It’s been something of a lack of motivation to write over the last several days. The inspiration has been lacking even though there have been some important events taking place. Autism Speaks have made a start in appointing a couple of Autistic people to their board. There has 
been quite some anger over the Australian AEIOU foundation in their handling of allegations of children being abused in their centres. Perhaps it’s been a bit of a mini shutdown, not having the motivation and energy and inspiration to rise up and write about these things. I have been very tired, and seemingly unable to muster the energy to get my head and heart into the actual task of writing.
During this time I have been thinking a little about special interests. Often they’re called obsession. I rankle with such a description, it makes me cringe, and somewhat annoyed. To my thinking an obsession is more than what a special interest is. It’s something you can’t help. Where as a special interest is something you can help but you are intensely interested in it.
a persistent idea or impulse that continually forces itsway into consciousness, often associated with anxiety and mental illness – www.dictionary.com
So an obsession is continually forcing its way into consciousness, whereas, in my opinion, special interest is so often in the consciousness because it is wanted there. The person involved is actually interested intensely not forced to consider it. I think this is a significant difference not just a playing with words.
I’ve had a few special interests over the years of my life. Some have been persistent and some short-lived. They are really wonderful and have taken me to wonderful achievements, or great learning.
As a thirteen year old I became interested in computers. This was quite some years ago, in the days before Macintosh’s existed and I think before Windows was even a thing. Home Computers were not a common thing, but if they were they tended to carry names on them like Apple ][ Europlus, Microbee, RadioShack TRS80, Texas Instruments TI…, Commodore Vic20 and Commodore 64. It was the time of BASIC 
and terrible games. Colour was something of a luxury oftentimes.
In the Christmas of 1983 I received a Commodore 64 for Christmas. It had no hard drive and 64KB of RAM. Programs were loaded on a tape drive and the display was an old Rank Arena 32cm Portable TV. Load Error was a common cause of much frustration. I spent a lot of time teaching myself the ins and outs of the BASIC Computer Language. At the time a feature of the Commodore was the introduction of Spirtes- Floating graphic images that could be sent bouncing around the screen. An achievement for me was spending hours with pen and graph paper and writing a program that created a new font or character set. For memory each character required the coding of 8 lines of data each 8 bits long. I was very pleased with myself when I created the full character set. Saved of course, to cassette tape via the cassette drive. In order to use the font of course it had to be loaded by tape into memory once the system was booted.
Those were certainly the days.
A persistent special interest for me has been distance running. I discovered this interest as a primary school student when I did well in the compulsory school cross-country. This led me to begin Little Athletics for a season in Grade 6, where I did quite well in the 400, 800 and 1500 metre events. This led me to take up running more with some others in High School, where I would run with some other students and a few interested teachers after school. We would run somewhere between 8 and 12 km each afternoon. It was at the time one of the very few activities at School that did not involve being bullied.
I lost interest in running for quite some time, until I was in my mid 30’s in fact. But in the 10 years since it became a renewed special interest I have achieved some wonderful things. I have run 5k in less than 20 minutes, 10k in less than 43 minutes, completed a number of Marathons and Ultra Marathons. And, more importantly made some great friends. At times family and friends would consider me obsessed, at one point I had run 130 odd consecutive days without a break. But the thing is it wasn’t that I had to run, it was that I wanted to run. So a special interest not an obsession.
Recently this interest has been in a hiatus, in fact I have allowed myself to lose all that fitness. It is not of course a discarded interest, it’s something I think of fondly most days and think seriously of re-igniting that interest and aim at some new wonderful achievements.
My Computer interest has been one that has also ebbed and flowed over the years. In my 20’s in the early to mid 90’s in the early days of the world wide web I taught myself html so I could make myself a webpage. I sat down with the bare bones guide to HTML and got myself going. Since that time this interest has mostly flowed rather than ebb, I have successfully built some sites, made some blogs for people. I have built and repaired not a few PC’s for myself and friends. It’s certainly been enjoyable, and educational. It has not been a compulsion but a desire.
Currently I am wading through a web developer course and am becoming successful in learning to design and build MySQL databases. Shortly I will move on to PHP and JavaScript to enhance those skills. Again this is an educational and mostly enjoyable and very satisfying interest. Not an obsession but an interest. A special interest.
Special interests are an Autistic Strength not a problem. They are to be celebrated for the achievements they bring rather than bemoaned by family and friends for the high level focus that is involved in them.
That’s right I have special interests, and they are wonderful things.
Oh so true Richard! Special interests are ” passions” not obsessions and I , like you, have had quite a few over my lifespan so far and the major ones resurface from time to time and some disappear but mainly through necessity.
Dance, various dance forms as well as creative dance and movement have been with me since very early childhood when at age 2 I’d dance to the flute music my father played… that was followed at age 4 by formal Irish Dance lessons, later ballet, Ballroom, Jazz, creative dance and movement, Latin American, Greek, Egyption, and Kurdish dance forms. I met my present partner via dancing in a performing dance group… even danced for PM Bob Hawke at the Hilton and had our fares and accommodation paid by the City of Launceston to dance at the Launceston Festival. I also enjoyed the current informal dances from the late 60’s onwards but couldn’t handle the social dance scene… noisy, strobe, meat markety and crowded. Dance was my passion it wasn’t the vehicle used to ” meet people from the opposite sex” as it seemed to be for most attendees at these dance venues.
Athletics particularly sprinting, hurdling, long jumping and the odd occasions of discus and javelin throwing for the Amateur Athletics Association and of course in school sports . I guess these were my main physical type passions.
Strangely enough, after a very awkward and unpleasant experiences in schools, and after I’d commenced teaching I realised that I wanted to study … I ‘d had a keen interest in psychology since I was about 15 and was fascinated with art and also history… particular Ancient Greek History and Renaissance Florence .. I had passionate teachers at school and even more so at University. I mention those epochs over History of other cultures and epochs , which I enjoyed studying because they gave a well rounded presentation of seemingly all aspects of life .In both the Greek and Florentine periods studied
Cultural ( plastic arts as sculpture , painting, architecture, literature, music etc)including the guilds, potters, stone masons, etc , political, religious, philosophical, economical, educational, and social ( including the position of the
ordinary person, slaves, women etc) … I’m sure that if I didn’t already have the type of brain that sought associations and could pull together a reasonably comprehensive understanding of ” civilisation” seeing how all aspects affect/effect the others .. the study of these epochs would have assisted greatly in my mental development in appreciating “the trees and how they fit within and form the Whole picture/forest.”… and yes! I am autistic… seeing “the trees AND the forest and the interrelationship/interdependence.
It was via my studies in history I was introduced to philosophy and art and my love of literature was further extended.
All these areas became part of my formal at University. education, including psychology, Fine arts , Greek Language., undergraduate and post graduate studies, spending in total 30 years post Matriculation in either full or part time study . I taught for a total of 20+ years… with my service broken about four times due to disenchantment , bullying, and also personal problems.
In teaching I was really interested in the children who ” had problems” learning, social, behavioural etc and had integrated Autistic children in to mainstream in Singapore and Australia. I also specialised in teaching Art and Creative writing. Those were my passions in education as a teacher.
Travel became a passion and from that came my interest in languages. As a hopeless language student in school… due to the boring and artificial manner in which it was taught… I was astounded to find myself acquiring other languages informally via my need to communicate with others. i steered clear of English speakers as I had always been drawn to ” other cultures ” ( another passion). Funnily enough as a young child , about 7 years old I was trying to invent another alphabet, the significance of which has only become apparent since my diagnosis as aspergers, I obviously was aware at some level of my inability to communicate to others in English… at that time the only language I knew.. apart from poetic language… a love of poetry given to me by my father ‘s reading in the evenings of early childhood… it was to become my first language of oral/written true self expression and since I’ve written poetry at various stages of my life.. and occasionally still do.
Now in poor health I’m no longer able to really dance, run etc and I find my self-expression via art forms and writing… my University studies in a variety of Disciplines has given me another voice to add to that of the poetic. I attend U3A organised group courses in Edx … Bioethics, War in the Middle East, and hopefully next year one from the Anthropological perspective . Fortunately there are discussions in Philosophy… and Listening to Classical music… a great way to enjoy being with people without having to engage in the social chit chat.
Finally there is my interest in nature… flora, fauna and our farm animals, Boer goats, hens, a dog , cat and until recently our beautiful cows,,, we had to seek them a month ago due to the lack of pasture… victims of climate change. I still paint but less regularly. Since early 2014 when I wrote to a professor engaged in work in autism expressing my concern that the voice of the adult late diagnosed autistic had not been sought in most research and was in fact the forgotten cohort that could actually annunciate the autistic experience , an untapped or under-utilised asset that may inform research based upon assumptions made by the neurotypical observation predominately of autistic children.
Circles, cycling through my life, repeated surfacing of special passions that are not obsessions but serve to enlighten and provide invigorated expression and awareness of self , others and the fabric of the world/cosmos in which I live. Each has its own gifts and reaps new rewards garnered through my engagement with my other companion interests.