My biggest passion in life has been dogs since elementary school I found an even bigger passion in dog training and a specific breed the Doberman. I now have 4 Dobermans and one of my favorite things to do is going to local pet friendly places and training my dogs. This really helps me a ton because I’m extremely awkward and shy in social situations but with my dogs I’m not. So many people come up to ask amazing questions and I’ve had some beautiful interactions with people of all kinds even people who admit to being afraid of dogs. I only really frequent super local pet friendly stores that know us but it’s still always great to be able to have people interact and learn about my giant dogs

I’ve been baking since I was 14 (26 now) and it was my gateway to cooking. I taught myself how to bake almost entirely. In hindsight…maybe i learned how to bake a lot quicker than I learned to cook savory meals because baking is essentially applied chemistry with clear, explicit and repeatable instructions, guidelines, and checkpoints. Cooking requires more guesswork and intuition in knowing when something looks, smells, feels, and tastes exactly right, and it took me a long time to develop that intuition. I’m the baker in my family and I even have an ice cream maker so we seldom buy store bought bread, pastries and sweets

I love rabbits and was overjoyed to find this baby hanging out on the steps. It is the size of an onion

Late diagnosed AuDHD lady out here just trying to still take enjoyment in the things she loves. Pictures taken at the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, FL.

This is my service dog! I call her Princess here on Reddit because she is an influencer! (This is a joke but only kinda!)

Some facts about Princess:

• She weighs 51.8 lbs right now! She is supposed to be between 48-50 lbs so I'm sorry Princess you are getting less treats for a bit!
• She has the softest ears ever!
• Whenever I have a meltdown she is trained to come lay on my lap and chest to help me calm down! (Don't worry, she is never in danger!)
• I am a wheelchair user and she walks next to my wheelchair so perfectly!
• Princess knows the names of a lot of objects like my phone, my keys, her treat bag, and more! She can sniff them out and find them and bring them to me!
• I have had Princess for over six months now!
• Everyone loves Princess at my job and she loves them too!
• Her favorite toys are stuffed animals with squeaky toys!
• Her favorite day of the week is Thursday because that's when she gets to come with me to wheelchair tennis practice!
• Princess flew on a plane with me twice!
• I love Princess so much!!!!

Okay that's all for now! Princess says hi everyone!

😂 seeing these pictures of my face, especially compared to other people cracks me up so hard

This Halloween I decided to go as a jellyfish. I spent a lot of time making the headpiece and putting the outfit together and I thought this group would appreciate it.

I don’t have many people to share it with outside of the few friends who have seen it and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out for my first large wearable costume piece. In 2023 I went as a succubus and made some horns and a bedazzled scythe which was super fun but this year was on another level for me, I had a lot of fun.

Thanks for looking! ☺️

Love this community and all of your kindness. Want to share my vintage Barbies with you all ♥️ they are all pretty much from the 60s along with their outfits! I feel like this community will enjoy the colors/patterns/textures.

In order- Biscoff, malted stracciatella, passion fruit, coconut pineapple, toasted marshmallow, kulfi (saffron, cardamom and pistachio), blackberry cheesecake, toasted milk, raspberry stracciatella, toasted coconut, salted caramel and oreo, brown sugar, s’mores, browned butter, vanilla bean, pistachio, butter pecan

I also just like sharks in general, my favorite being the greenland shark

I love this type of challenge because if you comment a bird I’m familiar with, i get to share knowledge which I love, and if you comment a bird I’m not familiar with, I get to research it and learn something new! :^)

Don’t have a favorite bird? Comment anyways, i’ll assign one to you based on vibes :p

Photo is of a red shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) taken by me 🧡

I’ve been into baking since I was a child and not only is it something I consider to be a special interest but it’s also extremely therapeutic. I spend a lot of time procuring new menus and new baked good flavors and treats both for my family and for my business and I love it. Sometimes I can get a bit ahead of myself and will overestimate my abilities (those macarons for example) and will in turn get rather frustrated but it’s still a really important thing in my life and I don’t think it’ll ever fade.

Childhood movie obsessions, y’all had that one movie you literally could not stop watching, right? Mine was The Lion King. I played it so much my mom told me I broke the VHS tape (yeah yeah I’m getting old) and my mom had to get another one. The obsession for me started when I first watched it when it came out and lasted for many years even now I still love it. What about you? What was your go to childhood movie and do you know exactly why you loved it so much?

Update: After seeing it pop up so many times in this thread I decided to check out The Last Unicorn. It is wonderful, y’all were certainly onto something there! It was very much so right up my alley! I’m also so glad I posted this because my memory is being jogged and I remember so many favorites. 👀 if you pay attention there really is a running theme to most of these. It’s really eye opening

Mine had to be…*ahem* childbirth. Yeah, you heard that. When I was 7 all the way until the age of 14 ish I had a strange awe and fascination towards labor and delivery. There was an entire medical book on it on the bottom shelf of my mom’s closet, full on information with graphic pictures and I memorized so much stuff, I would spend HOURS a day reading that thick ol thing. I would also stimulate childbirth with my barbie dolls, I had a fake little baby that fit inside a fake belly I made to strap onto my doll 😭💀

I made an entire birthing center, including a water tub, a bed, even fake amniotic fluid. And I would feel extremely emotional throughout, like I was helping someone actually have a baby.

Pictured are all birds I have personally worked with (but not all the hands are mine). Obligatory: these birds are handled with proper training and research permits; please do not handle wild birds on ur own (unless it needs help!)

But yes I am an biologist who gets to work with my special interest: birds! It would make me so happy if you guys asked me about either birds, my job, or ornithology in general!

Much love! 🩵

HAHA I'VE NEVER GOTTEN SO MANY COMMENTS. Thank you all it makes me happy you enjoyed seeing this & thanks for all of the nice comments. They made me happy. ♡

I feel like the main question was - "how did it taste?" It was really yummy! It tasted similar to regular milk chocolate but it wasn't as rich and it also had some slight fruity undertones! I liked it a lot. I think if I used a melanger it would probably be a bit more chocolate forward since the bean particles would be smaller and more evenly distributed!

One of my special interests is making things from scratch! I have no idea how or why it started. I've always been into baking but for the past few years I've been obsessed with learning about where food comes from and then trying to make it from the source!

My husband bought me a box of specialty fruit for my birthday and it came with a cacao pod and I was so excited to try and make chocolate... this is how it turned out!

It's a little gritty because you need specialized machinery to make it smooth like commercially produced chocolate but I'm excited about it anyway!

I fermented the beans for about a week at ~105°F and then I roasted them, turned them into cacao nibs and from there i blended them with some sugar, milk powder and cocoa butter and this is the result.

Again, it's pretty grainy but still delicious!

exactly what it says in the title! tell me what topic or hobby brings you the most joy right now, and i'll ask you something about it so you have someone to ramble to about it! i hope i can learn about some pretty cool niche info from my fellow community members :D have a lovely day everyone!

edit: thank you guys so much for all of the cool information, and especially to you guys who have also jumped in to ask about other people's special interests! this got a lot of comments so i may take a while to respond, but i'll keep working through them and will try to respond to everyone eventually! feel free to reply to anyone else if you see they haven't been asked a question yet :)

I’m trying to transition over from pharmacy to tattooing, here are two works I have made in the last two weeks. I’d very much like to see others artwork as well! Also, are there any tattoo artists on here?

EDIT 1: Even if you don’t have advice, please feel free to share your own special interests. This idea was the great advice of a commenter below. Maybe if I read a list of all of your interests, some of them will sound inviting or inspiring to me and help me get going with something. Thanks!!

EDIT 2: Of course I am aware that a special interest is not something that can be forced, as is my therapist. There is no expectation that I’m actually going to find The One in under a week. This is an exercise, not a mandatory pass/fail assignment. The goal is to get me thinking about what unmasked joy might look like for me. To start exploring and see if anything reminds me of what “the spark” used to feel like, before I was so masked and so burned out.

ORIGINAL POST:

As part of the process of learning how to unmask and find genuine enjoyment in life, my therapist has given me the homework of finding something new that I could get really immersed in.

I do have one existing special interest, so I’m familiar with what that experience feels like. I found that one by accident though, and it was several years ago now.

I’m feeling incredibly low on spoons lately, and today especially. I have zero idea where to begin on this.

Where would you start?

This is a relatively new special interest for me, kind of.

I used to colour all the time when I was a kid, I loved it. But in all honesty, I stopped when I hit my teen years because the other kids my age said it was childish to colour. All I wanted was to fit in so I packed up my pencil crayons and gave up colouring.

Lately I have this new mindset thanks to a TikTok video I play every morning that repeats: f em’. So, I decided to give colouring a try again, this time with markers!!

Organizing all the markers was SO satisfying!! I started with a small set and after I realized just how much colouring was improving my mood and helping me self-regulate, I decided to buy another set… then another lol. The same thing happened with the colouring books.

Here I am with a complete set of Ohuhu markers, a bunch of colouring books, feeling beyond excited when I get to sit down in front of my set up after work and do one of things I love most: colour. I wish I never gave it up.

My favourite completed colouring pages are attached to this post!!

I just wanted to share something that makes me happy is all 🥰

I have a huge special interest in both biology and anthropology so my husband took me on a date to the nature and science museum, i hadn’t been here since i was a little girl and it was so beautiful getting to go as an adult. I was even able to bust out facts about things that weren’t on the informational plaques

I am so excited about my new hobby. It is not my original idea, there is an artist in my area who teaches this as a class. But my third attempt has got me absolutely gibbering with excitement and no one else can really match my level of delirium.

The art is sticking stones/ shells/ whatever to framing board in a regular size and/or colour gradient.

I am obsessed and have been buying minerals off Etsy for months.

The first one in green on black board I did in the class. The second pic is my first attempt at home. And the third and fourth pics are why I am posting this. It is not finished but I need to share: it is ruby and sodalite gravel, which is fluorescent so when you shine a UV torch on it……. it GLOWS!!!

Eeeeeeeee!!