I Grow Weary

I love Super Heroes. I love comic books. With passion, I love these things. I have been an avid reader and fan since I could read. The mythology and their place as teachers of moral codes is unparallelled and deserves respect. I am who I am because of these characters...I would never give up one iota of what they have given me in my life.

But....

I think I am completely burnt out on film and TV adaptations. I feel like I'm drowning in superheroes.

Every once in a while I get excited because something looks different or unexpected, but, in the main...It's like an obligation, not a joy. I'll see Avengers, I'll see Ant-Man, I'll see Fantastic Four (and the last one actually has been surprising me with the imagery that's been released), but I can't say I feel excited about any of them. I am also just simply bored to tears with Robert Downey Jr's shtick.

I watched Daredevil, and was left pretty cold. Darkness and noir style I can enjoy (and, in fact, I love it), but brutality and gore simply doesn't work for me. I can't get through a single episode of SHIELD, let alone a full season. Arrow is working for me, to a point...I AM excited to start watching The Flash, as a life-long fan of the character.

I admit, I didn't hate the Batman v Superman teaser, mainly because they've taken my main problem with Man of Steel and addressed it head-on. That was unexpected, and intriguing. It also, like Fantastic Four, doesn't look like any of these other films.

Mad Max makes me excited. The Star Wars stuff makes me excited. Tomorrowland makes me excited. Things that are new, or have been away for a good, long while.

But, here I am a lifelong fan...and I'm sorta bored with the whole superhero thing. I shocks me. I can't imagine what a "civilian" might be starting to feel.

Now, I know exactly the reaction that I'm going to get there...that I am wrong, that it's a golden age. That Marvel Studios is perfect in every way. If you feel that way, fantastic, but I am also pretty fed up with a fandom that resembles cheering for a sports team.

I often wonder if that isn't my problem. I feel inundated with stuff I am supposed to be excited about because everyone else is, and if I don't agree, or offer mild criticisms, I'm "the guy who hates everything." Well, maybe I am, but so be it.

The Crash

I am at one of my "low points."

I don't really mean depression, or pain, or anything like that. I mean apathy. I mean inertia. I'm at a point where I struggle to get excited.  I struggle to generate enthusiasm. I don't know if it's exhaustion, or, yeah, maybe depression, or what.

Which, as you would probably guess, sucks. It sucks for me, and it sucks for the people I'm working with. Although, I do try to hide it, put on the brave face, soldier on, whatnot. That just makes me feel worse, because, damn it, I hate to let people down. At the end of the day, I just want something exciting to happen, and I feel like it might be a pipe dream.

It's not across the board. I'm really excited about the jam session on Saturday. That said, it's something different. I don't get to go in a room and play guitar with a rythum section often, hardly ever, honestly. It's been years.

It's the day-to-day stuff. Work. Eat. Stage Left stuff. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Doesn't help when the little shit, installing a new DSL modem and setting the wi-fi back up, for example, becomes WAY more complicated and intensive than it ought to. Haven't we evolved to a point where this sort of thing should be (relatively) plug-and-play? Or at least provide reasonably functional and clear directions?

Don't even get me started on the bigger stuff. It trickles down, and I just...feel...shot. I feel like there's nothing in the tank. At all. So much so, that, deep down, where I don't want to look very closely, I just don't really care so much anymore. That, my friends, scares the shit out of me.

Maybe I pushed too hard for to long. The '11-'12 season has been very busy for me. Three full shows, almost back-to-back, a directing gig in there, too, and a workshop process. I have to tell you, I'm a bit worried about having taken that understudy gig over the summer, at this point.

Then I read that..and just think, "what a whiner. What a brat." This is what you wanted, you idiot.

I need something really exciting to show up on the horizon. Something that speaks to me, personally. Something to be passionate about.