Special interests and employment

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i would very much love to have been able to make a vocational go of my present avocation, that of digital audio restoration/enhancement of recorded music.

Could you team up with a mentor who is a specialist in that, the internet makes these connections so much easier given that there are groups on the net for these kinds of things?

Cool! Looking forward to hearing how it goes in due course. You don't need ABA for that plan!!

these days there is cutthroat competition among different web entrepreneurs regarding audio restoration. sharp elbowed bunch, they.

Personally I benefited greatly from meeting three terrific mentors in my life.

The first was a senior lecturer at university who taught me about the "games people played" - ie those in charge of that particular faculty, the scheming that went on there to advantage some over others, the way they made decisions according to their biases and how they schemed to withhold awards to accomplished students they didn't like for political or other non-academic reasons. This helped me negotiate the rapids without capsizing, as I didn't know universities were so infected with these kinds of chicanery.

The second and third were senior public servants who approached me and took me under their wing, again teaching me how to play the poohbahs at their own political games to find a way through the prejudice and underhand chicanery. The poohbahs tried to block anyone or anything they saw as a challenge to their own self interest and any challenge to the status quo which they saw as a dictatorship to benefit themselves.

These 3 people were vital to the progress I went on to achieve.

I owe those people a huge debt of gratitude.

Eric Berne ?

if only i'd have found a mentor when it mattered. but none was available.

Yes, the goodies are thin on the ground. I was truly fortunate that they found me when I needed them.

yes indeed.

I kind of feel uncomfortable about the term "special interest". I feel like, at least to me, it comes off as patronizing. Why can't it just be called an "interest" or an "avid interest" if it is really strong?

I love insects. I am an entomologist. I'm not a "special entomologist." It's not like I received a "special PhD." I don't teach "special university coursework."

my interests are special to me

I'm not too sold on the term myself. It's hard to discern my own interests from NT hobbies anyway. Even their intensity isn't particularly different from those. Consider the football fan whose entire world collapses if a match doesn't proceed in the way he would have liked. I can get pretty welded to my interests for a time, but not quite that welded. Maybe my interests are only weird because they don't necessarily depend on a bunch of other people sharing them? Though even there I've long been mindful of the alienation and loneliness of going down a fascinating tunnel that nobody else has the faintest interest in, and I make efforts to try to keep my interests from getting completely decoupled from the rest of the human race.

an update to one of my audio editing/restoration programs [iZotopeRx8] now includes the ability to iron out "wow and flutter" from my recordings, so that is a new special interest, going through my collection of watery-sounding tapes and making them sound on-pitch again.

"Field of study" or "discipline" are better terms. I agree with your patronizing remark.

Agree. Interest, hobby, passion, obsession, whatever. NT and neurodiverse have this in common. Just because someone with ASD has an interest, doesn't mean it has to be "special". I think it's a way of flagging that someone is on the spectrum...but do we really need any more of that, with so much attention being given to it via a diagnosis? I'd be worried people identify too much with being on the spectrum and having a disability, "special" aspects of themselves, etc. It definitely can be limiting and condescending.

It's pathologising. You can compare it to the "double empathy" problem.