The Incredible Shrinking Special Interest

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In my younger years, I had a couple special interests along the way. They were the only things I could focus on, like an itch. School always suffered, but when I got home and could study them and talk about them it was all that mattered.

In later years this has essentially vanished. I miss those times.

Has anyone else permanently lost their special interests altogether?

I still have my special interests. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get stuff done that I need to. Being an adult is hard.

Neurotypicals?

I‘m still interested in one of two things at a time. I don‘t call them special interests anymore, because they don‘t fit the criterias of the Dsm 5 (I hate this book). Also they change after a couple of months.

I know what you mean! I miss these times aswell

I still have my one constant, animals, especially cats. My interest in tennis has increased over the years as I began taking lessons myself. It is an active pursuit as well as a fun thing to watch for me. Other interests lessened in intensity and faded from the forefront of my attention, but the knowledge I gained from my research has stayed in my memory.

I've been unable to push myself into recording another song since March. I can't see how it would turn out any better than the songs I've already recorded, and it's an awful lot of work being a one-man band and being my own producer, arranger, & recording engineer. And when I mix it, I hear it repeatedly for hours until it's lost all its freshness. I'll be back, but not yet a while. I don't consciously miss it but when I start after a long break I feel really alive, as long as the idea basically works. I think another reason for letting it go is the loneliness, I go for ambitious standards that most amateurs would see as too hard to bother with.

I can't seem to let go of my interest in computers though. They make a lot of things easy for me, but I spend a lot of time making them (and the saved work) as future-proof as possible. I wouldn't want to lose my work, and there's a lot of it in old formats that wouldn't run on a new computer. I'd probably have moved on my now, but for the wish to keep my stuff, and being techie it's quite satisfying at times.

mmmh during my first yr of uni i didn't spend a lot of time on my interests. had too much work to do. second year i failed uni because i spent too much time writing music. these days, i have no social life. i think about making music/ art constantly.

so... they shrunk and then now they are stronger than ever.

The nature of my interests has changed, but they're still there. They aren't as all-consuming as they used to be but in another sense have grown "more autistic," especially since I turned sixteen. I become wrapped up in details in some cases, and at other times they're very simplistic, like my current fascination with anorexia videos. In the latter case, there is no result. I don't cherish the interest for the sake of making it a part of myself (absorbing knowledge of the subject). Instead, it's more like a stim, repetitive and reassuring but ultimately mindless.

So diminishing interests, or I guess "obsessions", is fairly common then. I still have mild interests, but they're typically drowned out by inevitable apathy. Depression is a factor, and probably for some of you as well. It makes me wonder to what degree that's acting as a barrier against former affections.

It may be a good thing though, because back when I truly had obsessions/special interests I could not focus on anything else.

i still have my special interests such as architecture and game design, but the more I try to share my experience with other people, the less they are interested, although i have basic understanding, it's not complex enough to be considered worthy of conversation and that period of my life where my brain is able to absorb so much information, has passed; so that i've hit a brick wall in terms of expanding my knowledge in those areas.

Mine change monthly, usually cycling between several longstanding ones. Mine recently have been:

Skyrim, jiu-jitsu, pewdiepie

I wish they wouldn't change so often!

I've been thinking about this for a long time. At times, I feel like the so-called special interests became less intense. Other times, I feel like they never faded away.

What actually happens is, I still think about the interests constantly. I talk about them all the time. I just don't physically engage with them as often as I used to. That's probably because I've been feeling less and less motivated, depressed. Nothing cheers me up. I've been receiving bad news nearly every month with regards to my health and other things that affect my life directly.

Taking all that into account, I reckon it's hard to feel motivated and find spare time. Besides, my interests are supposed to make me happy but when I think of life and look at "my stuff", I feel like a grown up kid who refused to live by the social norms and soon will be paying a high price for his choices.

I live by myself, I don't have anyone to help me - that's how I've been living my whole adult life and certainly how I prefer things to be. I look back and whenever there was someone else, that person wasn't exactly helping. I feel like the world is becoming heavier every day and the majority of people are actually making it all the way more difficult for me. The saddest part is that some people actually did that on purpose.

So, is it normal that after a while I won't engage in my favourite pastimes? In the current scenario, it certainly is.

Interesting topic.

My "special interests" as a child were cloaked by having no obligations, etc that the interests would interfere with.

For example, for the "youngsters" here, you may not be aware of getting catalogs in the mail from stores like: JC Penny, Montgomery Wards, Sears, LaBelles, and many others. These were often even 1"-2" thick or more. I looked through all sections of these catalogs, hundreds of times. I'd even study the pictures and pages of the drapery and furniture sections which I had no use for at that age. I was obsessed with them. I was very excited when a new one would arrive.

A set of encyclopedias....same thing.

My most intense special interest as an adult, husband and new parent was with antique tonsorial memorabilia (barber razors, strops, hones, pastes, etc). I was consumed for years with collecting, restoring, selling, acquiring, sharpening, etc. I could go on about how in depth I got, but suffice it to say any free thought was occupied by thinking about that special interest and most of my time spent pursuing it. I finally realized after not seeing it for years that it hurt my marriage and detracted from me being the father I needed to be for my kids. I forced myself to quit that special interest and only gradually was I able to realize in retrospect regrettably how much it negatively affected my relationships. When I was actively pursuing my interest, at times it was like a drug and I was addicted.

I've had a few special interests since then such as collecting small travel sized bottles of scotch whisky. But of course I didn't just want to collect them, I wanted to learn about each distillery, each region in Scotland where each type of whisky is produced, the names of the master distillers at my favorite distilleries, etc. When I started to get into this special interest, I felt that same feeling I had in a general sense when I collected the memorabilia. A voracious desire to take the interest to its most extreme. A craving, an urge, an obsession.

I'm sad now in that I purposely quell such urges if I feel a new interest in something because I know how far I want to take things. I deny myself the ability to really fly unfettered into a new interest given my current obligations in life. Perhaps if I live long enough to retire a new interest will come along and I can be consumed by it like the others have consumed me in the past......