It can be a healthy move to have side-​obsessions.  For exam­ple, your side-​obsession can be Steve Martin.  Read two books at once—both Born Stand­ing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin, and Out of My Skin by John Haskell.  Read Born Stand­ing Up (which you found in the garbage, per­haps) very slowly, and read Out of My Skin very quickly.  Having side-​obsessions involves this kind of doing one thing very slowly and one thing very fast, both things having to do with the side-​obsession.  Just be care­ful not to make your side-​obsession a full obses­sion.  A good way to do this is to com­bine slow and fast behav­iors.  Next, occa­sion­ally rent Steve Martin movies, like L.A. Story.  Do not rent The Jerk, it will be on tele­vi­sion soon enough.  Talk to your friends about Steve Martin, but always non­cha­lantly, but always every so often, for years.  Your side-​obsession will last at least a decade!  You don’t know when it started.  Robert Walser was a master of the side-​obsession.  For him, this was writing—just a side-​obsession.  Are you going to see Pink Pan­ther 2?