Level Up Your Life

I am level 31.

As you may have guessed, I look at life differently from most people.  I don't age up; I level up.  I'm a gamer, so I look at life as an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) or a life simulation game.  Every day is a chance for me to earn experience points towards my next level.

Okay now, hang in here with me.  I tend to have strange perspectives on things.

As I sit here, I think back on all the little ways I earned XP this past year.  Let's see:

• I haggled with various merchants throughout the land and my barter skill increased
• I acquired better armor (developed thicker skin)
• I devoted many hours to learning and became a certified surgical technologist
• I trained hard and lost 40 pounds
• I read lots of articles on Google, practiced, and became a better cook
• I decided to take a chance on myself and my writing  
• I made more attempts to be social and my charisma and speech skills increased

Cue the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 level up sound, please (it's so epic to me)

BAM!  I leveled up, and my story mode is progressing along quite nicely.

Now if I could find a nice gamer guy, I would be all set.  I guess I still need to acquire more charisma points before that happens.  Some speech points wouldn't hurt, either.  Let's add some perception points in there so I can see the bull bull a mile away.  I digress.

I'm a more experienced version of myself compared to last year, but I'm not done.  There is no level cap.  I strive to continuously earn XP and level up again.  As long as the game is being played (life), I'll keep earning it.

Even when bad things happen, they offer chances for me to grow and adapt.  Live, learn, and you'll level up in time.

So what about you?

Treat your life like an adventure game.  Go out and explore the world.  Accept various quests along the way, but don't let the side quests distract you from completing your main quest.  Don't be afraid to tackle new challenges head on even if you don't feel that you've leveled up enough for it.  You'll earn XP no matter how it goes.

Form alliances with other players and join guilds/clans that assist you on your path.

Strive to become good at a little bit of everything or become highly specialized in one area.  The choice is yours.  Life is meant to be customized.

Now that I think about it, is it just me or does it feel like we're in The Sims?  You know, some player controlling us while we think we have free will.  Just me?  Oh, okay.  Sorry, random gamer thought.  Anyway, back to my point.

Play the game of life, and play it well.

Live and level up your life.  A short and sweet message for you all.

Oh, and I can't wait to get my copy of Fallout 4.  Yeah!  I'm ready to level up like crazy on that.  Marathon gaming sessions for the win.  I'm working on a special blog post to celebrate that.  It'll probably be up in the next few days.

How have you leveled up your life?  Feel free to drop a comment below.

Game on, my friends.