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How much control do you have over your special interest(s)?

Choose anything that applies to you.

  • My special interests seem to just randomly choose me

    Votes: 22 51.2%
  • I feel very in control of what I'm interested in/ obsessed with

    Votes: 5 11.6%
  • A mix of the two a answers above

    Votes: 10 23.3%
  • My special interests seem to change a lot

    Votes: 10 23.3%
  • My special interests change but it's rare

    Votes: 14 32.6%
  • My special interests have literally never changed

    Votes: 8 18.6%
  • I've tried to add a new or release an old special interest but it didn't work

    Votes: 8 18.6%
  • I've successfully added or removed special interests from my life

    Votes: 10 23.3%

  • Total voters
    43
I can't control what I become interested in (believe me, I've tried), but to a limited extent I can control which aspects of my interest I focus on.

For example, I love Homestuck (esp. the Troll race). Couldn't control that... I would have actually chosen something that would be more respectable, like learning about the solar system for example. But, I found that to some extent I could control which Homestuck character(s) I became interested in. First I thought Gamzee would be interesting, but a few days later I changed my mind when I learned about Damara.
 
I found this thread because I searched for special interests changing...

For years, one of my special interests was Middle Eastern dance - all the different regional dances, costumes, and the music. I studied, danced, listened to every scrap of music I could. I made costumes, I studied Arabic, I was part of a dance troupe, etc. Sometime during the last 3 years, I began to feel embarrassed (I guess that's what it was) about performing, unable to cope with the group dynamic any more, and generally like I didn't belong in that world anymore. Now I can't even listen to the music without feeling angry/sad/flustered/embarrassed/etc.

I don't know if that counts as a loss of a special interest, or midlife crisis, or what, but since then, I've had a series of short-lived, very intense interests that went as fast as they came on.. The latest: my desk at work is filled with little origami models due to a 3-week long origami obsession, and now I don't want to look at paper.

Currently, I am adrift without a special interest to anchor me...
 
My interests seem to segue from one to another. For example:
  1. Comic books,
  2. Figure drawing (initially, to make my own) [touches on musculo-skeletal anatomy/eidonomy, etc.],
  3. Figure collecting (initially, for help in drawing faces)
Another example: my semi-interest in intelligence/giftedness has led to some understanding about how statistics/the bell curve works. (I know that there is way more to statistics, but in this case, one interest foments another.)

Personal and professional problem-solving may instigate the same processes:
  1. Become a [semi-]expert in a particular problem,
  2. Familiarize myself with the tools available to fix the problem, and become [semi-]expert in them,
  3. Familiarize myself with successful (and unsuccessful) techniques in using said tools, etc.
The second sequence would not have become of interest to me except for the problem being put to me. Necessity IS the mother of invention. If I derive any pleasure from the newfound interest, it stays. Otherwise, I stay interested as long as it serves me to do so.
 
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I find this whole "tracing special interests" topic pretty fascinating. Now I've had numerous fixations and obsessions in the past, so I've been able to sort of figure out what seems to be going on.
Now from what I can tell, the way it works is that I've got everything related to living and the daily routine (Stuff like should I study? I Should do my requirements now? How should I organize the bed I call a nest? How do I like my food? Should I talk now? and stuff like that) in a single irreplaceable and immovable hard disk (my brain is the computer). Then there are a number of ports to insert the topics to be fixated on, of which there are many. Often many ports have certain "themes," such as mecha and robots, which get switched out depending on what I find fascinating from one time to the next. For example: I first stuck with Gundams from Gundam 00, Macross with their ridiculous mecha came up and I wanted to fuse them (Gundam 00 was still there, it just took a backseat to Macross), then Unicorn came along and I wanted to fuse that too (Macross joins Gundam 00 in the backseat), then came Knights of Sidonia with their sciencyness and I wanted to add that too (Again, more in the backseat), and then finally a new port with 3 themes mixed together (Mecha and robots, ridiculous "biology", and power) grew and replaced those ports, the fixation within being "Becoming a Gauna-Human Chimera from Knights of Sidonia plus the composite abilities of all Gauna like the Black Gauna's ridiculous speed, power and reaction time with the general shape and form of Accelerator with his Vector Control and Deflection ability"(Gauna-Human Chimeras are Garde sized, so like 17 meters tall I think, and are kinda basically bio-mecha, even if that "biology" is complete hax).
How new fixations get added really depends on chance and the fixation before them; sometimes I just find something fascinating enough to look up everything about them, but most of the time it depends on even the slightest connection between the 2 topics; case in point: I was looking up the feats and powers of Asriel Dreemurr and thus his connection to the theme of "power," but was then brought to Accelerator when I saw that they were both basically albinos (I say basically, but it's a bit more complicated than that), that held immense power. Accelerator's kind of power (reality-warping psychic shenanigans), combined with a personality that resonated with me and a general feeling of ability and power even at his weakest won me over, and since then an amalgamate that's predominantly Accelerator become my official persona (The ports he fit together were: Psionics/Psychics, Power, Albinoism and the white hair and skin that came with it, because White, Black and Gray are my Tier 0, absolute favorite colors, Control, Insanity and Mental Instability, Androgeny, Willful Isolation, Growth, and Neutrality). Now the general idea is that the more ports and themes a very specific topic covers the more it'll stick around, with a lot of mixing and separating and mutating in between.
 
I'm sorry if my previous post was overly long, but there wasn't any shorter way to put it with everything I wanted to say.
 
I find I return to my special interests a lot. For example I was really into cardistry/coin magic a couple of years ago. All my special decks got destroyed and I quit. Now I'm waiting for a couple of new decks and have been practicing coin walking. It's just stuff that I like, I like obsessively. I think that interest relates to others I have (nunchaku/knitting/hand arts). I have a few catagories of interest and all my interests seem to fall into the catagories. (psychology/hypnotism/neuroscience) (yoga/bellydancing/ballet)etc
 
I find I return to my special interests a lot. For example I was really into cardistry/coin magic a couple of years ago. All my special decks got destroyed and I quit. Now I'm waiting for a couple of new decks and have been practicing coin walking.
(One of?) my dad's special interests was Houdini (and related). When I was little, I dabbled in stage magic, too.
 

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