The short answer:

Yes, for short periods of time.

The long answer:

I have a problem with nuts. It is not that I don’t like nuts; it is perhaps that I like nuts too much. You see, I rarely have a craving for nuts. However, whenever I have a can of nuts in my possession, I can’t resist eating the nuts constantly, even if I’m not hungry. As a result, the nuts disappear at a truly alarming rate, and a single can of nuts rarely lasts more than a couple days. And then I cry “Nuts!” because I am left sad and without nuts, and I wonder why I had to go and eat all my nuts.

Heartbreaking, I know.

But this behavior of mine is not just limited to nuts. In fact, I find I have a habit of getting very enthusiastic about things for a short period of time. I call it, for lack of a better term, “going nuts.” The problem is that when I go nuts about something, inevitably I lose interest rather quickly. It is as if I am being consumed by it with such intensity that eventually there isn’t anything left to consume. And then I am left wondering why I was so foolish as to waste all that energy for something that really doesn’t deserve it.

I had never really thought about this until my freshman year of college when I got a harmonica through Secret Santa. I had always thought it would be cool to learn the harmonica, but I’d never gotten my hands on one until then. And so I practiced all the time. One day while I was practicing, my roommate, whom we’ll call B, said to me with disdain, “I guess you’re one of those people that just go crazy about something until they finally get sick of it.” This was just a passive-aggressive ploy by B to make me stop playing, so I did. I was also a little offended, but luckily I already hated B for unrelated reasons, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I didn’t think much of it until later, when I actually did get sick of the harmonica. To be fair, I still enjoyed picking it up from time to time, but somehow it just didn’t feel as exciting as it did before. That’s when I realized that B was right. Nuts.

This same pattern has happened to me countless other times. I’ve gone nuts about juggling and drawing and Rubik’s cubes and card tricks and jazz piano and Dr. Seuss and origami and psychology and sudoku and writing and backgammon and cartooning and badminton and sitcoms and poker and blogs and making long lists without commas. And while I still enjoy these things, it just isn’t the same as it was when I was nuts about them, and I can’t even fathom why I went nuts about them in the first place.

It’s distressing to me that I can’t seem to control my own enthusiasm. If it were up to me, I’d perfectly balance everything that I like so as to develop my interests gradually. Instead, I often find myself either unable to think about anything except for my current fascination or else with a heap of unfinished projects about which I just don’t care enough anymore to finish. As a result, I find myself being incredibly unproductive much more often than I’d like. I’ve tried to fix this habit of mine on occasion, but never to any avail. (It’s a tough nut to crack.)

But maybe it isn’t all bad. At least I’m learning new things instead of sitting around bored all the time. And perhaps one day I’ll find the one thing that perpetually excites me and my life will be complete. Or perhaps one day I’ll find that I have so many unfinished projects that my life will never be complete. Regardless, I think I’ll just have to learn to live with the fact that I’m not going to stop eating nuts anytime soon.

And sure, nuts are fatty, but it’s the good kind of fat.

Cheers,
-qm