Resolution update: 2012 in review

The following is the December update and end-of-year review of my 2011 New Year’s resolutions.

I am currently in the process of deciding upon my 2013 goals and will post them later in the day.

Of my twenty New Years resolutions established at the beginning of 2012, only six were successfully completed. This has been my least successful year in the seven years I have establishing goals and posting them to my blog. 

Of the goals achieved, I am most proud of my Moth performances and next week’s opening of The Clowns. Both of these achievements were unfathomable just two years ago.  

Of the goals I failed to complete in 2012, the failure to complete my fifth novel looms large.  It impacted completion of many other goals and hangs like an albatross around my neck.     

The success or failure of each individual resolution is as follows: 

1. Don’t die.

2. Lose ten pounds.

My weight is exactly the same as it was on the first day of the year.

3. Do at least 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups five days a day.  Also complete at least two two-minute planks five days per week.

Done.

4. Practice the flute for at least an hour a week.

I end the year with a broken flute and not a single hour of practice.

5. Complete my fifth novel before the birth of my next child.

Still not complete. My greatest failure of the year, and the cause of many other failures.

6. Complete my sixth novel.

Though I wrote parts of my sixth (and seventh novel), neither is even close to completion.  

7. Sell one children’s book to a publisher.

Three children’s books are in various states of completion, and an editor is interested in looking at them, but until I finish my fifth novel, all other writing projects were put on hold, preventing pursuit of this goal.

8. Complete the book proposal for my non-fiction, photographic  collaborative project.

See above.

9. Complete three chapters of my memoir.

Parts of three chapters have been written in preparation for stories that I have told at Moth StorySLAMs in 2012, but nothing formal or comprehensive has been written yet.  

10. Complete at least twelve blog posts on my brother and sister blog.

A total of ten posts were written for 2012.

11. Become certified to teach high school English by completing two required classes.

One class was completed in the fall of 2012. The second class is not available until 2013.

12. Publish at least one Op-Ed in a newspaper.

Many pieces were written. Few were submitted. None were accepted. The failure to complete the fifth novel made this goal exceedingly difficult to achieve.

13. Attend at least five Moth events with the intention of telling a story.

I attended a total eight Moth events in 2012, exceeding my goal. Seven StorySLAM’s and one GrandSLAM.

I won two StorySLAMs, placed second in three other StorySLAMs, placed second in the GrandSLAM, and was not called to the stage for one StorySLAM.

In terms of goals achieved in 2012, this is by far my proudest. I told my first Moth story in July of 2011, and since then, I have taken the stage for a total of eight StorySLAMs and two GrandSLAMs. I won three of the StorySLAMs, took second place three others, and placed second in this year’s  GrandSLAM.

The Moth has become an important part of my life in a relatively short time.

14. Complete the necessary revisions of our rock opera (The Clowns) so that it can be staged as a full production in 2013.

The Clowns opens on Friday for a weekend run. Are you coming?

15. Rid Elysha and myself of all education debt before the end of the year.

Incremental progress was made throughout 2012.

16. Give yoga an honest try.

This did not happen, despite the efforts of friends to help.  

17. Meditate for at least five minutes every day.

This has been my most surprising achievement of 2012. Not only do I spend every morning meditating, but recently, I was able to enter a state of meditation in a room full of people. For at least a couple minutes and maybe more, I managed to eliminate all distraction and empty my mind. I had been trying to do this for much of 2012, and though I only managed it once, I was thrilled.

18. Agree to try at least one new dish per month, even if it contains ingredients that I wouldn’t normally consider palatable.

I tried at least twelve new dishes in 2012 and found at least a few that are palatable.  

19. Conduct the ninth No-Longer-Annual A-Mattzing Race in 2012.

This goal went uncompleted as a result of my failure to complete my novel.

20. Post my progress in terms of these resolutions on this blog on the first day of every month.

Considering that I forgot to post results for the last two months, I can hardly consider even this to be a success.

My secret wish for 2013 is for Comic Sans

My secret wish for 2013 is for the New York Times to publish an edition entirely in Comic Sans, just so we can watch its more staid, crotchety and snobbish readers lose their minds for a day.

That would be AWESOME.

This girl does not look three

Sometimes she doesn’t make it to the potty quick enough and sometimes she looks old enough to drive a car.

Mr. Boo

This video was sent to me by Chris Harris, filmmaker who created this short film about an imaginary friend about a few years ago. He recently read MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, and it naturally made him think a lot about Mr. Boo.

I loved the film and wanted to share it with you. It’s about four minutes long and worth every second. Intriguing, mysterious, clever.  And I thought the actors were brilliant in their performances.

So much story in just four minutes.    

Overdressed or underdressed?

A podcast that I listen to discussed this question:

Do you prefer to be overdressed or underdressed?

Not surprising to many, I always prefer to be underdressed (even ahead of appropriately dressed), for three reasons:

1. It’s always more comfortable to be underdressed (at least for me), and as a human being and a grown man, I have a right to value personal comfort over the judgmental eye of others.

2. Being underdressed is a more approximate physical reflection of the person I am. By nature, I tend to be a person who rejects tradition and challenges norms, and in almost all things, I tend to lean toward the disentanglement and destruction of staid society.

I am the teacher who would prefer that his students call him by his first name.

I am the person who thinks that a verbal thank you mitigates the need for a formal thank you note.

I am the writer who tends to avoid profanity in his work but thinks the restrictions on profanity in television are ridiculous and unnecessary.

Being perpetually underdressed is just another way that I lean away from tradition and societal expectations. 

3. It is exceedingly rare that someone cares if you are underdressed.

Case in point: I attended a wedding last week of a friend. I wore pants, a shirt and a blazer. No tie, of course, because I ceased wearing ties years ago. I was aware that I would almost certainly be in the minority in this regard, and I knew that my wife thought I would look better with a tie, but I simply cannot strap that noose to my neck any longer.

Surprisingly, it turns out that I was the only man at this fairly large wedding not wearing a tie.

Did anyone notice this except me? I don’t think so.

Did anyone care? Certainly not.

In the unlikely event that someone did notice or care, do they even remember the absence of my tie two weeks later? Not likely.    

In fact, I have found that when I dress more formally than my instincts tell me that I should, there is almost always someone dressed similarly to the way I would have preferred.

Years ago I attended an engagement party at a country club, and after some cajoling on my wife’s part, I agreed to wear a suit despite the heat of the day. It turned out that the only two people wearing a suit were my father-in-law and me. We were both sweaty and uncomfortable for the duration of the affair.

At a recent family gathering, my wife asked me to replace the tee-shirt that I planned on wearing with a sweater or buttoned-down shirt. She almost never asks me to change something I’m wearing (a credit to her), and in truth, I thought it was probably a good idea, too. But when I arrived at the party, I found the host wearing not only a tee-shirt but sweat pants as well. It turned out that my original plans for jeans and a tee-shirt would have been fine.

This is not to say that underdressed is the right answer to this question. I know a guy whose wife teases him because he spends his evenings at home dressed in a button-down shirt, sweater and dress pants at all times. For reasons that I don’t understand but respect, he prefers a more formal look to tee-shirts and jeans, even while relaxing.

The right answer to “Overdressed or underdressed?” is not what everyone expects you to wear. The right answer is what you want to wear.

Outsourcing my New Year’s resolutions again: Would you like to play a role?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I take my goal setting and New Year’s resolutions very seriously.  Except of course, for the months of October and November of this year, when I completely dropped the ball. No idea why. Just busy, I guess.

At the end of every month I typically post the progress of each of my New Year’s resolutions, and I am tough on myself when I fail to achieve my goals. 

I’d begun the process of deciding upon my 2013 goals when I came upon a piece in the Wall Street Journal on New Year’s resolutions that suggests that outsourcing your resolutions may improve your ability to achieve them.

Most of us could use help achieving our goals. Who better to tell us how to improve ourselves than someone who knows us well—perhaps better than we know ourselves—and even may be all too happy to offer up some tough love? And if we promise to check in regularly with this person to discuss our progress, we’ll probably do a much better job of keeping our resolutions.

"We all have blind spots, but the people we are intimate with can see through them," says David Palmiter, a couples therapist and professor of psychology at Marywood University, in Scranton, Pa. A loved one can encourage us to meet our goals and hold us accountable when we slip, he says.

I’ve always asked a select group of friends to suggest goals for my upcoming year, but after reading this piece, I thought it might be a good idea to open up my goal selection process to anyone who might want to participate. 

So if you’d like to suggest a goal for me in 2013, I would love to hear your ideas. Please note that this does not guarantee that I will adopt every suggested goal, but I will seriously consider all that are submitted. 

Also note that all goals must be empirically measurable, so a goal like “Be less of a jerk-face” could not be included in my list of resolutions because there is no way for me to determine if the goal was met.

But you’re welcome to tell me to stop being a jerk-face at any time if you’d like. Not need to wait until the end of the year to make that request. 

Lessons from my third Moth victory

On Thursday night I was fortunate enough to win my third Moth StorySLAM of my storytelling career at The Bitter End in New York City. The theme of the night was AFTERMATH. I told a story the decisions that my parents made when I was a child and how the birth of my own children has cast those decisions in a new and unfortunate light for me. Following every StorySLAM, and especially every victory, I like to try to analyze my performance in order to glean any lessons or insight that might help me in future competitions.

It was an unusual StorySLAM in a couple ways. First, though The Bitter End was jammed with people, it wasn’t the usual raucous Moth crowd that I have come to expect at these events, perhaps because it was the week following Christmas and the audience was made up of many non-New Yorkers who were in town for the holidays. I suspect that there were a lot of people taking in The Moth for the first time and were not accustomed to the level of enthusiasm exhibited by typical Moth audiences.

It wasn’t a bad crowd. Just a quieter crowd. A little harder to make laugh.

Whatever the reason, the story I had prepared for the evening was not supposed to be funny, so it was probably the perfect kind of story for this particular audience.

It was also the first (and hopefully the last) time that I have heard storytellers call out other storytellers while onstage. It made for a couple of odd and slightly uncomfortable moments, to say the least. The first storyteller attempted to be funny by opening his story with a jab at previous storyteller’s story. The subsequent storyteller then attacked the first storyteller, calling him a douchebag for his criticism. Both remarks quieted the crowd and elicited groans from the people around me.

Another storyteller took the stage and opened by thanking us for braving the cold and the long line, attempting a Kumbaya-like moment with the audience.

I don’t think any of these things helped the storytellers in terms of their scores, nor did they serve to endear them to their audience.

I have always been a fan of getting on the stage, telling the story and getting off. Save the commentary for the host of the evening. That’s their job. Not ours.

That’s exactly what I did when I took the stage, but in truth, luck played a large role in my victory on Thursday night.

First, I was the final person to be called to the stage, which is an enormous benefit to any storyteller. The first storyteller of the night was someone I know well, and her story was outstanding. Humorous and revealing and full of suspense. It should have at least been contending with mine for the win, but because she went first, her chances for victory were exceptionally small.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever won a StorySLAM going first.

I also changed my story dramatically while onstage. On the drive to the city, I practiced my story in the car for my friend, but the story that I had prepared at home and told in the car was vastly different from the one told two hours later in front of the audience. I was fortunate. In the midst of telling the story, I found a couple of surprise transitions that helped propel it forward at a more rapid clip, and I stumbled upon two funny lines that worked very well.

Like I said, I got lucky.

As a storyteller, I feel that there is a delicate balance between being prepared and being over prepared. I’ve taken the stage at The Moth with a story that I have memorized almost word for word and done well, but more often, it seems as if I perform better if I have a general idea of my story, a few moments of planned transition and an opening line ready. By not memorizing the story entirely or even planning every moment of the story, I have more flexibility onstage and a greater opportunity to gauge the audience’s reaction, adjust if necessary and find those surprise moments that often work so well.

Of course, this can be dangerous, too. If I have not prepared enough, I might find myself lost in the story at moments, unable to finish it succinctly.

Like I said, it’s a delicate balance.

Also, for the first time ever, I took note of the location of the judges in the room. The three teams of judges happened to be located in the same general area, in front and to the left of the stage. Knowing that there were no judges to my right, I didn’t turn in that direction and establish eye contact with those audience members as often as I normally would have. Instead, I focused most of my attention straight ahead and to the left, where I knew that judges were seated. I’m not sure if this made a difference, but I can’t imagine that it hurt.

I’m still walking on air following my Moth victory on Thursday night. It broke a frustrating string of four second place finishes and will give me another chance at winning a GrandSLAM.

I love taking the stage and telling stories at The Moth. I feel exceptionally fortunate when my name emerges from that tote bag, allowing me the opportunity to tell my story to a willing audience. If it was not a competition but simply an evening of storytelling, I would still be dropping my name in that bag, hoping for it to be drawn.

But I won’t lie. The competitive aspect of The Moth adds an additional layer that I like very much. Win or lose, I love knowing exactly how I did on any given night. Having spent much of my childhood playing video games, I like to know my score. I like to know where I placed. I like to know if and how I should improve.

The Moth offers that as well.

And when you actually manage to win, you get to walk on air for a few days. Not a bad reward.

Charity sucks. At least in this instance.

There was once a device marketed to housewives  that would charge anyone who wanted to ring the doorbell 10 cents as a mean of reducing the number of traveling salesmen knocking on their doors.

In order to ring the doorbell, a visitor had to deposit a dime in a slot right next to the bell. This would trigger the bell to ring. If the guest was a friend, the dime was returned upon entrance. However, if the visitor was a stranger, the money was retained by the device and was given to charity.

Obviously the ability for a person to knock on a door rather than ringing the bell mitigates the effectiveness of this device, but my real problem with it is the idea that the money collected was given to charity.

While I am not opposed to charitable giving, it seems to me that if you are forced to endure an unsolicited solicitation from a sleazy salesman, you should be able to profit from the time lost.  

I encounter a similar issue when students in my class win writing contests and are awarded cash prizes. Oftentimes the parents of these fledgling wordsmiths want their child to donate their winnings to charity or to some school-related cause.

I’m always appalled at this notion.

I explain to parents that this is the worst possible thing to ask a child to do. In almost every case, it’s the first time in the child’s life that he or she has received monetary compensation for mental exertion and creative output.

Reinforce this incredible feeling by allowing your child to revel in the joy of cold, hard cash.

Better yet, expand upon the experience. Enhance the reinforcement.  

Take your child to the most decadent candy store on the planet and allow him or her to spend every dime on jujubes and lollipops.

Allow your child to purchase the book that you thought was inappropriate for his or her age level.

Permit your child to purchase his or her first rated R movie ticket.

There will be plenty of opportunities in a child’s life to help those in need, and a charitable spirit is a quality that is well worth fostering in young people.

Just not immediately after a child has been paid for something he made up in his head. Don’t ruin the moment by forcing your child to give this money away to starving children. Not this time.  

It’s no surprise that it took me three years to complete my first novel but less than a year to complete my subsequent books.

Once you get paid for your efforts, you want to be paid again and again.

Black and gross

My daughter told me that she was asked to try “gross food” at school today.

“Gross food, Daddy. Black food. Black, gross food. Black and gross.”

I was admittedly concerned at first, unable to conjure the image of what might constitute a black and gross food.

After some questioning, it turns out that she was served olives.

I agree with her opinion wholeheartedly.

It also places her in good standing after my son’s recent traitorous stand on peas. 

My most useless super power

In addition to my fairly useful super powers is one that is no less extraordinary but useless. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, for whatever reason, I can accurately state the time within fifteen minutes of the actual time, and oftentimes much more accurately than that.

Every time, without exception.

How I manage this is a mystery to me.

But an even bigger mystery:

How am I ever going to use this super power to defeat evil?

Woodstock’s quandary

Is Woodstock a figure of adoration or a bird in a hell of a lot of trouble?

My daughter refused to explain.

   

Food Nazis

In the post recent post on our brother-sister blog, 107 Federal Street, Kelli Elizabeth writes about living under the culinary version of the Third Reich.

Fat employees receive fewer benefits at Whole Foods

There are a lot of problems with Whole Foods’ policy of awarding larger discounts to employees with lower blood pressure, cholesterol and BMI.

There is the issue of privacy, of course. In order to determine what level of discount has been earned, an employee is required to subject him or herself to a physical examination and surrender private medical information to his or her employer. 

There are also genetic conditions and illnesses that prevent individuals from achieving the blood pressure, cholesterol and BMI levels that Whole Foods requires for the highest discount possible. While Whole Foods has attempted to mitigate these concerns by offering specialized consideration for legitimate medical issues, this would require employees to disclose even more medical information to their employer.

Once again, privacy concerns abound.

There is also an apparent disregard to the connection between a healthy diet and the amount of money a person can spend for food.

The research is clear:

The more a person can spend on food, the more likely his or her food choices will be healthy ones. Offering larger discounts to employees who are already exhibiting healthy eating habits only serves to perpetuate the chasm between those who can afford healthy food and those who cannot.

But all of these concerns pales in comparison to the real problem with Whole Foods policy:

It sounds like an incentive policy created by a bunch of condescending, judgmental jerk faces.

The title to this blog post is “Fat employees receive fewer benefits at Whole Foods.” While this sentence was admittedly chosen for its inflammatory nature, it’s factually accurate. It contains no exaggeration.

Fat employees, or employees with elevated blood pressures and levels of cholesterol are granted fewer benefits as a result of their physical condition.

Not good.

Even if an incentive plan is logical and based upon irrefutable scientific research, it can still appear mean-spirited and elitist.

This one does. 

Whole Foods needs to ask itself:

Is rating our employees based upon specific physical attributes and then assigning them levels (designated by a gold, silver or bronze label) sound like a nice thing to do?

No, it doesn’t.

Furthermore, there are so many other ways for Whole Foods management to incentivize their employees to lead healthier lives that don’t involve weighing them, sticking them with needles and dividing them into metallically-labeled levels of achievement.

Rather than a 20% discount on everything in the store, Whole Foods could offer a 40% discount on fruits and vegetables only.

They could offer free consultations with nutritionists and trainers or discounted memberships to local gyms.

They could subsidize the co-pay on an employee’s annual physical.

But categorizing employees by weight and blood pressure for the purposes of offering varying discounts on food purchases?

Even if it works to improve the overall health of the workforce, it’s just not nice, and it doesn’t project the right image for a company that is all about image.

Charlie Brown’s close encounter

My three-year old daughter is playing in the other room. I just heard her say, "Charlie Brown, take me to your leader."

Snoopy? Lucy?

Charles Schultz? 

Strangest Christmas behavior ever. Right?

It’s 9:00 AM on Christmas morning. Things are not going as expected.

After opening a few presents, including three books that I had to read aloud before we could continue, my daughter has told us that she is tired of opening presents and wants to practice her numbers on my computer.

 

So now she is sitting at the table, typing the numbers 1-10 and asking how to make 14, 19, 22 and so on.

There is still a pile of presents under the tree, including her best gift, but she wants nothing to do with them.

“When I’m done with my numbers, let’s eat breakfast,” she says. “I’m hungry.”

“Do you want to open presents first?” I ask.

“No!” she says. “No more presents!”

At this rate, these presents may never get opened.

Honestly, in the history of the mankind, has something like this ever happened? I adore nonconformity, and her lack of materialism warms my soul, but this is ridiculous.

First peas

I do not like peas.

As a child, I despised them. Before being introduced to broccoli, peas were my least favorite food. My mother used to require me to eat as many peas as I was old, and even that was difficult.

My son tried peas for the first time yesterday and seems to feel decidedly different about them.

Is it wrong to think that he has betrayed me?

 

A tree is dead. A little girl whispers to the survivors. A family rejoices with chocolate.

Our annual Christmas tree hunt was a huge success.

One dead evergreen and an afternoon of fun.

We began our adventure by ensuring that Charlie was dressed for a possible Antarctic blizzard, despite the 40 degree temperatures and clear skies.

Upon arriving at the Christmas tree farm, Clara became intensely interested in the tiny trees, referring to them as “little baby trees” and having short but intense chats with each one, often ending with, “See you next year.”

Little kids are so weird.

Once I killed our tree and strapped its carcass to the car, we stopped for some hot chocolate and eggnog.

Great fun was had by all.

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Poltergeists and an actual house fire

My most recent post on my brother-sister blog, 107 Federal Street, includes one of the most terrifying moments from my childhood, involving a closet, a dog and a film that little children should not have seen.

Poltergeists and house fires

My sister’s latest post on 107 Federal Street deals with the two most terrifying moments of her childhood.

Parents can be awful and despicable to their adult children. I will not be one of them.

After years of listening to stories about the suffering that my adult friends are forced to endure at the hands of their meddlesome and controlling parents, I have decided to create a list of promises to my children that will protect them from such behavior in their future.

While I can’t imagine myself engaging in any of this despicable behavior when my kids are adults, I can only assume that these rotten, interfering  parents felt the same way when they were my age, and yet somehow they ended up acting like selfish, petulant, overbearing jerks.

This list will serve as an insurance policy in the event that the same happens to me when I am older.

I plan on adding to the list and re-posting it as often as needed.

Please feel free to offer any additions to the list.

It should also be noted that as of this moment, my in-laws are not guilty of any of these offenses, nor was my mother when she was alive. These items are based solely on the experience of my unfortunate friends.

Thus far I have been exceedingly fortunate.

This does not mean, however, that I would not include them on this list in the future if their otherwise reasonable and respectful behavior takes a turn for the worse.

Promises To My Future Adult Children

1. I will never criticize or attempt to manipulate my children’s choice of names for my grandchildren. Doing so is a selfish, intrusive, despicable act. It is also one of the most asinine things a grandparent can do.
   
2. I will never pressure any of my children to get married. Doing so is hurtful, insensitive, narrow-minded and potentially damaging to a child’s future.
   
3. I will never criticize my children’s choice of occupations. Doing so only serves to impose my own values and personal estimation of happiness on them, which is selfish, narrow0minded and despicable.
   
4. I will never criticize my children’s decisions related to religion. Doing so fails to honor them as individuals and free thinkers and is selfish, self-serving, antagonistic and despicable.