How to live an interest-driven life, step one: watch a birdwatching documentary
If you want to be creative, you need to take your interests seriously
Sometimes you watch a film and you like it, sometimes you watch a film and it moves you, and then sometimes you watch a film and it crystallises some vague thoughts you’ve been having into a coherent worldview and changes your life for the better. That film for me was, for some reason, LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching, available to watch for free here (I think it’s important to state that it’s an enjoyable watch for anyone with even a passing interest in nature, even if, like me, you don’t specifically care about birds).
The documentary is made by two brothers who decide it would be cool to be able to identify all the species in their big book of North American birds, so they get a van and travel around the states to see as many birds as they can in one calendar year. They talk to competitive birders about how their hobby manifests and what it means to them. The tone of the film is funny and playful, but they are sincere about their new love of birdwatching.
I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about people with an obsessive interest: Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Man on Wire, Free Solo, Burden of Dreams. I admire the way the subjects of these films pursue their goals with a single-minded fury, but… none of them seem to be having any fun. I want to be intense, but I don't want to be miserable! Watching LISTERS, with its focus on nature and whimsy, felt like the culmination of all of my thinking about how I actually want to live my life in relation to my interests. I want the focus to be on immersion and enjoyment, not the fulfilment of a particular outcome.
Being artistic is mostly about being interested in things: people, places, ideas, feelings. Being autistic and adhd is also, to a large extent, about being interested in things. Very interested in things, a lot of the time (for more on this, see recent theories of autistic flow and interest-based nervous systems). I never used to relate to the strength of other autistic people’s interests, partly because I also have adhd, so I have a LOT of interests and most of them don’t last that long, but also because other autistic people seemed to just allow themselves to have interests that they were fully immersed in and shaped their lives. I always held myself back from my obsessive nature, but now that I’ve started to let myself enjoy my interests fully and wholeheartedly, I’ve realised I always felt the same level of intensity, but I was confining myself by trying to force my interests to be long-term, productive and “important”.
More recently, I’ve started viewing my interests as a “way in” to my inner world. I can map my mind by documenting everything that has sparked my interest over the course of my life. In the past few years, I’ve been into cookbooks, food science, Mount Everest, Jungian analysis, graphic design, Anthony Bourdain, aeroplanes, Bravo reality shows and many more things that I’ve already forgotten about. Some are long-term, some are short-term, some are “smart”, some are “silly”, but these are not important distinctions. To an outsider, they might seem like a confusing and contradictory jumble of nonsense, but to me they make sense, even though I might be the only person alive who would connect them all together. When you do things just for fun, just because you are drawn to them, something magical happens and you start making connections that nobody else could.
The art I make now is created with the energy generated from engaging with my interests. They ground me and my art in something real: an idea, a concept, a world of connections which, without my very specific mind, wouldn’t exist. When you can’t access your desires, it can sometimes be easier to consider what ideas or images you are drawn towards. When you can’t figure out what you want to make, ask yourself what you are interested in right now. And if the answer is “nothing”, that’s fine too! You can’t force interest by pushing yourself harder, but you can try and make some time and space for your curiosity to come through.
It sounds incredibly obvious that my biggest takeaway here is to let yourself be wildly interested in the things you are wildly interested in, but after decades of pretending to be a “normal” level of excited about things, it’s often not that easy. It takes time, but I’m slowly building a life in which my interests are my centre of gravity, and I invite you to consider doing it too. Maybe I won’t quit my job to start a year-long birdwatching project and make a film about it, but I will, at the very least, not block my genuine curiosity with judgements about how the thing I want to immerse myself in right now is somehow a waste of time.
A little bit more…
If LISTERS got you excited about birds but you prefer a more traditional documentary, I’d also recommend Birdsong, about the ornithologist Seán Ronayne’s project to record the sound of every bird species in Ireland
There's several episodes of the podcast Ologies about birds, but if you don't want more bird content, there's lots of other episodes to get you interested in something you didn't know you cared about
Yes. This right here. I am currently obsessed with birds (and lots of other things too). Looking for more of this in my life. Keep writing.
“When you do things just for fun, just because you are drawn to them, something magical happens and you start making connections that nobody else could.” will stick with me forever. we are not meant to only do 1 thing. be multi faceted my friend 💛👏