Losing A Lifelong Special Interest

[Deep_Blue_Girl]

Oh, you're not losing a special interest. You're still just a young pup! You're just fatigued and burnt out. Maybe your big dreams of the big city were more just a teenager wanting something more exciting than your home town.

Maybe you would like your line of work better, if you moved to a smaller area where the rent was cheaper, and you could work fewer hours, and not need a roommate (yuck- aspies and roommates don't mix!)

Aspies and roommates don't work well together? In what ways?

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Aspies and roommates don't work well together? In what ways?

It's very nice to live alone in your fortress of solitude, as a respite from the oversensory world.

 

[Aspie_With_Attitude]

My special interest had came and went. Mine is currently autistic YouTube blogging and so far from my YouTube channel I had made two documentaries about my past special interest that I don't have anymore.

1995 - 2001 "Model Railroading with HO Scale"

2003 - 2016 "Rhyming and Rapping in the Hip-Hop scene"

 

[gaffaglow]

I've had the same primary special interest since I was six, but it can get expensive, so I've tried a couple of times to replace it with something else. But I've never been able to give it up completely. I've just looked for ways to reduce the part that costs money.

 

[WolfSpirit]

Hi. I created this thread to ask if anyone has ever lost what they had considered to be their lifelong special interest.

I was a 3D animator at one point, between the ages of 13 and 18 (I am 25 now.) The process of animating soothed me and brought me immense joy. I considered 3D animation to be my destined career.

At age 18, I moved to a big, horribly loud city with people I barely knew, and had to share a room with a boy which felt incredibly wrong, so already there's a massive change in routine which I did not handle well. Meltdowns were frequent.

At the same time, I had attempted to take a course in Animation Mentor. I passed the first course but didn't bother taking the second one because I felt none of the joy I once did. It didn't soothe me, not even if I did it has a hobby. It just felt like work.

From this point, I felt lost. I suddenly no longer had an outlet, during a time in my life when I needed one the most.

[End-of-post]

I always thought I would go to grad school. It was the only socially acceptable thing that I was actual capable of doing that I could find that would satisfy the adults in my life in terms of life goals, etc. ... in the end, after many, many years of part time undergraduate studies, and two B.A.s later, and an event of academic discrimination and harassment, despite my best efforts to preempt such a problem, and several reassurances no such thing would happen, and the resultant PTSD and burnout, my academic mentor, and friend pointed out to me that it might be a dream I'd have to give up. That it might not be achievable, no matter what my academic abilities were, and what my desires were. In the end, I decided shevwas right. I just didn't have it in me yo be 'first', again, and to be the trailblazer for autistic grad students. I had done that for undergrad, and in some ways, never stopped. (Though I was often oblivious to it), and I just didn't have any more in me. I'd used it all up fighting to finish my last degree. Also, those bullies had broken something thst was fledgling at the time, and no matter my resilience, and no matter my strength, or resolve, I just didn't have it in me any more.

Almost a decade later, I've wound up with s pretty great life. Better than I could've ever imagined, but that has meant giving up on the whole notion of 'competing' with the NT world, or being financially self sufficient.