I can sort of relate to this.
When I was a kid, I started off being interested in music. I took piano lessons and I really liked trying to learn new things and imitate the music I heard. I also have perfect pitch which is an ability to hear tones and know what notes/frequencies they are, without comparing them to some reference. This helped me latch onto musical ideas very quickly. As I got older though, I realized that my real passion wasn't just music, but music technology. More specifically, synthesizers.
I can spend hours playing with various software synths, and sometimes, when I'm really absorbed in something or have a specific goal in mind, I'll try to figure out how a certain synthesizer makes certain sounds. Playing with this stuff has been my private escape, since when I realized I was interested in this, I didn't know anyone who knew much about this stuff.
Unfortunately, I don't have the math or programming chops to really get far in any of these endeavors, and even when I try to read dumbed-down explanations of a certain technical concept, I often struggle to comprehend it. But it's still fun trying to understand what I can. About the only thing I have going for me in this regard is a bit of a knack for number juggling and mental math. So any time I want to study something, I try to get it down to some numeric form. If I can reduce what I'm doing to a simple math problem, I have a better chance of finding a solution that will actually get me somewhere. If I actually had the drive to do it, I could probably take my math skills higher, but I had bad experiences with that in school. I could work out math problems just fine, until they got into algebra and functions and other things. I couldn't rely on my number skills as much. Now I had to understand hypothetical relationships in order for the numbers to make sense, and I am not good at that.
That is probably why I am still thinking musically in a sense. For example, if I want to understand how a certain waveform on a synthesizer is generated and then I want to recreate it, I don't focus my efforts on how technically accurate my recreation is, I focus on how it sounds. If it sounds right, then I'll check the numbers to compare to the original, and if they're different, I'll be curious as to why, but at the end of the day I only ask for an accurate sound.
Where I think I have the most skills are in transcription/immitation. I'm starting to apply these skills for practical purposes now. IN a few months I'll be doing a 3-hour performance, and have decided to transcribe most of the songs I'm playing so that I can do a one-man band type of thing with my keyboard, instead of sticking to a simple piano sound. When I'm transcribing a song, I try very hard to get every instrument's sound and articulation as close as I can to the original I'm using. I've looked up instrument lessons and instructional content on Youtube to try to understand how different instruments are physically and mechanically played. I don't delve into the scientific, but I do spend way too much time looking at the basics. Acoustic instruments are harder to recreate in a convincing way so I enjoy those most. With EDM and the like, the challenge is more streamlined; most synthesizers stick to conventional ways of operating so it's not quite as involved much of the time, so long as you have a good ear for matching things and you have tools that can recreate the sounds. In any case, I enjoy imitation because not only do you have to think musically, you have to psychologically connect with the unique set of conditions each instrument presents in the real world, and you also have to have some technical skills to imitate the sounds you want and refine them if needed, otherwise it could sound sloppy. I am a perfectionist and that is both my biggest strength, and my biggest weakness.
I tried to pursue my musical talents in college by getting a degree in music industry and recording technology. I had a lot of fun in the music classes, and I learned a lot about how people traditionally do things, but I felt like something was missing. For some reason which I can't yet fully explain, my focus was different from the focus of most of the other people. They were all focused on getting a good professional sound from a band's multitrack recording. But I had trouble getting that professional sound they seemed to be after, because I couldn't hear the details they were hearing. On the other hand, I was hearing things that nobody else seemed to notice. For example, I'm often able to pick out specific frequencies that stick out, but nobody else seemed to catch onto them. Or if they did, they spent 5 minutes with an equalizer trying to figure out how best to get rid of it, when I could've done it in a few seconds. I kept this to myself though, since I knew I just heard things differently and I didn't want to be known as a showoff. I already kind of was, because I was taking more advanced classes. On the contrary, I wanted to be more like everyone else, because most people wouldn't care about my forensic attention to little details that keeps me from seeing the big picture. I blaim Aspergers for this, or whatever has made me the geek I am. Because really, I spend way too much time with this stuff. Lol