Special Interests vs. Narrow Interests

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To them, they are. If they're anything like me, their Special Interests are their life.

Honestly, at times in my life, my Special Interests are the only thing that have got me through.

For me, one of the issues is "falling in love" with a topic. I am interested in languages, and sometimes when I hear about some obscure language I just have to know about it ... but I won't be at all interested in another related obscure language. It is like the language becomes my "secret garden" - it is just me and my obscure language. I feel like I am exploring a hidden world where no else goes - although of course, if it is a real language then people on another continent do speak it and (obviously) do know more about it than I do.

But in the English-speaking world where I live (Australia), when I say that I read or speak a certain obscure language, I then have to explain what the language is because usually no one else has ever heard of it. I really like those off-beat little paths where so few others go ... my private world. The odd thing is, the language will have to be a specific dialect - any other dialect of the language just leaves me cold. E.g. when I bought a book about Rheto-Romance (eastern Switzerland), I only cared about information on the Engadine dialects (Vallader and Puter) ... I just wasn't interested in the other dialects for some reason (well actually I do know the reason: there is a suburb called "Engadine" in my part of Sydney, and somehow I felt I had discovered a mysterious Engadine behind the ordinary Engadine that I knew - kind of like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia).

I don't know if others feel this sense of secret wonderment with any of their special interests? It's like you're the only one who cares about your special topic.