anyway. And you hope, you pray, that this time it will be different. Please, for god’s sake, don’t let this be just another obsession. Please let it be real this time. Please let my life be worth something.

Yes. I cycle through obsessive interests far more rapidly than I'm comfortable with. I think far more rapidly than most aspies. I actually wrote a blog entry about this here: http://crowdedhead.blog.com/2012/11/23/obsessions/

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