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Do you chose your special interests/hyperfixations or did they choose you?

Not really sure what qualifies as “choosing.” Can one really decide to be genuinely interested in something? Or perhaps that’s more common than I think, just foreign to me because it’s not how my mind works.

But that’s really just an interesting thought I had as an aside. I certainly do not choose my “special interests,” they’re just things that sort of hit my mind in the right place and stick (not always immediately, sometimes even years later). Sometimes I become fixated on things I even dislike, listening repeatedly to a song I don’t like or combing the Internet for every scrap of information I can find on a movie I really want nothing to do with, for no particular reason besides that the urge to do so just will not leave my mind.

It may also be because even my genuine interests usually do not involve any sort of skill, crafting, or really anything besides intake of information. There isn’t really anything to come naturally or not. My primary interests are a large part of who I am, but that is at least in part because they have sculpted me over the years.

If it were truly up to me, I would at least pick a different subgenre of horror to fixate on rather than body horror, the most gory and gruesome one there is. I don’t like it for the gore, there has to be more than that to really hold my interest, but it’s a bit off-putting to many people.
 
My earliest memories are music. I can remember very early scenes, maybe from less than a year old. I hear Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and I can see the living room and my parents in front of me, particularly my dad on the right hand side. I remember straining my neck to try and see where the sound was coming from, it was to my left and above. I'm on the floor in some sort of cradle/chair thing.

I was fascinated by speakers, I wanted to know how the sound was created and I used to press my fingers against the speaker cones.

I was given a cheap rubbish cassette player to play story tapes on, I used to jam down the play and fast forward buttons to make it speed up or play in reverse with rewind. It all fascinated me. VU meters on my Dad's hifi.

One day I noticed we had a new "TV" in the living room, it was small and green. It turned out that it was a computer, it was 1984 and I was 3 years old. My dad taught me how to load a tape. I was fascinated again! He told me that the tape told the computer what to do. I played 3D Starstrike, even though it was confusing and quite abstract I thought it was a spaceship.

Next morning I got up early! I went to turn on the computer and took my HE-MAN tape with me. I put it in the computer cassette deck, and carried out the procedure to load a tape. I honestly believed the "man" on the tape would make a HE-MAN game appear on the screen and for a brief moment I thought I was successful when I saw writing appear on the screen. I couldn't read it, but it said "Read Error A". So, I resolved to figure it out! I found another computer tape, the only one there, it had a green spiky plant and a desk on the cover.

I took it to my cheap cassette player and put it in and pressed play...silence...then.....SQUEEEEEEEEL!!!!!!! I shut of the cassette player and hear my dad shout "Mildred! What are you doing?!" I stayed quiet and he went back to sleep. So, no man on the tape telling anyone to do anything! Huh? Then I thought "Words on the screen! The words must be on the tape!" I understood roughly how tape worked due to my experiments with my story tapes. So I took out the cassette, and started carefully unspooling the tape determined to find the "words".

I remember the tape falling to the floor and tickling my bare feet. Eventually I had unspoiled the entire tape and examined every inch, but no "words". Then I became aware of what I had done! I thought I would be in trouble and I remember starting to sob a bit. But then I wondered if the tape would still work if there was no "tape" in it. So I put the cassette back into the cassette player and pressed play, but nothing :-( BUUUUUT! THE TAPE MOVED!

So inspiration hit me and I started pressing buttons! I eventually hit rewind or fast forward and watched in awe as the tape snaked and whipped around from the living room, across the hallway, into my bed room and into the cassette deck. In a few moments, the tape was spooled into the cassette! I carefully put in back into the case, and replaced it back where I found it. I had survived!

Basically these events set in motion everything I'm interested in. It all goes back to that and wanting to understand how sound was made and how computers were told what to do with sound on a tape!

There's more to it than that but this has been an infodump of a story! So I will leave it there and maybe I will give you part two some day. That part of the story really makes me wonder about predestination! :)
 
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MildredHubble said:
I eventually hit rewind or fast forward and watched in awe as the tape snaked and whipped around....
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Reminds me of my mate's 2 year old and the mystery of the vanishing toilet paper. Every time they put a new roll in the toilet it disappeared and it took a couple of weeks to catch him in the act and solve the mystery.

He'd grab the end of the roll and put it in the toilet and hit the flush, giggling with delight as the whole roll unravelled down the toilet.
 
Outdated said:
Reminds me of my mate's 2 year old and the mystery of the vanishing toilet paper. Every time they put a new roll in the toilet it disappeared and it took a couple of weeks to catch him in the act and solve the mystery.

He'd grab the end of the roll and put it in the toilet and hit the flush, giggling with delight as the whole roll unravelled down the toilet.
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He will be an engineer one day! Mark my words! :smilecat:
 
Outdated said:
He's in his 30s now, a computer engineer/chip design.
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Called it! :smilecat: He grew up fast! :smilecat: There's me thinking he was still 2 years old! Lol!

But it does make me wonder how many engineers started out as 2 year olds fascinated by something like that?

I guess it goes to show that parents should be entertained and amazed at things like this rather than chastising their kids. You can never know the life you may deny them.
 
MildredHubble said:
I guess it goes to show that parents should be entertained and amazed at things like this rather than chastising their kids. You can never know the life you may deny them.
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It's not easy to tell them it's wrong when you're laughing as much as they are. :)
 
I think my music obssession is more to do with stimming rather than knowing how something works or how sound is produced. I just really liked listening to music. I often listened to one song over and over again, often going in circle around the room. Always wanting to get hold of new music, too. I can't be without music.
 
Moogwizard said:
@Progster

I feel the same sometimes , currently have a Motown song on repeat in my headphones for the last 3hrs . :rolleyes:
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I did this with Roy Orbison's Ooby Dooby from A Black and White Night. I must have listened to that for about 3 hours too. It was certainly stimulating.

I wonder if this could be some sort of Stim for me as @Progster described. I remember building a disk drive interface a few years back playing "Tiger Feet" (I'm a little embarrassed to admit) over and over full blast in my headphones. I can't dance and I'm sure if people had seen me bopping around to the song ad nauseum, a few eyebrows would have been raised lol!

It felt wonderful, like all there was was me inside the song super focused on soldering. I had just thought at times like this maybe it was me being a bit on the manic side. Maybe that's all it is, I'm wondering about it now though.
 
Definitely "They chose me"
I had a general interested in history, but no special interest in Egypt at all. Then I travelled there for the first time, just because the opportunity presented itself.
Consequence: 3 weeks later joined the course in hieroglyphs ( Middle Egyptian language) at my university, and never looked back
 
@MildredHubble

That sounds like me too! That is a great song as well . I really like Roy Orbison as well. I think @Progster is correct on this behavior being a type of stimming, because for me it is very comforting and I am able to focus my thoughts when doing this

Also off topic , I mentioned to the guitarist in my band I really like Ac/Dc particularly the Bon Scott era.

He said aggressively,
“I hate Ac /Dc”
Because they are dad rock .

I don’t understand this .I like all music that catches my interest, and never looked at it as old or new ,or conforming it to a certain generalization of a person or group of people.

I can’t comprehend this.
So I mentioned I like classical especially Beethoven, and asked do you consider that 7 times great grandfather music ?
He gotreally offended . I don’t know why . So does his logic only apply to his opinion. This seems narcissistic and void of any real rational thought .

Had he said Ac/Dc are not my particular taste , I understand that. But to base a musical taste on a stereotype of person listening to it seems odd.

I can find something in all music , even if is something that is not in my particular taste, I don’t associate it with a stereotype of a person .

Now I am afraid to mention any music I like @ the moment around him.

I will contemplate this more. Seems border line insane to me . For this thought process .
I will think about it tonight stimming for hours listening to a particular song that strikes me at the moment
 
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Moogwizard said:
@MildredHubble

That sounds like me too! That is a great song as well . I really like Roy Orbison as well. I think @Progster is correct on this behavior being a type of stimming, because for me it is very comforting and I am able to focus my thoughts when doing this

Also of topic , I mentioned to the guitarist in my band I really like Ac/Dc particularly the Bon Scott era.

He said aggressively,
“I hate Ac /Dc”
Because they are dad rock .

I don’t understand this .I like all music that catches my interest, and never looked at it as old or new ,or conforming it to a certain generalization of a person or group of people.

I can’t comprehend this.
So I mentioned I like classical especially Beethoven, and asked do you consider that 7 times great grandfather music ?
He gotreally offended . I don’t know why . So does his logic only apply to his opinion. This seems narcissistic and void of any real rational thought .

I kind find something in all music , even if is something that is not in my particular taste, I don’t associate it with a stereotype of a person .

Now I am afraid to mention any music I like @ the moment around him.

I will contemplate this more. Seems border line insane to me . For this thought process .
I will think about it tonight stimming for hours listening to a particular song that strikes me at the moment
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This is something I've encountered a lot too! It's a very strange argument to present. It essentially boils down to "I don't like this music (that is very similar to the music I do profess to like) I do so on ideological grounds, them being, older people can't be relevant or valid".

I feel it's narcissistic too. I mean, we all grow older with time. It will happen to all of us. AC/DC were pioneers! They have been and continue to be hugely influential. There is no expiration date on genius!
 
Ever since I can remember, I've been banging on pots and pans, strumming guitars, humming and singing tunes. I think it chose me. Now, programming and hacking, on the other hand, I chose those. I was always taking things apart to find out how they worked. Parents weren't too happy about it though. Specially after I made a vacuum bag explode. The bag contents went everywhere. :)
 
@Storm Hess

I agree with this , music seems to be part of my DNA as a special interest, born with it . I have lots of other special interests that really fascinate me , but I feel I have control over my interest in my other ones.

Music not so much . That can take over at any moment , and everything else must wait , Composing , listening, researching. It just goes on it’s own and I feel I am there just for the ride . And it relaxes me . And it makes sense to me . And there is no anxiety attached to it .
 
Storm Hess said:
Ever since I can remember, I've been banging on pots and pans, strumming guitars, humming and singing tunes. I think it chose me. Now, programming and hacking, on the other hand, I chose those. I was always taking things apart to find out how they worked. Parents weren't too happy about it though. Specially after I made a vacuum bag explode. The bag contents went everywhere. :)
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I'm the same! I have so many stories about taking things apart and getting into trouble for it!
It's a shame that it was only my dad who eventually cottoned on to the fact that I wasn't trying to misbehave, I was trying to learn and had an aptitude for figuring things out.

I guess it may just not be obvious to some parents. But my mother tried to belittle everything I learned or achieved. I wonder how much more I would have learned about electronics and mechanical stuff if she hadn't had such a strange and aggressive opposition to everything I did.

Personally, if I had kids, I would encourage their curiosity in a way that helps them learn and in safety. It's like shouting at the tide to not come if you try to prevent a kids curiosity from manifesting.
 
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