Confessions of a Literary Addict

Walking.

Not my favorite thing to do while living in Southwest Florida, where the water in the air is so thick you might develop gills and the heat is always about 6 degrees hotter than the thermostat claims.

What does Pokémon GO make you do? Yeah, exactly.

Regardless, I was pretty hyped about giving it a go (no pun intended) when I had first heard about it forever ago. I downloaded it the other night and spent a few days giving it a whirl, and, like many, many others, was fairly confused when most of my landmarks were the several churches I have in my area. Actually, those were almost my only options for PokéStops, with the other two being the daycare along the street and the preschool.

Um. Churches it is, I guess. No need to look like a creeper just for a few Pokémon.

Aside from that, and the super annoying inability to get logged onto the server at times, I’m actually having a ball walking around and snagging the different Pokémon. PokéStops aren’t quite at my disposal, since I do live near a very busy road that has a horrible track record of hitting pedestrians (definitely not something I want to traverse while looking at my phone), but I have fun stalking the grass for various creatures. Living around a lot of water yields me far fewer water Pokémon than I had anticipated, so that’s something.

As for the gym battles, it took me a while to get the hang of them, but now I’m in a set rivalry with the blue team members that live around the park that the gym sits in, and I’ve run into one of the guys twice now while trying to kick him (he must live in one of the houses right nearby, he’s always in the gym) out and take it over. We’re kind of undeclared rivals, it’s pretty cool.

All in all, I kind of love it! It might not be everything I hoped for, but it’s so much fun to play, even if it’s mostly collecting right now, and it gets me to go out for walks more than anything ever has before.

Thank you, Pokémon, for giving me the real motivation I needed to get off of my butt.

I can’t wait until they release the next gen, and maybe some new features?

For now, though, I’m definitely going to be busy hunting down my 150. Or so. No idea what they’re going to do for the legendaries, but we’ll see.

Fun bonus, I live on the Gulf, so I have to cross a bridge to get places. This is horrifying!

Back outside I go!