Our hockey team got blown out 7-0

Where is the positive in a 7-0 shellacking ?

The answer is that its a great lesson in what not to do when you play a hockey game... Oh we didn't get the bounces... and for sure that happened, but remember you have to make your bounces. It helped expose some key weakness in our team at a good time before playoffs so we can make the proper adjustments and not suffer such a crippling failure at a critical time.

One of the problems with non professionals... some people never learn... it's just a game and a chance to go be one of the guys. Of course I don't buy that horse shit for a second, but you need to know what you have and then play accordingly. A group with lesser talent can beat a group of greater talent by working together, and that is one of the great highs of the game. I always remember those times when every player buys into the plan and plays up to their best level within the scope of the team, and the team wins the game. It is really one of the greatest feelings... like a band playing a tight show.

Oddly enough this team i play with has on it a fellow who i knew from way back in my early rock and roll days. He was a Jazz guitar player in a wicked band and i was a maniac in an insane band and we did some 4 track recording in the day and played a few "improv" shows together.

We sat beside each other in the dressing room tonight disecting the game in the same way that we would have disected a live show years ago. A very scientific evaluation of the events. Hockey like music often suffers from peoples unauthentic recolection of what actually went wrong. It's a human problem... obviously i didn't do anything wrong lets find some other fault is the way we work in this century.

The raw fact is we got pushed around... in another game with another referee perhaps there would have been some calls, but there wasn't so you need to push back and put your anger into the game not verbally at the referee. The more we fell behind the more we shot into the opposing goalies breadbasket... the more we tried to catch up the more we fell behind. When you start trying to cheat (for offence) in hockey it's kind of like drilling another hole in the rowboat that is floating above the reef in shark infested waters.

I actually believe we needed a sharp defeat... one of the dudes asked me how it felt not scoring as i seem to be good for about 3 points a night up until this night. I know what i did wrong on all my chances tonight... and that's a good thing. I have always been a prolific point scorer in hockey all my life... I never made pro clearly, but it's a funny thing being a point producer... I"ll make the analogy to music again... the band that does well is shitty and got all the breaks just like the guy who puts up all the points is a puck hog. When I was 14 I won a scoring title in some Toronto league and some of the guys on my street who went to school with other guys I played in the league with started telling me I had the reputation as a "Puck hog" even though I led the league in assists. For the record it was my right winger Nate Lindon that really helped me win the title... he was always open and could always finish... in the end I beat him by a point or two, but it could have easily gone the other way. I'd carry the puck down into the zone and he would put it in the net.

it's just the way it goes.

Under pressure Robertson finds a way...

My wife was so proud of me trying to find the positive in things this year... i guess if you are married to a clinical Rage Hero that kind of news might be music to the old ears. It was a positive day for sure.. every member of my family was occupied by some institution while i was out getting a good sweat in on some eliptical cardio machine. I even chose one of the machines away from the television so to not be tempted by the dark side. I then came back home and ate a tuna fish sandwich and made some piano music... good times. Then to the school to pick up my 6 year old daughter... she had written some stuff in her journal about our trip to Bold Point Road we had a great walk home and decided that we would spend out time together mowing through some chapters of "The Wizard of OZ"... not to play spoiler here but the Wicked witch of the West dies in a different manor than in the movie.

Perfect day basking in the positive... may as well bottle that cider and wheat beer so we can stay "in booze" if you know what i mean... clearly positive. If only bottling devices weren't made cheap cheap cheap... and of plastic. The device is meant to control beer flow through a tube so that one can take the tube from one bottle to the next and stop the flow of beer in between... but of course when shitty cheap plastic things are shitty cheap plastic things they cease to function resulting in a hose pouring of good beer on the kitchen floor.

Well i guess i went into a swearing frenzy while focused and on task not even realizing i was doing it when i heard CT say... "so what was your positive thought of the day"... And the only thing i could think of under the circumstances was that one didn't need a positive thought every day and by setting one to such a harsh regiment of forced positivity one was perhaps likely to view positivity as unattainable and that would be wrong.

I passed my first test

I had the fine fortune of finishing up the latest 21 tandem repeats album today so i took the train out to the studio and took a shortcut through the Costco parking lot... and it was, well, like a Costco parking lot... jam packed with lines of idling cars waiting for a spot to open up... some just waiting for others to get a spot so they can then leave... me walking sucking in the exhaust observing the whole package.

Normally that's when i would snap and go into a negative vortex that would cloud the rest of the day and somehow become part of everything else through the energy i chose to hang on to. But i was telling myself... No man find a positive! Just as i though that i saw a woman with a super sized arm full of stuff inching towards the back of her pickup truck. I smiled and said "can i give you a hand here" and reached to lower her tailgate for her. She smiled a wonderful smile said thanks and we parted ways with that good energy and then i was out of the parking lot happy to be helpful.

The later on at night i was at the Grocery store and i noticed they were blowing out eggnog which means that eggnog season is coming to an end... and that's a negative... but then i thought about the positive... eggnog for $1.29 per litre... then the negative (8 L limit)... then the positive (the eggnog goes bad in 3 days so you still get 2 days of drinking 3 l of eggnog and one day of drinking 2 l of eggnog).

So yes with my new found attitude i found happiness today...

A more positive Robertson

I was thinking today that i should try to be more positive this year, and perhaps my engagements will be more productive. Perhaps less anger, fewer swearing tirades, less time hating objects and people for their shortcomings... perhaps i could spend a day not loathing plastic garbage litter, and then making some connection to how it represents how fatally ignorant humanity has become.

Because we have had all of those thoughts, over and over again... they are old thoughts and they end in despair. There is always something positive happening, you just need your radar adjusted to tune it in. When i was a kid i was a bird watcher... something i did with my day and my neighbour and others. I have often been out with people hiking or anywhere and amazed people with my ability to spot birds. Driving down the highway i point out hawks left right and center... and people say "how the hell do you always see them"... and the answer of course is because i have been trained to see them, and i like seeing them, and i am interested in them so i know their habits and what they like to do, and where they like to be.

The point is they are always there it's just that most people don't see them because they are not looking for them. It's like the positive or the negative, what are you looking for?

I just need to train myself to find the positive.
That an playing the piano is what i need to do this year.

OK