On the trees and the forest

or, why I don't enjoy things anymore.

I have always been a generalist - I find nearly everything interesting, and know bits and pieces about a lot of subjects - but even when I get really interested in a subject, my brain tends to record information about it in a general way, and I have trouble holding on to most details.

The problem comes when I encounter people who hold onto details really well, and who are interested in the things that I'm interested in. In those situations, when I talk about the subject in common, I nearly always get "well, ACTUALLY" in response - and more and more, I find that I'm always in those situations.

And while I try very hard to accept being corrected when I'm wrong, having someone effectively say "no, I know this better than you" nearly every time I talk about my interests makes me feel like I've gotten a Bad Grade in Being Interested In This. The constant correction feels like punishment, and like I'm being told that I'm being a fan incorrectly.

(This is in addition to being in places where I've learned that I shouldn't talk about being interested in things that people there aren't also interested in, because the response is anywhere between "well, I don't care about that, so please stop talking about it", "lol you care about that? loser", and "actually you're a bad person for thinking that's interesting".)

So over time, I have learned to talk less and less about the things I enjoy, and I've realized in the last year or so that as a result I don't really get interested in things anymore; I can do "hm, that's interesting", but there hasn't been anything that I've actually been a fan of in a long time. (After all, you can't get a bad grade in a class you're not taking.)

I don't know what to do about this. If I get really interested in things, I want to talk about them, but if I talk about them, I feel punished for it, and if I don't talk about them, then I don't have the social reinforcement that keeps the interest going. I want to fix this, but I don't know how, and in the meantime my life is turning more and more grey and feeling less and less like a life I want to keep living.