The Hulk is Always Greener on the Other Side...

Welcome back New Year readers! While you've enjoyed a semester break, I packed my winter solstice into one fantastic week at home. Chicago brought a first-night Snowsera gig (my best buddies band, who is shamelessly promoted at the bottom of this blog) at Schubas downtown, lots of family focused around Christmas cookies, specifically the little balls with nuts and frosting, and the Blokus board. If you've yet to challenge your loved ones to a game of Blokus, run, don't walk to your nearest board game retailer and pick up this game de force.
Objective: silently make alliances while destroying those who lack telepathic bargaining skills.
A fan favorite in the Allison house hold at the holidays.
I thought I was going to truly miss the "semester break," but whether it be in the Gap stock room or at the Noodles and Co. counter (I realize that you may have never heard of this haven for noodle lovers, but if you ever venture out to the Midwest or beyond, look 'em up, your pallet will be elated) I was always working during these breaks. So slinging ice cream, countin comics and selling clothes were far from a stretch for this workaholic.
Workaholic, a label that I've been pinned with for most of my late teen, and all of my early twenties life. Have I been fortunate enough to enjoy my place of employment, the people I work for and with, and on the whole, the customers who frequent my places of business, absolutely. Do I love my weekends that fall on Monday and Tuesday...without question. So why have I always picked up shifts, stayed late, and had no problem coming in early?
I like productivity, I like contributing to something other than myself, for in turn I feel better about the time I do take for myself. Which is an interesting way to look at it - for all things that I find worthy of my time, is time taken for myself.
Wanting what we do not have is somewhat of a tradition in the human condition. And how we go about it is what differentiates us from one another. Wanting what we don't have can either be interpreted as wanting what another has, or wanting to better improve what we already posses. It can even be identified as wanting to free ourselves of something we are already carrying. Perhaps this has been the catalyst for my love and infatuation with the superhero genre. Modernized archetypes handling the woes of the every-man with challenges that mirror yet idealize our own. The villain most always wants what the hero has, becoming the incarnation of the hero's ideal, turned on its head. (See Iron Man's Iron Monger). Iron Man himself expresses his need to improve himself by improving his armor, taking it through stages that parallel what he is going through personally. Heroes such as the Hulk or Wolverine are on a constant search to expend their past ghosts and relieve the pain that comes with their genetic and genetically altered charges. Though, all the while, they follow Spidy's Uncle Ben philosophy, "With great power, comes great responsibility."
So what it is that I take from my comic readings?
The story isn't told in one issue, or in one arch...a story never truly has an end, merely a lead in to the next adventure. It ain't over until life is so uninteresting that you stop stop picking up your own book every week. Hell, when I stop enjoying life to the point that I can't find even an ounce of worth while experience in the simplest of tasks, the important will never be appreciated, and that is a life not worth living. Cheers --d