Today was a busy day at the dojang. It was FILLED with kids because they were getting new students for the upcoming school year. The owner and the head teacher were both surprised to see me as I came out of nowhere and was like "Hi, so, yeah Go." They put me in the non-going-to-be-professional class which is where all the 4-5d's go and I was owning face. I went 3-1, and I only lost against the one kid cuz his Go was super crazy, leave weak groups everywhere and somehow live by reading kind of style which is hard to counter. I missed a tesuji that would've won me the game and that was that. The kids were nice, they expected me to suck and were really surprised when they lost, but thankfully no one cried.
My attitude was wonderfully different. I wasn't sitting there trying to push myself. I made a point of smiling during my games to improve my mood, and told myself if I wasn't having fun to just walk out. If I had thoughts like "man these moves are making me angry", I just let said thoughts float away into nothingness and get back to the game. I was mentally tired and beat after 4 hours of training but it was that good kind of tiredness where you know the next day you'll be tougher. The thing is, I didn't get any reviews from the teacher but that didn't matter, I still learned by just doing game reviews myself and reading books. I've found that also, I don't like studying alone, I like studying with people around me. I wondered how the kids learned so fast without the teacher systematically going through each one of their games. Normally the teacher just floats around the room, goes off to organize something or sits with his planner. Rarely if ever do they do game reviews, so I thought maybe the kids just absorbed his knowledge. Actually, it's not so much that, it's just the mood of being around other people who are also laser focussed on what you're doing and just enjoying the atmosphere I think.
