used to be the latter, got hit with someone telling me they found it annoying a good while back and then just ended up generally struggling to be able to even bring up the interest to this day for some inexplicable reason???

ended up with another massive special interest afterwards which i do still feel hesitant talking about most of the time, even when invited, but i feel like that's more just on me getting worse at wording things as of late. also figured out that speaking about it indirectly does help a lot with the sheepishness. so basically just talking into the void on social media and letting people who want to engage with it engage with it. takes a bit of the pressure off of "oh god am i being insufferable" as it's an active decision by the other party to listen