Here’s just some dates of the rest of my progression:

level 35: 16th April 2017
level 36: 8th May 2017
level 37: 21st June 2017
level 38: 28th July 2017
level 39: 28th September 2017
level 40: 29th November 2017

Another sad thing about the new gym system is that Blissey is kind of the only actual gym defender. Even Snorlax which was the best defender in gen 1 is now kind of easy to take out. I completed my non-regional gen 2 pokedex in June shortly after reaching level 37. My last 2 pokemon to complete it was Unown and Ampharos that I only got the candy to evolve into from hatches. So, I’ll be walking my Chansey until gen 3 comes out.

In total it took me 1 year and 2 months to get to level 40. Here’s more about how I play:

I’m a free to play solo player with no Pokemon Go Plus. I don’t drive to hotspots or certain pokemon. I play mainly on the way to work, during my lunch break and then coming back home. On weekends, I play around my neighbourhood. Before when I cared about experience and getting good gym defenders, I would do 1 mass evolution a week on the day that I got my 7 day streaks and try to hatch my 10k eggs I collected during the week during that lucky egg time. I only used premium incubators on 10k eggs and only lucky eggs for mass evolutions.

Pokemon Go has been a life changing experience to say the least. I’m going outside more every day getting that exercise and vitamin D (I was vitamin D deficient before at some point). I’ve been to a lot of new places in my city that I have never been to and even in my neighbourhood despite living here for years thanks to the game. I’ve met a bunch of people through the game. To me, daily quests have always been in the game: try to get the daily coins from gyms every day. Raids added another daily task. Even when they’re all done for the day, the core game-play of just walking around catching pokemon is just fun to me.

Rough Level 40 stats:
Walked 3100km
Caught 36300 pokemon
Visited 33400 stops
Won 5200 battles
No where near completing: Magikarp, Rattata, Steel or Dragon medals.

So what happens now?

Well, I stopped caring about experience a long time ago so not much has changed. I will not be missing mass evolutions because they were easily the most boring aspect of the game. I do wish they would make player levels infinite but for now, I’ll keep playing the game since it’s still fun focusing more on stardust than experience. Also hoping to get an EX raid pass some day. If they release the majority of gen 3 this month, you can bet I’ll be running like crazy for pokemon again :)