Special Talent and Interests?

[Questella]

I have a few special interests they include:
Doll collecting (mostly Barbie,Disney princess,my little pony and 80s dolls)
Comic collecting
Drawing
Disney princesses (my favourites are Belle,Ariel and Cinderella)
Makeup
Mythology and paranormal romance novels
I gotten back into drawing again after going two years not drawing anything and it's once again one of my main hobbies now.

Oh I should totally list make-up as one of mine. I love watching YouTube videos and getting books and learning how to do new tricks and fantasy make-up. Part of the reason I love going to raves is you can dress and do make-up so extreme it would never be okay someplace else. :3

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

I love cooking, gardening, cross stitch, and traveling. I grow a lot of vegetables and all kinds of herbs in huge pots and containers. It's amazing how much food you can grow that way. I grow a few crops in the ground like okra, beans, kale and other greens and have 10 chickens for fresh eggs. Yum! I share and cook what I harvest. I've been vacationing in Mexico for decades and love cooking authentic Mexican food, but have a strong interest in all other cultures, too. One of my best friends and I have been making pork and venison sausage from scratch lately. We joke around about playing with our food but everything we make is delicious. I want to make all my own bread which I did back in college and grad school in the 1970's, but never seem to find time to do it these days.

That's nice to share what you harvest and cook. My Mom loved planting lots of vegetables and finding ways to make big meals out of those, when we were young. She preserved lots of grown foods. Of all those items you listed, homemade bread and Mexican food would be my favorites.

The only worry we had of doing a huge vegetable garden here is we wondered if it would attract animals as there are all types of animals here in the State Forrest just behind us. Maybe people here would have insight on what would prevent a garden from being destroyed by animals.

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

I love maths i'm glad to go to a SEN collage which encourages this and provides GCSE statistics and accountancy lessons for me.

That is a nice field to get into. I must have took fifteen math courses in college and university, and six statistic courses, and I did very well in all of those courses. All the other twenty two courses I did pretty good in too, but I needed to put in more effort.

Ironically, in high school my grades were worse than university, as I was living at home up to age eighteen and never studied much, and as I was bullied at school and way too different. My mind was elsewhere. The last thing then on my mind in high school was schoolwork.

Accounting is one subject though that I had less interest in. For whatever reason, I avoided those classes. Maybe it's because I did not like tax forms.

 

[Leelu]

My wife wants to one day start up gardening. We have a great almost 3-acre subdivision parcel, with no neighbors in view, and would like to create something near our new home which is on the looped end of a cul-de-sac. The land is semi-wooded and semi-open, and with privacy, but a residential feel. We feel a nice flower garden would fit right in.

My wife says she cannot think of any interests or talents she currently has, as she has concentration difficulties and difficulties finishing potential interests to a conclusion, thus resulting in less talents. I tell her she has lots of interests or talents like photography, keeping important paperwork and documents in containers, but she says that she needs to try something more.

Starting a garden and/or learning to garden can be overwhelming. I'd suggest starting small ... every year I expand mine a little and add different plants (I primarily do vegetables in raised beds & grow bags because we rent our house) as my knowledge expands. Doing it slowly is also a little easier on the wallet!

 

[Leelu]

Hello all. I'm an artist but have studied architecture and woodworking/furniture design, and I've also worked as a graphic designer. My art is often based on patterns in nature and/or my own photographs, but sometimes I enjoy art projects that require a lot of research as I love gathering information and embedding it in my artwork. I also love learning new art and craft techniques (I sort have a problem sticking to one discipline for too long, LOL) and have more art/craft supplies and tools than you can imagine! That said, all of my artwork has a digital component in that I use Adobe Photoshop extensively.

I also love cooking and vegetable gardening, and I spend a lot of time reading. And, I love animals and volunteer for a local wildlife rescue group.

I'm a self-identified Aspie.

 

[Dannarama]

There's some very talented people here
My interest / talent is making music (I can teach myself almost any instrument) and I also cosplay (make costumes, special FX makeup, build props / weapons, etc).

 

[AdultAspie69]

Some of my interests are:
Computer graphics/animation (I've been using computers since 1987, have pretty good computer skills)
Although over the past 5-10 years it's been getting more and more difficult to concentrate on working the animation software. I don't do it as much anymore.

Listening to music. Mostly mellow 70's and 80's soft rock, though I've become quite fond of "new age" music. Really helps me relieve stress.

Being out in nature. camping, hiking, nature walks, riding bikes. Anything to do with animals. I do a lot of walking around town, I usually have a specific route I walk each time.

Playing video games, but only specific types like "ratchet and clank" "jak and daxter" "god of war" games that have a story and have puzzles to solve. I still have a PlayStation 2 so I can play these games.

 

[AdultAspie69]

Forgot to mention I'm really into Science Fiction shows/movies (trek, Stargate, Babylon 5) etc...

 

[AdultAspie69]

I loved reading comic and sports pages in my local newspapers growing up. Maybe this is why I always gravitated to businesses that had comic books and sports cards under the same roof. I seemed to eventually prefer sports cards though, as some of the cartoons on television were a bit too violent, and as I did not have the greatest concentration for reading, or as I kept needing to remember all the dialogue and facts. But, then again, my favorite sport, football, was filled with aggression as well. I think I just wanted to collect many smaller and cheaper items like cards that could be organized in albums, and with statistics and numbers to look at on the backs.

As we have a house with boys, many of those other interests you had we never tried, but if we would have had girls, I am sure they could have liked many of those same things.

I also like reading comics, I read them every day online. I like watching 70's tv shows, a few 80's shows. The 80's was a really bad decade for me.

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

Some of my interests are:
Computer graphics/animation (I've been using computers since 1987, have pretty good computer skills)
Although over the past 5-10 years it's been getting more and more difficult to concentrate on working the animation software. I don't do it as much anymore.

Listening to music. Mostly mellow 70's and 80's soft rock, though I've become quite fond of "new age" music. Really helps me relieve stress.

Being out in nature. camping, hiking, nature walks, riding bikes. Anything to do with animals. I do a lot of walking around town, I usually have a specific route I walk each time.

Playing video games, but only specific types like "ratchet and clank" "jak and daxter" "god of war" games that have a story and have puzzles to solve. I still have a PlayStation 2 so I can play these games.

Hello. Your music tastes I am very familiar with as I grew up around the same time as you. I listened to that stuff a lot. And the nature things you mentioned I love.

Speaking of walks, it is a good time to push Dylan on his stroller ride now before his bedtime. He likes me to take him around the end of our road loop several times. He loves nature, and likes looking around when I walk with him.

I am not too familiar with many video games, but they sound fun. When I was young they had Atari, Pong and Pac man. Things have come a long way since.

 

[AdultAspie69]

I am not too familiar with many video games, but they sound fun. When I was young they had Atari, Pong and Pac man pong. Things have come a long way since.

I still have an Atari 2600 system and many games from 1982 that still works.

 

[abby normal]

music, and audio restoration of old recordings.

 

[AdultAspie69]

Recording tv shows onto vhs tapes. Have a large collection but nothing to play them on. (Mostly 80's and 90's shows)
Recording songs on radio to cassette tapes during the 80's-90's

 

[Adora]

Oh I should totally list make-up as one of mine. I love watching YouTube videos and getting books and learning how to do new tricks and fantasy make-up. Part of the reason I love going to raves is you can dress and do make-up so extreme it would never be okay someplace else. :3

Yeah I actually go to comic con at least once a year and I cosplayed for the first time last year and went as Suicide Squad Harley Quinn but yeah dressing up in costumes can be fun though it took me years to convince myself I would cosplay at a comic convention.

 

[Questella]

Yeah I actually go to comic con at least once a year and I cosplayed for the first time last year and went as Suicide Squad Harley Quinn but yeah dressing up in costumes can be fun though it took me years to convince myself I would cosplay at a comic convention.

I'll be missing the comic expo this year, I'll be 38 weeks pregnant when it's going on. -._-.

 

[Questella]

I still have an Atari 2600 system and many games from 1982 that still works.

I still have the 5100 but the second player function stopped working on it. :<

 

[Tyrantus1212]

As a child I was very much the artistic types; I loved writing for myself and wrote novels, stories, poems, songs and even some plays. I felt jealous about the authors out there writing so well and wanted to do something similar. None of my works have been published though and I'm afraid I ended up growing out of this artistic phase. Right now I still have the novels and I expand on them from time to time so I wouldn't say the artist in me is gone for good.

I've always played computer games but only focused on one, maybe two, at a time. Right now I'm all into Hearthstone - I play it every day, I talk about it to people every day, I made over 30 online friends, and I watch multiple streamers play it. I've also set a goal for myself to eventually collect all the cards (I'm a free-to-play, so without paying real money, I need to challenge myself and get rewarded for my hard work). I also just have to reach Legend rank but I just enter into losing streaks and totally give up, switching over to casual (non-ranked) play. I also read up on the different cards quite a lot, often right before going to sleep. One can say I'm quite obsessed with this game right now, and I've been playing it for almost 2 years!

A couple of my long-term fascination include streetlights and construction sites. As a child I used to constantly take outdoor walks with my mother and father and I couldn't help but observe each and every streetlight. I memorized the configuration and position of each one, and during subsequent walks I would say to myself, "so this streetlight such and such, that is streetlight such and such..." - and I always looked forward to seeing them light up at dusk. I memorized which ones worked and which ones didn't. I drew them and I made model streetlights out of straw and paper. Currently, I'm still a bit interested in lights but not nearly as much as I have been. If there is a set of power poles with lights on them, I tend to observe the actual power lines and remember how they begin and how they end.

Construction sites - during my childhood walks with my parents we used to go by construction sites and I just loved watching those big cranes at it; not only cranes, but just general construction machinery. My interest in these sites right now is still the same as it has always been, unlike the streetlights one which diminished. There was a small residential construction sites right across where I lived as a kid (and ironically, the noises from that site did bother me, and I've heard that's an Aspie quality). Well, I used to observe and mimic. Whatever they did down there I mimicked using toy construction machinery, and I've used random junk at home to actually mimic the houses down there. I've placed the mimic construction site right on the edge of my parents' bed, and often times they would roll over during sleep and accidentally knock over a part of the mimic site and awakening form the resultant noise. I always thought that these two interests were unique to me and only me but I didn't care, I loved lights and sites.

In addition, I've often created imaginary cities in my head that would contains tons of streetlights and construction sites, and I've memorized every single IMAGINARY light and site. I used to draw out maps of these imaginary cities and these maps are all still stored somewhere, as I am truly a hoarder.

Other interests would include Isuzu tow (and non-tow but with platforms) trucks. I would pay attention to each and every one of these types of trucks and memorize specific Isuzu trucks and then ask my mom and dad if they remember this truck, or that truck, so on. I've actually included vans in this category, but tow trucks and any type of platform trucks with the Isuzu brand were my favorite. Their cabins were flat and not protruding, and that's what triggered my obsession; I thought those cabins were "cute". The truck obsession has also diminished, and that was mostly a teenage years obsession - but I used to just talk about those trucks non-stop, and my mom would always tell me to stop talking about trucks. Of course I still talked about those trucks. I used to look up photos of those trucks online and print my favorites out.

I used to also collect bottle caps and random pieces of wood as a child. Yes, pieces of wood. Right now I'm more of a digital collector, I need all the Hearthstone cards!

As for talents, I'm not sure if I have any. The artistic stuff I've done as a child was a hobby but I don't equate myself to Charles Dickens. I can bend my fingers at a 90 degree angle! Can that count as a talent?

I used to obsess with some aspects of math - specifically square roots, number divisibilities and 4-digit numbers that start with 9. I used to be bad at math as a child but somehow started excelling in it as a preteen. Same with computers - I was way too slow as a preteen, but in college I started to get the hang of it and now work as a software developer.

I do have a one-track mind, when I become interested in something I just can't stop thinking and talking about it. I even went through a big Kirby phase in high school Freshman year (students said "please stop talking about Kirby") and a Back to the Future phase where I watched the films on DVD every day for 2 weeks and it made my mom and dad grow tired of those films due to the fact that they were on every single evening.

I don't really have any passions in life (other than reaching Legend rank in Hearthstone) but I always do my best, even with my lack of common sense. All in all I'm a pretty boring guy, but I'd still consider myself to be a very unique individual.

 

[Thursday]

My observation skills help me be a pet whisperer of sorts. I'm usually able to approach unfamiliar cats, dogs and other animals like chickens without scaring them and some have followed me around without any food on my person. They seem to view me as non-threatening -- even our house lizard lets me approach it but scampers off when it's my husband in the area.

We do have two cats of our own and, unless it's feeding time, we're able to communicate to them in plain sentences with much success. Like, I just say "no, not right now, I'm working on something" and they'll either protest with a meow or they'll grudgingly jump down to give me space. They have been with me for a while now (close to 14 years) so there's that. Who knows, they may be people whisperers too!

As for interests, I doodle both when I feel like it and when I'm feeling overwhelmed. I enjoy writing at times, though I find I edit things so often that it can become stressful.

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

As a child I was very much the artistic types; I loved writing for myself and wrote novels, stories, poems, songs and even some plays. I felt jealous about the authors out there writing so well and wanted to do something similar. None of my works have been published though and I'm afraid I ended up growing out of this artistic phase. Right now I still have the novels and I expand on them from time to time so I wouldn't say the artist in me is gone for good.

I've always played computer games but only focused on one, maybe two, at a time. Right now I'm all into Hearthstone - I play it every day, I talk about it to people every day, I made over 30 online friends, and I watch multiple streamers play it. I've also set a goal for myself to eventually collect all the cards (I'm a free-to-play, so without paying real money, I need to challenge myself and get rewarded for my hard work). I also just have to reach Legend rank but I just enter into losing streaks and totally give up, switching over to casual (non-ranked) play. I also read up on the different cards quite a lot, often right before going to sleep. One can say I'm quite obsessed with this game right now, and I've been playing it for almost 2 years!

A couple of my long-term fascination include streetlights and construction sites. As a child I used to constantly take outdoor walks with my mother and father and I couldn't help but observe each and every streetlight. I memorized the configuration and position of each one, and during subsequent walks I would say to myself, "so this streetlight such and such, that is streetlight such and such..." - and I always looked forward to seeing them light up at dusk. I memorized which ones worked and which ones didn't. I drew them and I made model streetlights out of straw and paper. Currently, I'm still a bit interested in lights but not nearly as much as I have been. If there is a set of power poles with lights on them, I tend to observe the actual power lines and remember how they begin and how they end.

Construction sites - during my childhood walks with my parents we used to go by construction sites and I just loved watching those big cranes at it; not only cranes, but just general construction machinery. My interest in these sites right now is still the same as it has always been, unlike the streetlights one which diminished. There was a small residential construction sites right across where I lived as a kid (and ironically, the noises from that site did bother me, and I've heard that's an Aspie quality). Well, I used to observe and mimic. Whatever they did down there I mimicked using toy construction machinery, and I've used random junk at home to actually mimic the houses down there. I've placed the mimic construction site right on the edge of my parents' bed, and often times they would roll over during sleep and accidentally knock over a part of the mimic site and awakening form the resultant noise. I always thought that these two interests were unique to me and only me but I didn't care, I loved lights and sites.

In addition, I've often created imaginary cities in my head that would contains tons of streetlights and construction sites, and I've memorized every single IMAGINARY light and site. I used to draw out maps of these imaginary cities and these maps are all still stored somewhere, as I am truly a hoarder.

Other interests would include Isuzu tow (and non-tow but with platforms) trucks. I would pay attention to each and every one of these types of trucks and memorize specific Isuzu trucks and then ask my mom and dad if they remember this truck, or that truck, so on. I've actually included vans in this category, but tow trucks and any type of platform trucks with the Isuzu brand were my favorite. Their cabins were flat and not protruding, and that's what triggered my obsession; I thought those cabins were "cute". The truck obsession has also diminished, and that was mostly a teenage years obsession - but I used to just talk about those trucks non-stop, and my mom would always tell me to stop talking about trucks. Of course I still talked about those trucks. I used to look up photos of those trucks online and print my favorites out.

I used to also collect bottle caps and random pieces of wood as a child. Yes, pieces of wood. Right now I'm more of a digital collector, I need all the Hearthstone cards!

As for talents, I'm not sure if I have any. The artistic stuff I've done as a child was a hobby but I don't equate myself to Charles Dickens. I can bend my fingers at a 90 degree angle! Can that count as a talent?

I used to obsess with some aspects of math - specifically square roots, number divisibilities and 4-digit numbers that start with 9. I used to be bad at math as a child but somehow started excelling in it as a preteen. Same with computers - I was way too slow as a preteen, but in college I started to get the hang of it and now work as a software developer.

I do have a one-track mind, when I become interested in something I just can't stop thinking and talking about it. I even went through a big Kirby phase in high school Freshman year (students said "please stop talking about Kirby") and a Back to the Future phase where I watched the films on DVD every day for 2 weeks and it made my mom and dad grow tired of those films due to the fact that they were on every single evening.

I don't really have any passions in life (other than reaching Legend rank in Hearthstone) but I always do my best, even with my lack of common sense. All in all I'm a pretty boring guy, but I'd still consider myself to be a very unique individual.

That's a lot of interesting things you mentioned.

For the writing it can be tough, as writers are like artists. You can have a great work, but it is the advertising, promotion and marketing that sell it. Sometimes luck comes into play, too, to reach the right person, but for those who choose to do everything themselves, it can be a lot of time, effort and money involved if you want to sell lots.

For my latest work, I chose to just self-publish, and sell on a more limited scale. I do not resort to marketing, other than a small family website, and I focus on selling to just family, friends and to anyone else interested. Most persons do not seem to care about those with Autism and Aspergers Syndrome anyways, so I do not waste any extra efforts there.

It was the self-satisfaction of creating a finished work anyway, that trumped over anything else. Our children can see in the future what they had to go through in life and dealing with the medical community, and when they were young. They can sell the remaining copies I have when they are older, if it is their desire, or hand them out to their friends. I made that book for them, and to document their lives.

Our youngest son loves lights, so I related to your fascination with street lights. At Christmas he hops up and down and giggles in excitement when we put the lights on the tree. He likes looking at them and touching them. At large stores that have huge lighting section and displays, he always looks at each and every lighted up fixture hanging overhead and on the display shelves. He loves our night drives too, when we go to the business district, and seeing signs lighted up.

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

My observation skills help me be a pet whisperer of sorts. I'm usually able to approach unfamiliar cats, dogs and other animals like chickens without scaring them and some have followed me around without any food on my person. They seem to view me as non-threatening -- even our house lizard lets me approach it but scampers off when it's my husband in the area.

We do have two cats of our own and, unless it's feeding time, we're able to communicate to them in plain sentences with much success. Like, I just say "no, not right now, I'm working on something" and they'll either protest with a meow or they'll grudgingly jump down to give me space. They have been with me for a while now (close to 14 years) so there's that. Who knows, they may be people whisperers too!

As for interests, I doodle both when I feel like it and when I'm feeling overwhelmed. I enjoy writing at times, though I find I edit things so often that it can become stressful.

I used to watch long ago that cable show with Cesar Milan, the dog whisperer. Although I did not and do not have any pets, I thought that show was tremendous insight into the possible mindset of dogs. I always am curious to the thoughts and feelings of people and animals, and what makes them tick, and why they act and react as they do. To understand such is to love, and to love is to be loved. That is my simple perspective on things.