Deep interests/Passions/Flow activites

[ptsdick]

It's amazing the seeking to master and perfect a skillset that never ends I thought this just me and my wife, For me it's always been contact juggling as a go to fiddle as this is something that can always be improved upon and has helped so much with integrated of my core that I didn't even realise I didn't use until 40 as I forced the other muscles to do it. Obviously also every other circus skill and building and fixing everything and a need to know exactly how it works on every level , I didn't consider until recently that learning all trades in building as unusual as live in council flat and their workers don't do a good enough job so have always done myself, I was masking for nearly 40 years AuDHD and cptsd so very many things.
Now I'm learning about mastering the mind and am making good work on somatic massage and release via the pineal gland, a 5hz vibration plate for 30 second integration, goddam my muscles hurt now they are integrated mind( like I've been kicked in the arse by a horse.

Very interesting the idea I've just read about, shortening the reaction time to stimulation that causes the overwhelm as we retain all information for further analysis beyond that of the average person which is supposedly what causes the overall over stimulation problems we all seem to experience at some level. Apparently catching and music/ basically integration of multiple senses at once such as tapping a drum to a beat or dancing, even my juggling teach the brain to not hold the information as long decreasing overwhelm.

[MODERATED CONTENT]

 

[MandyH]

I have a real interest in genealogy - when my dad died I also inherited most of his family history stuff (2 tall filing cabinets full that we condensed into box files and left on shelves in my 'office' for nearly ten years until I finally mostly retired so I have time now to go through it all and try to make sense of it).
It appeals to my need to research and go down rabbit holes... I love finding new family members and going back as many years as I can.
Unfortunately it has led to some very late nights (a couple of all-nighters) as it's so hard to stop once I've started.

The only thing that I ever experienced 'flow' like this with previously has been reading - once I start a book it's very hard to put it down until it's finished.
Other interests - have taken up pottery/ceramics recently which is truly my happy place.

For ten years I delivered autism training.... which ultimately led to burnout shortly after I was diagnosed and the penny dropped into place. I stopped beating myself up for anxiety and overwhelm. I hope I managed to make life better for some neurodivergent folk with the training I delivered though.

 

[Ajax]

Love gaming on PC also a half decent beatboxer and love good scifi be it books TV or films

 

[UnicornSpoon]

OH MY GOD I LOVE GAMING!!

Minecraft and Roblox especially!!

Oh I gotta talk about my Allminer experiment in Minecraft!! I make a new world, set up all the command blocks and the collection system, and then I gradually mine out EVERYTHING from surface to bedrock in a square area that's 128x128 blocks. It all gets collected into boxes by type, and at the end I have a giant hole in the world and a hilarious amount of storage boxes filled with all kinds of fun things! I also love building Everyfarms, which feature almost every kind of non-animal product in the game! Except Nether Wart and Chorus Fruit, they're ugly and weird.

As for Roblox, I LOOOVE horse games!! My favourite is Horse World, which is a dress-up and roleplay game with a HUUUGE range of horse breeds and accessories but a very simple premise: you either RIDE the horses, or BE one! I almost always prefer to BE the horse! My original characters include Nightfall, a black unipeg (unicorn pegasus)) mare with white hair and green eyes draped in all kinds of jewellery. There's Tabitha, a much more ordinary brown mare with white patches and black and blonde hair. Then there's also Golden Silverhorse, a battle horse statue that's solid gold at night and solid silver in the daytime! The trick is all her bits are a very reflective material that reflects the sky, so the gold colour mixes with the blue sky and looks silver, and at night when the sky is black the true golden colour comes out instead!

I also made a virtual sensory room in Roblox as well, as my final year project at university. It takes advantage of not being limited by real-world constraints, and has a giant chair carousel on the high ceiling, shapes you can click that change colour and shape and material, soft play areas, giant floor keyboards that make cat and dog noises, and a space room with stars and the Solar System in the sky! All the planets' orbit times are accurate relative to each other! If I remember correctly Mercury takes 8.8 seconds in game and 88 days in real life to orbit the sun? So in my sensory room Solar System for each planet the real days are seconds and divided by 10? Pluto needs more than an hour to orbit once lol.

My two most recent Roblox projects have been CLICKY!, a game where you click to summon a random assortment of objects including pointe shoes, Pot Noodle, strawberries, slices of cake, and my own head! The challenge is so summon SO MUCH STUFF you either lag out or completely crash the game! And the other more recent one is Plushie Riding Stables! It's a working title, but the idea is life-sized plushie-style horses living in a barn where you can take them riding and do all kinds of lovely things with them! There's 8 realistically coloured horses including black, white, palomino, Spirit the stallion and even a blue roan, and 8 fantasy coloured horses including green, purple, rainbow, and blue! Each horse has a loose box (like a room) it lives in, there's wash stalls (shower rooms) with interactive grooming tools, a lounge for humans with a counter for making tea and pot noodles, and a storage room with bags of food and clothes you can change into! I have TONS of further ideas which I'm adding every day!

I LOVE THIS THREAD OMG.

 

[Loubie]

Mine have varied over the years - I have a room of "stuff" which I call my graveyard of retired hobbies

But there is a theme for a number of them - that I like to understand how things work - for about the last 6/7 years this has manifested as a deep interest in psychology. Prompted by learning about my own and my healing journey re my trauma. Now I just enjoy understanding about psychology more widely. I have also always enjoyed learning science-based knowledge because of this. I spend a lot of time reading, learning, absorbing all sorts of information. And dumping it on people thereafter when the opportunity arises

Music is my other long-term deep passion. I taught myself to play many instruments as a kid and sang (competed musically), and I now stick mainly to singing and my piano. Could do that all day.

Another is finance and accountancy, which I kind of dabbled with even as a kid without realising.. and then it became my career until I stopped work in 2020. Would like to get back to that because getting paid for a deep interest (all the rules and application of them, eg accountancy, tax etc) is the dream. Damn you autistic burnout...

I am actually ill in bed with a stomach bug and got distracted by this thread because seeing it made me want to talk about it, even though I need to go rest. And that is the downside to my deep interests, I can't easily switch them off even when my health demands it.

Laura

Hi all,

I have been elusive recently as I am neck deep in divorce court proceedings I will be back once life allows.

Just wanted to share this link below to my choir performances yesterday. As I shared above, music is a deep passion of mine

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

Snippets of 3 of the 12 songs we performed

See you all soon
Laura x

 

[Camel]

Hi all,

I have been elusive recently as I am neck deep in divorce court proceedings I will be back once life allows.

Just wanted to share this link below to my choir performances yesterday. As I shared above, music is a deep passion of mine

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

Snippets of 3 of the 12 songs we performed

See you all soon
Laura x

Hi Laura

Good to hear from you. Sorry you are going through this through a tough time, but pleased that you are still able to give yourself a therapeutic dose of singing “self care”. All important when times are hard.

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Keep well

Wade

 

[Loubie]

Hi Laura

Good to hear from you. Sorry you are going through this through a tough time, but pleased that you are still able to give yourself a therapeutic dose of singing “self care”. All important when times are hard.

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Keep well

Wade

Thanks for replying Wade, and the kind words, as always.

Can't wait until this life stress is all done (and I am finally divorced and free!), and I can come back and spend some time with you lovely lot again

Take care until then - L x