I have loved Pokémon since 1999 and I will until the day
I Faint, die and become a Ghost type, haunting the streets of York and known as
that Odd Scrawny Ghost reciting poetry and writing blogs in 20 minutes and 16 seconds.
So it’s been a real kick in the Voltorbs that my Nokia
windows phone cannot accommodate the Game (or App) Pokémon Go which is sweeping
the nation like a Speed Boosted Mega Blaziken.
Don’t know what that is?
Don’t worry about. Go back to
catching Caterpies, mate.
The real salt in my wrenched wound was when a random
drunk bloke (seemingly) took the piss out of me, assuming I was playing the
game and pointing at nothing in the middle of the road saying “Did you see that?” Maybe there was another (complex) joke at
hand I (apparently) missed. If so, I
should have laughed. Instead I posted on
social media: “Some guy took the piss out of me cos he thought I
was playing Pokemon Go. For Fuck's
sake I can't win.”
But clearly I can win, cos I got 25 Likes out of that little sharp
observation. Yus.
I post on social media too much, and check it too much
too. I touch my phone too often, and
berate the instinct in my windows for doing so.
It’s becoming something I want to challenge in myself. I am going to start making a tally on my hand
in pen for every time I move to stop my phone.
Not because I don’t want my hand to do this, and that I
want to cut down each day like beating a habit, but because I move to check my
phone whenever I am nervous, or more accurately, anxious.
Many a year back, I worked for an EdFringe venue, and on
Day 1 where everyone gets to meet one another, we had to find the people we
were living with by going around and chatting to the strangers. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know what I did instead in the
presence of people, but I essentially took trips to the toilet and sat in a
cubicle more than once.
I found it impossible to just start a casual conversation
with people who were all strangers anyway.
But, of course, it all seems like they’ve all become instant friends
with all the ease of a hot bath (a luxury during EdFringe).
As it happened, the people I stayed with where absolutely
charming people I got on with exceptionally well, eventually.
Now I’ve found whenever faced with this issue of feeling
nervous around people with an inability to add to a conversation, I’ll check my
phone. It’s become a social norm,
something that’s acceptable and means that it takes pressure of being a voice
within the voices.
As much as my phone has sucked me into a world of clicks
and likes and a plastic sense of relationships, it has given me the ability to
stay within a conversation, a space, a ensemble, without having to constantly
be making eye contact, adding words and being entirely present. I can take part of me away, and release some
of that intensity.
If you know what I’m talking about, then Hi.
I’ve always found too many people all in one place, when
alcohol and merriment flow, I become very uncomfortable, quiet and unable to
hold a conversation. Not just that,
unable to stay in the place. I see
people in the arts scene do this a lot, post-show drinks, where people have big
ol’ chats and buy each other drinks and compliment each other’s faces off. Audience and actors and directors and techies
mix and it all becomes so intense…
Of course, it’s not intense. It’s just a form of intensity for me.
So I often end up leaving, no matter how my phone allows
me some respite. I’ve never tried just
drinking through it, I don’t have the patience or money for alcohol. If you are one of the people who has the
energy for such beloved friendship circles, beer garden revelry and unfazed bar-waiting
strength then I salute you, I don’t know how you do it, but you do it.
I don’t want to diminish anyone’s fun, and I also don’t
think I want allowances or support on this.
I just thought I’d write a blog about it. To say what I feel about an Internet-connected
phone being so very useful when criticism is constantly levelled against it
when it comes to ‘reality’. To say how,
if you feel it hard to network, to celebrate, to be involved in very involving
scenes, you’re not alone.
You may feel alone.
I feel alone. Hey, forget Pokémon
Go, this is Anxiety Go. Catching bad
vibes and levelling them up. Taming
them. Training them. Choosing when they Evolve, and who they beat.
Be The Very Best, because there may be 8
Gym Leaders, an Elite Four but there is only One Champion. So I guess being that rad is gonna be lonely
from time-to-time, right?
And also to say FUCK POKEMON GO and I’m looking forward
to Pokémon Sun & Moon. Like I did
with X & Y, I shall not be looking at any pre-release information, leaks or
sneak peeks.
Love & solidarity
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