TRIGGER WARNING
Discussions of mental health present.
Sections within this post
- What are these blog posts about?
- Introduction
- Teenage trauma
- Millennial nostalgia
- An adult salary
- Consumerist guilt
- Autism tax and special interests
- Conclusion
- Until next time…
‘Infodumps’ are posts related to my special interests, or a mass of incoherent thoughts splashed on a page, but through the autistic lens. I share out the information I have mentally hoarded on a topic, to get it out of my brain and file it under this category when I have no idea where else on the blog it should belong.
Introduction
The idea for this blog post came whilst I was brushing my teeth before going to bed (they do say the best ideas come from downtime or when you are not sat there forcing them), so I had to delay my bedtime to get these thoughts out quick. I had spent intermittent hours during my day off work, looking at more Labubu pendants to buy (example pictured below) whilst already owning three, with 5 more yet to arrive. Worse still, the only successful means of getting them is through second-hand marketplaces, as they are permanently sold out via their main distributor, and so I am often price-scalped on them. In the other room sits a backpack with a Labubu face on it (not even used yet as I barely leave the house), whilst I already own a collection of various backpacks, including Cinnamoroll Loungefly bags.
Source: Popmart (one of my favourites, as it mixes my favourite colours)
Prior to my autism diagnosis and still to this day, I often wonder why I have ‘obsessive buying’ habits that have not shaken or dulled, despite all the work I put into researching anti-consumerism and financial independence (a couple of special interests I flow in and out of). Let’s explore these behaviours, thoughts, and feelings, through the lens of autism and social commentary.
Teenage trauma
(Trigger warnings apply here - please skip ahead if you need to)
If you have been around this site for some time, you may have read up on my life story in my autism diagnosis series, under the Life on the Spectrum category. Without getting too dark here, as the nitty gritty details are already sprinkled throughout the existing blog post, my teenage years were some of the worst years of my life - leaving ‘childish’ special interests behind was hard enough, and then came years spent trying to fit in with my peers to no sustainable level of success.
Source: Pexels
A core memory I have from transitioning into teenagehood that I cannot shake to this day is having to give up my dolls. Despite being regarded as an autism diagnostic marker, pretend play was something I absolutely loved, and was able to do with no trouble - so long as I was in control the whole time and everybody else involved bowed to my whims. This pretend play extended to my dolls, and especially Bratz dolls - released in the very early 2000s, they were ridiculously ‘cool’ and incredibly fashionable of the time. A lot of discourse surrounds Bratz dolls for unrealistic body and beauty standards, but I never cared for that - they were my ‘cool’ puppets for imaginary stories.
Each of my dolls had their own personalities, of which were derived from their individual fashion tastes and their media depictions of the time (for example, how they were presented in TV show and video game adaptations). They went through friendship fall-outs, boyfriend break-ups and shopping splurges, all of which being products of my imagination. I had a few different dolls and a car (complete with working FM radio and a boot / trunk of miniature shopping bags), that I accumulated over numerous annual gift-giving occasions such as birthdays and Christmas. In the first year of high school (middle school), my mum started encouraging me to stop playing with them, as I was ‘getting too old for them now’. My only age-appropriate means for having a similar experience was playing The Sims (which I still do - I’ve played all iterations since 2003).
In 2023, still haunted by the memory of packing away the Bratz dolls, but to the point where I no longer had a single trace of them nor their car (not even hoarded into boxes in the loft / attic), I learned that special 20 year anniversary versions of the original doll line-up had been released in recent years, wearing the same outfits they wore from their initial release back in the early 2000s…
Millennial nostalgia
…and so, as an adult over the age of 30 with some disposable income, I bought the set of four dolls, plus the same car I used to have but in a completely worse-for-wear state from a pre-loved marketplace. I put them on display on my desk, and they are still on it today. There are no pretend play sessions with these dolls, but looking at them takes me back to simpler times, especially as they are exactly what I had, aged 11. Part of me felt that I had finally got closure on my trauma of giving up those dolls, plus also having the power of being able to do what I want as an adult (which is perfect for an autistic person that loves being in control).
Having gone through over 15 years of being a said-adult, with everything that entails (working full time to pay bills, cost of owning a home as grateful as I am for being able to do so, losing family members as time flies by, etc.), on top of being autistic, the struggle of existing as an adult is getting harder every year for me and I am constantly grasping onto anything that will ‘help’ or ‘soothe’ my difficulties (except gambling, illicit activities, or substances). In some aspects of my life, I have regressed, almost like I am aging backward and I am craving the simplicity of childhood again - definitely not the schools, homework, and exams, but looking at childhood through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia, the calm before the tech storm of modern day that we live in, and the lifestyle of the time. Since my autism diagnosis in 2022, I have slowly started to unmask in many situations (this is probably progression rather than the regression mentioned earlier) and certain people around me, whilst at the same time, my special interests have gone back to things I loved as a child, as well as things I would have loved as a child if I still was one.
Nostalgia is a comfort to many, autistic or not - but when you feel like you are living life on hard mode, those old special interests become an even-comfier comfort blanket and ‘safe place’ with the nostalgia hit in them combined. Examples of nostalgic ‘things’ I have hyperfixated on include 90s ‘aesthetics’, vintage clothing, Sanrio characters, Bratz dolls, Pokémon (a special interest that comes and goes and has done since 1999), Nintendo in general plus some Sega franchises, The Sims, and bands / musicians I used to love from time gone by.
Source: Pexels
An adult salary
As a kid and through my teenage years, I tended to get new things in relation to my interests as small one-off gifts or as part of my birthday / Christmas presents (my parents tried their damnedest to ensure I wasn’t ’spoiled’ too much, as can be common for being an only child). As a result of waiting for special occasions for new things, every item I have ever owned has been treasured and treated like a multi-million pound one-off piece of artwork - whether gratitude or perfectionism, I have handled possessions as though a replacement for them doesn’t exist (even if it does). In contrast and fast-forwarding to nowadays of me being an adult with a salary, once I have paid the bills and saved up (something, but not always), there’s some money left over to be spent on things that didn’t come very often when I was younger but are (dangerously) now freely accessible to me with disposable income (such as four Bratz dolls and a car for them).
With this adult salary, I have periods of save and splurge - with the splurge always being around hyperfixations. When a new hobby catches me in a chokehold, my savings start to dwindle. I am very much ‘all the gear, but no idea’. I also have spells of overconsuming pairs of shoes and trainers / sneakers, handbags, books on a topic, and so on, as well as the traditional overbuying of craft supplies (Rainbow Loom bands back in the day, with more modern examples being bracelet beads, cross stitch threads, felting materials, coloured pens, 3D printing filament, and the one I am a cretin for the most - yarn, yarn and more yarn). When a hobby or fixation ‘sticks’ for longer, I upgrade the gear to the best I can afford, as my mental gymnastics tell me that the hobbies will be even more enjoyable and productive with better tools to do them with (not always true but at this point, I am beyond any sense). This mass coveting then leads me to feel the title of the next section.
Consumerist guilt
From what I have written so far, objectively it is very clear that I do have some sort of a spending problem, regardless of the reasons behind it. One of many reasonings is that I am clearly a hypocritical consumerist sucker simultaneously panged with guilt for my actions. This painful guilt of overspending on ‘stuff’, drowning in collections of endless knick-knacks and ‘little treats’ takes a toll on your living space, finances, mental health, and of course, the planet.
There are already enough unnecessary items to covet on Earth in existence, before creating new things from scratch - just look at ‘come thrift with me’ videos on YouTube, for example, to see endless aisles of second-hand clothing, bric-a-brac, and homeware present in American thrift stores alone, still existing, functional, and in abundance, before we even consider the new daily stock in typical high-street stores or cheap online marketplaces.
With this in mind, I do my best more-so nowadays to get things second-hand to soften the blow of my environmental impact, or to line the pockets of major corporations less, but I am not perfect and can still overconsume things to my own detriment (and that of my poor husband who has to see my collections of utter ‘crap’ littering the home, plus Mother Earth).
Source: Pexels
Autism tax and special interests
The term ‘autism tax’ can be interpreted in a few ways, including most of what I have said prior about spending a lot of money to pursue special interests and collecting things in relation to them. Another meaning it covers is the cost of paying for services / supplies that help you to manage your autistic traits (for example, requiring expensive noise-cancelling headphones just to cope with sensory issues for five minutes outside of your home). In my case, the autism tax is a mix of everything I have written above - not only am I easily swayed into consumerist trends now and again thanks to “that’s cute and it just so happens to match my pastel-themed special interest space”, but my ability to hyperfixate and hoard special interests makes it even more intense and difficult to be a ‘sensible, grown adult’ who is on top of their finances. As the title of the post suggests, my autism tax bill is indeed sky high, and I am being charged in the currency of financial safety, mental health, and physical space, as well as my husband’s sanity.
It can’t all be doom and gloom, right? This slew of negative reasoning for these behaviours makes it all seem totally futile, as a whole - but the joy from autistic special interests is unmatched yet impossible to describe to folk who are not neurodivergent nor do not experience intense special interests. Balance and moderation is key in most things, and regardless, I do love looking at my mass collections of silly little things - whether they trigger a deep dive into the filing cabinets of my brain and draw out happy memories of childhood, time spent with others, interesting facts and titbits about the item itself, and so on. A good catch-all example of this is a Pokémon plush that I recently bought from a convention - it is of a Pokémon that I can relate to personally in terms of its traits and personality, and it is one of my favourite Pokémon since childhood whilst also being the exact same plush as one I used to have back as a child in the 90s. On top of these, it also reminds me of a happy day out that I enjoyed with people I am close to.
Source: Pexels
Conclusion
Being autistic and living in a capitalist society, I am set up perfectly for a difficult, endless battle with my finances and sanity - suckered in to anything quirky, easily accessible, and ‘addictive’, plus a complete puppet of my overly-hyperfixating brain constantly taking over my entire life (to the point where I fall asleep thinking of my obsessions and wake up thinking of them all over again, before considering my own needs and that of my dear family around me).
How is that Labubu hyperfixation going, you may ask (you probably didn’t but I will tell you anyway)? From starting this blog post to finishing it, I now have a collection of about thirty(!) Labubu pendants now, all of which are on display on my big gaming desk with the Bratz dolls and other special interest collectables (including my Sanrio trinkets). I regularly pick up the Labubus to admire their cutesy-creepy faces and to scrape some dopamine from their teeny-tiny-fluffy-ness. I also have outfits for most of them, most of which I have made as a result of my knitting and crochet fixations (both have had a good track record for longevity so far, I am pleased to report). The Labubus are distracting me from hoarding Jellycats, of which I love for a similar reason - the irresistible silly little faces just make me smile for once in this mundane adult world.
From the paragraph above alone, it is pretty clear that my autism tax bill is not going to be paid off any time soon.
Thank you very much for reading this blog post. I appreciate you spending time here on my corner of the internet. Hopefully you got something out of reading the essay above.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts and be the first to read them by following me on the social media links, in the menu bar, to know exactly when new posts are published.
Also, feel free to share your special interests with the community via the comment section below. I love hearing of the passion people have for their particular hobbies and interests, as much as I do sharing my own.
Until next time,
