Level 40

Wish I could rock a jumpsuit like that in real life!

I reached level 40 a while ago.  I should have done it sooner, but you know, debilitating arthritis, am I right?

Sometimes I am a bad ass.  Like shortly after my lymph node was removed, which I was wide awake for, mind you, I walked around the campus of the hospital formally known as U Might Die in NJ playing while Shadow was worried/impressed with me and only got me to stop because he offered to buy me breakfast at IHOP.

When we lived in the shelter, I had to delete the app off my phone because I had this god awful Android where I had to physically clear out the cache.  I’m telling you, the premium price of the iPhone is worth getting rid of that headache 20 times over.

So there was a long stretch of time I sadly couldn’t play.  Especially those months on meds that didn’t work and I was bedridden.

It’s not even my favorite game to be honest, or maybe it is, or maybe I just don’t have a favorite?  It’s fun, it keeps me occupied and I love catching them all.  I’ve been playing some iteration of Pokémon since 1998, so I haven’t grown tired of my favorite pocket monsters yet!

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get to level 40 before the new year and thus received the 40 legacy badge which is pretty cool.

Since then, they have increased the levels to 50.  Which is pretty sweet, except for one thing.  I have to pass these “tasks” on top of gaining millions in XP.  So while I am chugging along with my XP, as you can see, I haven’t made a dent in the task of completing 30 raids.

See, I refuse to spend money in games and I also can’t go to my usual places to play because of Covid.  The only way to get coins for raid passes is to sit on a gym for 8 hours and hope no one knocks everyone out.  After all that they lock you at 50 coins a day.  So it takes days to get serious cash.  Sometimes, and many players agree with me on this, it takes the fun out of the game because then it’s all about spending cash.  Not cool.

Through out the pandemic and lockdowns they have given us some freebies, and they made it easier to access stops from home.  I’m lucky that I live on three stops and can sometimes drift to a gym.  But rural players have had it tough from day one.  

I’m very thankful I can play this game easily in this township despite being disabled.  It’s been four and a half years.  That’s a long time to have invested in a game that doesn’t exist outside of cyber space.  It could very well lead me to have an existential crisis at age 40, who knows?