191. What's to worry about?

I told myself I wouldn’t write about Pokemon Go. I don’t need to add to the noise. I want to reflect on serious topic that involve serious things (or funny topics that involve funny things), but my brain can’t seem to let it go. I’m not going to explain what it is because you can read basically any news story and you’ll be able to find out about it.

I initially downloaded it on Friday and fudged around with it over my lunch hour. At first, I thought it was cool, but then I deleted it maybe 20 minutes after I initially downloaded it. I didn’t need another reason to look at my phone in my life. Between texts, emails, social media, podcasts, and checking the weather, I stare into the void of my phone too much.

Instead of throwing out some mumbo jumbo about how I’m trying to be “more mindful”, I’ll just say this, I don’t like how my brain gets when I take out my phone too often. My eyes start to hurt. I can’t concentrate, and my brain can’t seem to latch on one thing to think about. It’s nice to step off of that merry-go-round every once in a while.

While I can see the fun in Pokemon Go for some people, I don’t enjoy video games all that much. I tend to get obsessive about them. Take for example the game Canyon Defense 2 on miniclip.com. I played it for about 40 minutes a night over the course of a few months trying to get through all the levels. I got obsessed over it, not joyful.

I argued with a friend over text about Pokemon Go later that day. I thought it was dumb, he was having fun playing it. I saw posts on social media for both sides, while i wanted to defend my position, I eventually said, who really cares? While it might be ruining the youth of America, I’m sure people said the same things about rock’n’roll, television, record players, comic books, atari, etc. It’s just another thing that people will debate about.

Another friend of mine, who’s probably one of the most politically active people I know, posted something defending that she liked playing the game. She said that while it’s important to fight for the cause, it’s also important to take your mind away from it for a while. I respected that.

It felt weird seeing posts defending it or praising it. Can’t we have the option to be apathetic about it? As long as people aren’t hurting you, who really cares? Once I accepted that, a lot of operating power freed up in my brain.

I have a rule that I try to live by: if you’re complaining too much about what’s on your social media feeds, get off social media. Your life will continue. I know some people call Millennials apathetic, but I disagree, we’re just passionate about very specific things in very specific ways. I think we should be more apathetic about things that don’t really matter.

We all have lives to live, just keep on living your own.