Autism assessment: question 6
Oct. 13th, 2022 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstorm6. What are your interests? Do they differ from other people’s interests in intensity and scope? If so, in what way? Are you perfectionistic?
My entire life is devoted to plants, gardening, and agriculture. This has shaped everything about me, it is not just a hobby; in this way it is very different from how neurotypical people approach their hobby of gardening. I research my varieties and breed them. I spend more than all of my disposable income on plants and having the correct environment for plants. I spent multiple hours most days thinking about and working on this interest, and have since I was 5 years old. I know latin names and several common names for many plants, though sometimes I need to switch "libraries" and refresh myself on, say, pacific northwest ornamentals as opposed to northern commercial species or whatnot. So yes, I’d say this is more intense than most people’s interests in anything, and has a wider scope where most people limit the scope of their interests to knowing a couple things about their subject.
I find new hobbies by how they relate to plants, such as: brewing or canning to preserve extra stuff from my garden, pottery to make plates appropriate to eat my food off, raising animals to provide me with nutrition and disturbance agents for my garden. In essence the scope of my interest gets wider to encompass more and more facets of how plants exist in the world and their relationship to people, other animals, and other environmental functions.
I enjoy plants/gardening/ecosystems as a hobby because it’s impossible to be limited by perfectionism around it: each system is a little different, and we can’t know every myriad way that the systems interact with themselves, so there is no perfect way to do things. There is only doing something, learning from it, and doing better next time: it means that when doing this hobby I’m unable to inhabit the limiting gross feeling of perfectionism and instead fully inhabit my curiosity, which feels wonderful.
People are also an interest of mine, both generally and occasional specific people. I like figuring out how social structures work and play out; I like figuring out what cues I need to understand what’s going on with people. I think the way each individual is different from each other individual is really beautiful and I want to experience many of those individuals, and experience that beauty, I guess in the way other people look at flowers or read books. I’m more careful with this interest since people are often unsafe either physically or emotionally, or they don’t like being the object of sustained attention sometimes, or they mistake my sustained attention for wanting a romantic commitment. I am both more intellectual about liking people than most neurotypical people are, and much much much more intense about it.
I used to be very perfectionistic, and sometimes still default to that state, but I make a concerted effort not to let it limit me. For instance, my perfectionism meant it was hard for me to learn rock climbing because I didn't want anyone to see me doing it imperfectly, so I spent several months learning in situations where only very trusted friends were present so that when I finally did it in the public space of a busy climbing gym I wasn't ashamed or embarrassed. But opportunities like that are rare, and now I try to just do things, even in public, even if I'll be less than perfect at them. I developed a system with a former employer for him to communicate how perfectionistic I should be, this job might want "80% perfect" while this other job might want "95% perfect" and that as an incredibly useful accommodation for me.
My entire life is devoted to plants, gardening, and agriculture. This has shaped everything about me, it is not just a hobby; in this way it is very different from how neurotypical people approach their hobby of gardening. I research my varieties and breed them. I spend more than all of my disposable income on plants and having the correct environment for plants. I spent multiple hours most days thinking about and working on this interest, and have since I was 5 years old. I know latin names and several common names for many plants, though sometimes I need to switch "libraries" and refresh myself on, say, pacific northwest ornamentals as opposed to northern commercial species or whatnot. So yes, I’d say this is more intense than most people’s interests in anything, and has a wider scope where most people limit the scope of their interests to knowing a couple things about their subject.
I find new hobbies by how they relate to plants, such as: brewing or canning to preserve extra stuff from my garden, pottery to make plates appropriate to eat my food off, raising animals to provide me with nutrition and disturbance agents for my garden. In essence the scope of my interest gets wider to encompass more and more facets of how plants exist in the world and their relationship to people, other animals, and other environmental functions.
I enjoy plants/gardening/ecosystems as a hobby because it’s impossible to be limited by perfectionism around it: each system is a little different, and we can’t know every myriad way that the systems interact with themselves, so there is no perfect way to do things. There is only doing something, learning from it, and doing better next time: it means that when doing this hobby I’m unable to inhabit the limiting gross feeling of perfectionism and instead fully inhabit my curiosity, which feels wonderful.
People are also an interest of mine, both generally and occasional specific people. I like figuring out how social structures work and play out; I like figuring out what cues I need to understand what’s going on with people. I think the way each individual is different from each other individual is really beautiful and I want to experience many of those individuals, and experience that beauty, I guess in the way other people look at flowers or read books. I’m more careful with this interest since people are often unsafe either physically or emotionally, or they don’t like being the object of sustained attention sometimes, or they mistake my sustained attention for wanting a romantic commitment. I am both more intellectual about liking people than most neurotypical people are, and much much much more intense about it.
I used to be very perfectionistic, and sometimes still default to that state, but I make a concerted effort not to let it limit me. For instance, my perfectionism meant it was hard for me to learn rock climbing because I didn't want anyone to see me doing it imperfectly, so I spent several months learning in situations where only very trusted friends were present so that when I finally did it in the public space of a busy climbing gym I wasn't ashamed or embarrassed. But opportunities like that are rare, and now I try to just do things, even in public, even if I'll be less than perfect at them. I developed a system with a former employer for him to communicate how perfectionistic I should be, this job might want "80% perfect" while this other job might want "95% perfect" and that as an incredibly useful accommodation for me.
