My main special interest is autism itself. I've had a special interest in autism for a little over a year, making it my second-longest special interest. I originally got hyperfixated on autism in November of 2023. I was procrastinating while writing an essay for school and stumbled upon a blog written by two sisters (one autistic, one neurotypical) about autism. I'd known I was autistic before that point, but I had never given it much thought. I was suddenly very excited about the prospect of learning how my brain worked. In 2024, I started hunting for books with autistic main characters written by autistic authors. I discovered many of my favorite books this way. At the end of the 2023-2024 school year, I wrote a research paper about the benefits of special interests and hyperfixations in autistic children. A curious fact is that I discovered my special interest through an English assignment, and I used an English assignment to share my special interest with the world.
answering the prompts from this project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/992114955/
