Special Interests joy

Over the years I have had many special interests, including wanting to adopt a native crow in middle school. I found it’s not legal for anyone to own a native crow in the USA without a special permit or license. Also, during middle school and high school, I used to read magazines and then cut them up and create and sort the articles into different subject matter scrapbooks. I’d do the cutting and pasting for hours at a time. During that time period, I was also fascinated by genetics and wanted to be a geneticist. To my great disappointment, I didn’t have the necessary advanced math skills to do that since the hard sciences involve a lot of math and chemistry.

I was also enthralled by a computer game called Norms. It was a really cool game where you hatched creatures and you were responsible for taking care of them as they grew up and had children of their own and you had to keep them safe from the bad creatures. I spent many hours on that game and hours on the internet looking for things to download associated with the game.

Going back even further. I used to be fascinated by what looked like little bugs (but are actually crustaceans, related to crabs and shrimp) called pill bugs or roly-polies. They look like little insects that roll into balls that feed on decaying plant vegetation. I’m pretty sure my Mom didn’t like this but I would put them into her outside flower pots. At the same time in my childhood, I liked making and collecting the holes from the paper hole puncher. I really liked seeing how many holes I could punch out of a piece of paper and I would keep the “holes” or little paper dots in a container.

 What do all of these interests have in common? They all require obsessive focus as I would devote many hours to them. I derived uncomplicated joy and happiness from these activities.

These days my special interests include reading fantasy books, crocheting, and spending time with my cat. I enjoy these interests but it’s different than when I was a child or teenager in that I can’t afford to become too absorbed with them because of responsibilities that I have as an adult on my own.

These days I find that I actually enjoy small talk because it allows me to get to know other people compared to when in the past, I just wanted to talk about my own special interests. I’m wondering if other people’s special interests have changed over the years and if the intensity of their special interests have also changed.