The children of this fine country are on crack. Most not literally, but they are addicted to something as strongly as any junkie. I’m talking Pokémon, people. Something about these little creatures makes them into fluffy, cuddly crack.

My nephew has been hooked for a long time. A few months ago, his family visited my home and he let me play his Game Boy. The only game he brought was the blue version of this electronic crack. I played it, and I couldn’t stop. While he was exploring his Christmas gifts, I was fighting wild Pidgeys and matching skills with rival Pokémon trainers.

This experience gnawed on the back of my mind like a feral badger, and every time I went into a Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, or any other store with video games on display I would jack myself into the demo Game Boy and get a fix of the little bastards. Finally, I caved to my addiction a week ago and spent my state tax refund on my own Game Boy Color and the damned cartridge.

I couldn’t stop there! I had to go out and buy the Nintendo 64 Pokémon Stadium so that I could use my Pokémon in the middle of my living room without running down batteries. I got the poster from my sister so that I could see where I stood on my quest to catch ‘em all. I’ve lost sleep with Game Boy in hand, tossing around in bed to find the prime fighting position.

GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL…

I hate the prospect of the real world. I’m so freaking afraid that I won’t be able to find happiness out there. I was helping tear down a conference for the N.C. Association of Physics Teachers here on campus with another student and my advisor, and something disturbing hit me. The other student is getting married, and I commented on how young she seemed to be doing that. My advisor said, "Yes, but when you meet the right person you don’t mind at all."

Don’t get me wrong, I believe him. What disturbs me is that meeting that right person is becoming less and less probable for me. Sounds sort of fatalistic for a 21 year old, but when in life do you meet the most people? College. I haven’t had much luck in this department, here. I have met people I like, people I enjoy spending time with, but I haven’t had more than the slightest tingle of the "rightness" that happens when you meet that special someone. I believe we have levels of compatibility, and that when you meet somebody you are really compatible with you feel that. I think I’m just not very easy to get along with. I’m scraping the bottom of the compatibility pool, and my chances of meeting somebody so exacting are going down the toilet.

I’m not crying in my Diet Dr. Pepper about this. I think I can be very, very happy without a life partner. Hell, even if you have the right person as your partner, you can still be fucking miserable. The trick is finding the other stuff in life that make you happy and grabbing onto it, giving it all you have, and refusing to be shaken from it no matter what happens.

In the end, though, you can’t have all of those things. You have to sacrifice some pleasures for others, prioritize, skim the cream off the milk and concentrate on that. I don’t know what my cream is. I haven’t the slightest clue what the essential elements of my happiness are, what I have to hold on to no matter the sacrifice. I know who I am, but I don’t know what this world has for me that I have to take. The biggest part of your life (time-wise) will be your career, and I don’t even know how important that is to me. I know that the career that I would find the most happiness in is that of a physician; it is so high above all others that they seem mere specks of possibility. However, is being a doctor essential to my happiness? Is that part of the cream?

That seems like the answer should be very simple to find. I should be able to just look into my heart and see it glaring right back at me. But, I can’t. I’m all murky inside. I can’t see anything at all in there, and the surface is like an oil slick. There is a rainbow of distorted colours staring back at me that I just can’t make heads or tails off.

I don’t like stumbling about like this. I want goals and I want a destination. I want to know that happiness isn’t sneaking past me while I just can’t see it. I just don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to find it.

Oh, yeah. Fuck UNC.

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