Some days you just have to remember

Posted on by kassabi1a

It’s been a long…I’m not sure what time frame works. The car accident was back in March, for those of you following I’m recovering well.

But of late I’ve been working on some projects(back to my roots with some screenplays, still need more brain capacity before returning to the primal age). Tonight it was about 9pm when I sat down to write. With the full time jobs and part time jobs I like to be in bed at a decent hour these days. And I really really really didn’t want to sit down and write.

There’s projects needing done and deadlines looming, but I wasn’t feeling it.

So I did something I hadn’t done in 7 years. I listened to my old prewriting playlist. As that went through I found my way back to that writer version of me.

I can’t promise my words were anything of legacy or legend tonight, but by taking a few minutes to remember who I am I was able to hit my page count.

So, if you’re out there tonight, feeling stressed or tired, thinking more about your mortgage than your goals, take a moment and remember who you are.

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Good days and bad days

Posted on by kassabi1a

In writing, and life, you’ll have good days and bad days. The one thing I always remind myself on the bad writing days is finishing is more important than winning. Sometimes you just have to get through a bad day to get to a good one, but that doesn’t give you an excuse not to do what you set out to do.

For those of you following know that I’m holding 1000 words a day. I am not so ocd that I stop at 1000 words. I’ll usually finish the thought or paragraph but I won’t go too far because it makes it easier to pick up the next day. When I am having a bad writing day where each word is a painful as pulling a tooth, I stop at exactly 1000.

But the important part is I finished what I started. Meet your goals. Even if you don’t meet them as well as you’d like.

Check Your Emotion At The Door

Posted on by kassabi1a
Moses
Source: Getty Images

First thing I need in a goalie is the ability to check their emotion at the door. Every time I get a new goalie I point to the locker room door and say “It doesn’t matter what happened in school today, or if your (insert boyfriend/girlfriend where appropriate) broke up with you today, or you got in a fight with your best friend. When you walk through that door you leave it all behind. For three hours you are a goalie.”

A goalie needs to be able to turn off their emotion. You are put in a position to fail, and fail constantly. Even when you succeed it is rare that anyone besides a goalie will notice the impact you had. Hubris needs to be minimal confidence needs to be high. Emotion will only slow a goalie down. I need them to appear the same whether they are down by ten, up by ten, or in a tie game.

I don’t expect a 14 year old kid to be able to totally shut their emotion down, but I do expect them to mask it. In a game I know the exact moment an opponents goalie cracks just by watching their face and that is when I tell the head coach to unleash shots from anywhere because they will score. What I do expect from a goalie is to be able to not show the emotion. To keep a ‘goalie face’ at all times. That way you never give your opponent an advantage by showing your mental state.

When I get a chance to explain this to goalies post graduation I explain this lesson carries into the real world because you can’t let emotion harm your day to day life. If you had a bad weekend, you still need to show up to class on Monday. You get in a fight with your wife the night before you go to work, you still need to show up to work. And showing up isn’t just enough, you need to be present.

If you aren’t careful a negative emotion can snowball one problem into an avalanche. So to stop this from happening, when you recognize the snowball you set it aside until you can give it your full attention. Until then you are only creating a bigger problem, and life must go on, because it will whether or not you are keeping up.