Have you ever read 300 pages of a book before deciding it wasn't worth the effort to finish it?
Chunk it in the bag for McKay's.
Maybe you've watched 30 or 45 minutes of a movie, then thought, "This is garbage."
Turn it off.
Perhaps you've plowed through half of a TV show's season, then realized you have no desire to watch the second half. Or worse, you've invested several seasons' worth of watching, but finally got fed up and said, "I don't care whether any or all of these characters live or die."
There's no shame in dumping a chump. Life's too short to waste on boring books, stupid movies or lame TV. Close the cover. Click the remote. Move on.
It happened to me a few days ago after I got around to watching the season finale of "The Walking Dead."
I've been watching that series since it began eight seasons ago. But when the finale was over and the credits rolled, I told myself, "Done. No more."
I honestly have reached the point where I don't care if everyone on the show is eaten alive by zombies. Plots have been grinding through the same points over and over and over.
Zombies are dead and people are alive, but are worse than zombies. People must change to survive, and the ones that don't are zombie tartare or killed by another human. Each character faces them. Hey, "Walking Dead," we get it. Really. We do.
For a while, I watched "The Expanse" on Syfy. I've read many of the books by James A. Corey that are the basis of the show. Liked them; quit watching the show. While the plot was interesting, none of the characters meant a thing to me.
Fifty pages from the end of "The Night Parade" by Ronald Malfi, I put it down. Nothing of any importance had happened by that point, so I wasn't interested if anything ever did.
An online website said "The Similars," a Spanish horror movie, was one of those "secret finds," something you'd never heard about but was well-worth watching. It wasn't. A 90-minute rip-off of "It's a Good Life," an episode of "The Twilight Zone."
The point is: Burning hours on lousy entertainment is a bad investment. So kick those bad investments to the curb and find new ones.
Contact Shawn Ryan at mshawnryan@gmail.com.