Anyone else having special interests take over?

Post Reply New Topic

So, I'm an A level student and up until this week all the work I have been doing is answering worksheets and taking notes before sending it to the teacher. I hadn't been in school for almost a week before it actually shut down due to corona due to mental illness and as this persisted, I found myself two weeks behind with no motivation to do anything. I am a person who needs others around/judging me in order to study effectively and with a busy mum and sister who has barely any work, as well as friends not willing to participate with me, studying has been hell. However my mental health has improved tremendously during lock down and now I am finding my special interests are taking over.

I am currently obsessed with two things: manga and literally any information about attraction. This means that I spend a lot of time reading manga (I have read about 100 chapters in the last two days out of an almost 300 chapter manga) as well as buying 3 more volumes of different manga. I also spend lot of time going through different forums looking up info on things like what being attractive feels like, how people feel when they are attracted to others, what it feels like when people are attracted to you, the science etc. The point is I am now still not working as much as I need to and cus I have dyspraxia, have difficulty organising myself to balance special interest time and work time. I also (maybe foolishly) took on an EPQ so we will see how that goes haha.

Is anyone else finding that they are being consumed by their special interests at the moment. How do you deal with it? Also out of curiosity, what is it?

I would say that special interests can be helpful at times of stress and anxiety such as the current situation with coronavirus. I had a nervous breakdown a few years ago and I had a special interest with neca figures and me thinking about it and buying figures really helped me at the time with diverting my mind with my depression and anxiety.
I think having an interest though is tricky because it can really help you feel happy, but on the downside consume too much time and if things aren't going well with the special interest because it feels so important it can really depress you.
I wouldn't feel to bad due to this unpredictable time with the special interests, but also maybe try to make a timetable with your study time and then free time where you can pursue your special interests if you want. Maybe chatting online with friends about studying might help and if they don't want to, try to use it as motivation that you will be better than them.
My main special interest is being an artist but ive had lots of others over my life.
Sometimes it can be hard because im a perfectionist with my art so I push myself very hard and can don't think things are good enough.

Well. I have been tidying my bedroom so I can spend more time focusing on elements to do with my main special interest. The problem is tidying is a slow process. I pick things up and then draw a blank as to what I do with it, and just either stand there with it in my hand or I don't pick it up in the first place.

You mention magna. Is that to do with volcanos?

My special interests profile seems to be pretty broad, so instead of just being fixated on one or two subjects I've got a range of different activities that I get very involved with. I've noticed that since retiring I've had more of what I call the "sticky brain syndrome" where I start doing a thing and then find it really hard to tear myself away from it until I feel I've done a thoroughly good job. I was always rather that way but I think retiring gave me the freedom to go wherever my brain happened to lead me, whereas while I had a job I had no choice but to spend a lot of my time doing as I was told, so the sticky brain thing wasn't as noticeable. I have to apply quite a lot of uncomfortable self-discipline to keep myself from spending the whole day on one thing - if I let myself do that, I start to feel anxious that I may be wasting my life or heading for something nasty, because I think a lot of important things get overlooked when I let myself go. The result is that I find myself working at breakneck speed on everything in the hope of cutting down the time taken. It's not an ideal solution because I don't like working too fast, I feel prone to making mistakes, but at least I get things done quicker.

The virus lockdown hasn't made much difference. I'd been hoping that the freedom from having to go out and socialise and go to appointments, shopping etc. would give me more time, and it has, but I just keep finding more and more things to get hyperfocussed on.

I'm always telling myself I ought to spend a bit of time planning what the best use of my time is and then trying to stick to that, but I don't seem able to do that very much.

Yes. Computer games. I've found an app where I can play casual computer games and get paid for doing so. That's the reason that I don't post here as often as I would like.

At least you’re getting paid for it.

If I was still a student I probably would, but since I'm working, I just open my computer at a proper time and work until my hours for the work day are up. This can probably work for kids and perhaps for those in secondary education, but if you're an university student then it's probably a little trickier... I mean, it's hard to predict how long assingments will take, right?

I just lost a couple of days because an old special interest stirred up queries. An engineer wanted to pick my brains about an old project, but when I tried to correct his thinking about hydrodynamics to understand my results, he quit listening.

I've got at least 3 things I planned to do today, but here I sit welded to my computer, feeling increasingly uncomfortable about those 3 things that aren't getting done, until the pressure of the anxiety tears me away - probably when there's not enough time left to complete the mission, and almost certainly not enough time to complete it comfortably. Dammit. Every day I tell myself it'll be different tomorrow, and so far it's been the same, for a very long time.