"813 days later, I am level 40. What a journey."

#PokemonGO: I’m not normally the type to tell stories, but this felt appropriate because of my experiences along the way.I started playing as soon as I could get my hands on the game. Being in Canada, we didn’t get the game until it had already been released for a while, but I was fortunate enough to have access to an American iTunes account, so I managed to download it on July 7th. And so my journey began.Like most cities, when the game first released, everyone was playing it, and it was obvious that a lot of people did what I did and got the game before it came out here. It was a bit odd at first, just trying to get used to everything, catch everything, waste stardust on evolving and powering up crap Pokémon because like many people I didn’t know about IVs then, you know the deal.It wasn’t until raids came out that I started to meet some of the other people that played in my area. I had seen some names a lot in gyms before then, but never met any of them since it was just me and my wife playing wen we had time. But slowly I started putting faces to all the names, and developed some friendships with these people I only knew as screen names before.I never considered myself a grinder. I find it tedious and boring as all hell. So I never cared much about XP or levels. Hell, I’ve only ever done maybe two or three mass evolve sessions, just because I didn’t find it fun. Then I found out that at level 30, everyone above that level sees the same Pokémon, so it makes it easier when someone calls out a good spawn. So I tried catching as much as I could to reach that. Level 30 came and went, and I was in it for the long haul now. By the time I hit level 35, I was feeling good. I was able to power up Pokémon to a decent point, and could hold my own in gym battles and lower level raids.Then I hit the magical point where you’re halfway to 40 XP-wise. It was funny since you’re so close yet so far away. But now that the game offered you so many ways to get XP, I thought to myself, I can do this. With friendships and raid days for the birds, the XP was adding up.Finally, yesterday, after adding a few new friends to do some trades with, I finally saw that little animation and then big 40 on my screen. It felt like a weight had just been lifted from me, as I was feee from having to worry about popping lucky eggs on everything I was doing. Now I can just relax and do whatever comes my way. Makes it that much more fun and relaxing to play.I never thought that a phone game could make me so many friends, and allow me to have common ground with people from so many different walks of life.Thanks for reading, and keep on catchin’ em all. via /r/pokemongo https://ift.tt/2DI60KW