Evolving or, ZOMG We’re Just Like Pokemon!
When I was a kid not too long ago, I feel in love with a game called Pokemon. Many of you may have as well.
God, I loved that game. I was obsessed. What was not to love? Collecting lots of little monsters, battling, leveling up, evolving. Even 20-odd versions later, the game is still cool.
I remember the twang of excitement I’d get when my Pokemon reached a certain level and there’d be a slight pause at the end of a battle and the following text showed up:
What? PIDGEY is evolving!
And your Pidgey, or whatever, changed into something completely different, but stronger and more powerful.
PIDGEY evolved into PIDGEOTTO!
Awesome.
After that I moved on to other RPG games, mostly on the Internet, where I could take my character and level it up, and evolve.
My latest is, I write with abashment, a recent find. A game called Urban Rivals. A game where you collect different ‘normal’ looking human characters and evolve them into more supernatural forms.
I can’t help it.
I love this game concept of evolution. The ability to gain experience points (win or lose) and once you fill the bar, you raise a level, learn a new ability or change form completely.
I remember I used to sit at my bedroom window as a kid and look at the birds in the backyard and wish Pokemon existed for real*; catching and training the ones that would appear around the house. And at 10, like in the show, I would’ve been off on my own to wander the globe looking for animals to catch and battle.
Never mind the small fact that a ten year-old kid cannot look after themselves.
I still catch myself wishing that all the aspects in our lives were like this: a little EXP bar floating above us showing our level and skills, all of which would grow every time we did something and suddenly, we would glow and transform into a different, noticeably stronger and smarter form.
But then I think.
That’s exactly how life is, isn’t it?
Sure, ok, we don’t have EXP bars floating above our heads, but we have experience levels for all the tasks we ever do in our lives. Right now, my experience levels (if I had to give numbers to them) may look like this:
COPYWRITING: 31
SHAVING: 74
MAKING BANANA MILKSHAKES: 89
SEWING: 4
We change form, we just don’t notice it until we pull out the old photos. And we do take on new forms and learn new ‘attacks’ or abilities. The only difference is we don’t have a constant update on our lives like you see in games:
DAN reached level 21!
DAN learned IDEAS (Level 1)!
DAN learned ART DIRECTION (Level 1)!
DAN learned COPYWRITING (Level 1)!
DAN obtained the item, UNI DEGREE!
What? DAN is evolving!
DAN evolved into JUNIOR COPYWRITER!
DAN learned HEADLINES!
DAN learned IDEAS (Level 2)
DAN learned COPYWRITING (Level 2)!
DAN reached level 22!
DAN learned COPYWRITING (Level 3)!
DAN obtained the item AD AWARD!
What? DAN is evolving!
DAN evolved into MID-WEIGHT COPYWRITER!
The battles we enter are the everyday tasks we do in our work and our hobbies that give us the experience to become more skillful. It’s the constant practice that raises our skill level.
If you lift weights all the time, do our muscles not get bigger? Karl Fleet, Deputy Creative Director at Colenso BBDO told me:
“The brain is a muscle. Just keep working it and it will get stronger.”
Totally true; if you play a card game enough, you tend to become more strategic in your approach, making you a better player.
The same would be for your passion. Simply keep going. Keep battling every day and challenge yourself to get better at what you love doing and gain more experience. You’ll evolve eventually.
DAN learned INSIGHT (Level 1)!
What? DAN is evolving!
DAN evolved into BLOGGER!
DAN learned BLOG POST (Level 2)!
*If you watched or played Pokemon as a kid, you did too. Don’t lie to me.
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