Have You Had A Career Involving Your Special Interest?

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Nearly all the jobs I have done have involved one of my special interests except one temporary summer job which by its nature, didn't last long.

What about you?

Yes. I specialised in my special interest in Uni, and it led to a successful career until I imploded from burnout.

I never worked in any other field except for a couple of part-time, summer jobs.

No job has involved one particular special interest, but all of my jobs have involved my general interests of books and writing in some form or another.

Only for a little while - I did a bit of computer programming in my last job. It didn't go very well, really; I was too used to having total control over my coding projects, and I found it very hard to do it as part of a team and with dead-lines etc. To be honest, it kind of killed it as a hobby for a while because it would remind me too much of the stress of work - I've got back into it now that it's just a hobby again, though.

I reached a point where I found I could no longer take another job (Which I hope will change in the future) in one of my special interests (Bicycles) and it has really hit me in the ability to work on my own bikes. I promised a man and lady I know I would repair their bikes and it has been months as I was shutting down just looking at them! I will eventually do them. I am determined because I promised. Maybe if I do just a little bit now and then I can get them done so at least by next year they can ride them again.
It is aweful not being able to do the very things I used to do I could do... It is like my security has been pulled out from under me.

That's pretty much I how felt, too. My coding was always a really good hobby for escaping from stress at work before; so when I started working as a coder, I felt like I'd lost one of the best ways I had of coping with the stress.

It's often recommended that autistic people look to their special interests as "strengths" to help them find a job. I think it can be a good thing for some of us, but I'm not so sure that it's always the best advice - I think that "transferable skills" are more important than trying to match the exact same thing. Doing a hobby under the stress of working conditions felt very different to doing it as a self-motivated thing, especially working for a corporation rather than being self-employed. After my experience, I've decided that I'd prefer to keep my interests and working life apart if I can.

I'm jealous of those who have a special interest they can make a career out of. None of my interests have any practical uses.

The issue is I found that I needed to work in jobs that somehow involved one of my special interests or I would have been too stressed. The one job I did which was not part of one of my special interests wasn't at all easy.

No special interest

No career

No hobbies

No job

No job skills

So what, I have no job skills?

Plenty of lil dipshits also have no job skills

They call themselves licensed clinical social worker

I got into making Techno in 1992, with a friend. We got our first record deal in 1996. We released about 10 singles, did a few remixes, had a few tracks on compilation albums, and released 2 CD albums.
We gigged in London twice, then went on tour around Europe, playing 17 gigs. While on tour, I met someone and ended up moving to Switzerland 6 months later, where we got married
My friend didn't want to work over the Internet so we disbanded. I carried on working as a DJ for a while, released one more tune and called it a day in 2001.

^ whereupon I packed about 1000 meltdowns into a two year period, (no exaggeration) had a psychotic episode and got sectioned, then divorced.

I had wanted to be a programmer ever since I read a phamplet "Yes, No, One, Zero" while in elementary school and that was about my entire career. For years I was a contract musician when various churches needed an orchestra for Christmas, Easter, or presenting a major choral work--I had taken piano lessons for over a year around the 4th grade and violin in the 6th. A few years ago I taught chess at a summer camp, a hobby since around the 5th grade.

I'm a novelist (in process of trying to get my first, [Ilnconveniences,[/I] published, and currently typing The Harrowing of Helspeth.)

Sometimes I write with dip pens, or fountain pens, but mostly I use a typewriter. While I am working I like to keep the phonograph going and listen to some good music. Lately I have been on a major classical kick and playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, his 6th Symphony, and Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 on a windup Columbia "Grafonola" from the early thirties or late twenties. It sounds kind of like a really good radio instead of an old phonograph. All the writing is done under the 40-watt Edison lightbulb of my 1935 Eagle desk lamp.

My daily driver typewriter is a big sit-up-and-beg Remington, the "Paragon 12" model of 1927. But after lnconveniences it broke down due to dirt in the movement and a worn-out ribbon so I am not using it at the moment. Instead I am writing on a Corona 3 Folding Typewriter from 1922. It's very small and shaky and cigar-boxy but somehow it runs 97 years after manufacture.

Also, my desk has vintage books on it and a tombstone radio from 1938.

So I get to use all my special interests in one spot! Also, I need a real job.

A career? Forget it, I've never even had a short term contract with a job that would have anything to do with any of my special interests. I do however have interest in mythical creatures and fantasy plus I write fiction, so I'm in the progress of hopefully making that a side job by becoming a novelist. I find it extremely unlikely, though not perfectly impossible, that I could one day make a living just out of that, but even having it as a side job would be somewhat satisfying and help me deal with my current boring job (or any other boring job I might end up with.)

Give it a shot! You have a boring job. It's money & you can do good work, I hope--so keep it and moonlight as a fantasy novelist. Bonus awesomeness if you're also adding characters into your books who have terrible occupations but are secretly into something amazing. Runes? Slaying dragons--or taming dragons and riding forth to fight the greatest evils that ever threatened the world??

You can only do what you try.

Even a special interest with some practical use can be problematic. I’ve had more than one special interest over the years. I developed a special interests in psychology in my teens and eventually after a lot of detours did become a psychologist. I found the work fascinating, but, working as an aspie therapist was exhausting with all the social contact and demands on my executive functioning. I ended up burning out and then was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a month (the same place I had worked a few years earlier, ironic yes). I’ve not been the same since. I still love psychology, but my career as a full-time therapist is over. The strain broke me and now I can't manage a full day without coming home with a splitting headache, shut down and non-verbal for the rest of the day.