New Year’s resolutions: 2014

The following are my New Years resolutions for 2014. As always, I reserve the right to alter the list for up to one week after posting. Suggestions are still welcome.

1. Don’t die.

Recommended by a reader a couple years ago, this continues to be an excellent resolution.

2. Lose ten pounds.

I lost ten pounds last year, and since I began losing weight four years ago, I’m lost a total of 45 pounds. I’m within 15 pounds of my high school weight, when I was a legitimate athlete. I’m hoping to get back to that point someday soon.

3. Do at least 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups five days a week.

Unchanged from last year, it remains an excellent goal.

4. Launch at least one new podcast.

Author Out Loud, our first podcast, will launch in January. My goal is to launch a second podcast, dealing with storytelling,  education or parenting, later in the year.

5. Complete my sixth novel before the Ides of March.

Though my sixth novel will likely sell before it’s actually finished, I will eventually need to finish writing it. April 15 will give me my April vacation to complete it if not before.

6. Complete my seventh novel.

I plan on writing another novel in 2014 as well. This book may or may not be started already.

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

I failed to achieve this goal last year, not because of rejection as much as my inability to pull a manuscript together. I will rectify this in 2014.

8. Complete a book proposal for my memoir.

I have a large chunk of this book written, but it needs to be re-written. I will spend 2014 writing 3-5 excellent chapters plus a proposal.

9. Host at least one Shakespeare Circle.

I intend on hosting an evening of Shakespeare. Friends will join us around the table to read a Shakespearean play aloud, with each person assuming a different role. I already have a group of people who have agreed to attend.

10. Write a screenplay.

This is a challenge that I would like to undertake after befriending a screenwriter and becoming a fan of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting.

11. Write at least three short stories.

I wrote three short stories in 2013 and would like to write at least three more in 2014 with an eye toward eventually publishing a collection.

12. Write a collection of poetry using existing and newly written poems.

I have many poems from my college and post college days that I like a lot. I’d like to revise them and write some new poetry in order to complete a collection by the end of the year.

13. Become certified to teach high school English by completing one required class.

I took one of the two required classes in 2013. I’d like to finish the certification by completing one more course.

14. Publish at least one Op-Ed in a physical newspaper.

I published several Op-Ed pieces in online outlets last year, and while I plan to continue this, I would like to get at least one piece in a physical newspaper while they still exist.

15. Attend at least 10 Moth events with the intention of telling a story.

In 2013 I attended 16 Moth events. Ten seems like a reasonable number for 2014.

16. Win a Moth GrandSLAM.

I’ve won 10 Moth StorySLAMs since I started competing in 2011, include 7 out of 13 last year. I’ve competed in three GrandSLAM championships but have yet to win one.

17. Give yoga an honest try.

I failed to complete this goal in 2013.

18. De-clutter the basement.

I made significant progress in the basement in 2013. I would like to complete the work in 2014.

19. De-clutter the shed

I made significant progress in the basement in 2013. I would like to complete the work in 2014.

20. Conduct the ninth No-Longer-Annual A-Mattzing Race in 2013.

I failed to complete this goal in 2013.

21. Produce a total of 6 Speak Up storytelling events.

My wife and I launched our storytelling venture in 2013 and produced a total of three shows. We’d like to double this number in 2014.

22. Deliver a TED Talk.

I spoke at two TED conferences in 2013. I’d like to add to my total in 2014.

23. Set a new personal best in golf.

My lowest score for nine holes is a 45, and my lowest score for 18 holes is 95. I’d like to improve on either score in 2014.

24. Find a way to keep my wife home for one more year with our children.

My wife has been staying home with our children for the last four years, working part time when Clara entered preschool and Charlie was not yet born. I would love to give her and my son one more year at home before she returns to work fulltime. In order to make this possible, I will have to find a way to earn enough money (through writing and/or other sources) and cut expenses for one more year.

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

Say my name

My son, Charlie, said his own name for the first time yesterday then continued to be cute just to spite me.

Choosing goals for 2014

I am in the process of reviewing the completion of my New Year’s resolutions and establishing new goals for 2014.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I’m always happy to listen and incorporate feedback whenever possible.

This boy is all boy

Stick a piece of construction equipment outside the house, and this boy thinks it’s better than any television, water slide, swing and iPad combined.

Compelling? Truthy? Horribly narrow minded and sexist? I’m not sure.

From a piece in TIME entitled It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be by Camille Paglia (author and professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) comes these two paragraphs which I found incredibly intriguing and thought provoking. 

I’m not saying I fully agree with what Paglia asserts here, but I’m not saying that I disagree, either.

I’m not sure. It has the air of truthiness to it, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel quite right.

It also makes use of two unnecessary exclamation points, which doesn’t help her argument at all.

I would love to hear what you think about the paragraphs and perhaps about the entire piece.

__________________________________

After the next inevitable apocalypse, men will be desperately needed again! Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock, but most women and children will be expecting men to scrounge for food and water and to defend the home turf. Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

Twas the Night Before Christmas

As our holiday season draws to a close, I wanted to point this out to you. It’s a Christmas special that I watched and loved as a child and adored entitled Twas The Night Before Christmas.

I showed it to my daughter a couple days before Christmas, and she’s watched it at least half a dozen times since.

She loves it as much as I still do.

The story is clever, the music is great (and highly addictive) and for a daughter who can barely get through the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special because of the Abominable Snow Monster of the North and had to bail entirely on Santa Claus is Coming to Town because of the Winter Warlock, this special is decidedly free of angry, toothy monsters.

The shifting opinions about Santa

   

Portuguese!

The Portuguese edition of Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend.

I love this cover.

Want to maintain longer lasting friendships? Here is my simple piece of advice.

A friend on Twitter recently asked for advice on maintaining long-term friendships. She was having a hard time remaining connected in meaningful ways with her friends and was searching of ideas.

My advice was simple:

Center each friendship on a project, activity or goal.

Always have something to do.

Perhaps this is a male instinct, but all of my closest male friendships are anchored by specific activities and/or goals. You will never find me having coffee with a friend (my hatred for coffee none withstanding). I don’t meet with my friends for brunch unless our spouses are included. I don’t chat with my friends on the phone.

My friend and I do stuff together.

Bengi (my friend of 28 years) and I have owned a DJ company for the last 17 years together. Though our friendship does not rely on the DJ company, our business forces us together more frequently than we would otherwise. Bengi has been a a storyteller for Speak Up, the storytelling organization that my wife and I founded this year. He attends Moth events with me. We are planning to write a book together.

Shep and I are Patriots season ticket owners. We spend about ten Sundays a year together, and we spend the rest of the NFL season communicating through email and texts about our team, our tailgate plans and more. We golf together during the summer and often catch movies together in the middle of the day. He has attended Moth events with me. He is one of the first and most valuable readers of my fiction.

Tom and I play a great deal of golf together. I recently enlisted Tom to become the producer of our soon-to-launch podcast, and he is now recording the audio at our Speak Up events as well. In the past, Tom and I have played a lot of poker together. Tom joins me from time to time at Moth events in New York City and hopes to one day tell a story on a Moth stage.

Until last year when he retired, Plato and I had worked together for fifteen years. I taught his daughter in third grade. Plato and I also play golf often. He has been a Speak Up storyteller. Recently he joined me for his Moth StorySLAM. In the past, I have acted in plays that Plato wrote and directed at our local playhouse. He attends Patriot games with me. We have written articles and presented together at conferences. We are apocalypse partners in the event that society crumbles, zombies rise from their graves or aliens invade. 

In 2006, he married me and Elysha. We are ministers for the same online church, and we have even worked a wedding together as minister and DJ.

 

Jeff and I teach together. He is my daughter’s godfather. We play golf often. We used to play a lot of poker, and I hope to play again someday soon. He reads my completed manuscripts and offers input. Over the years, we have attempted to launch several businesses together that have failed to get off the ground. We have a dream of opening our own one room schoolhouse in five years. We are constantly scheming. 

Andrew is my son’s godfather. I taught both of his children, including his daughter in third and fifth grade. We are in a book club together. He has attended Moth events with me. Two years ago I introduced him to golf, and it has become his obsession. We play together a lot. We have played together in the snow and the rain. I have become good friends with his nephew, who lives in New York and joins me for Moth events often. 

David is one of my more recent friends. He is a screenwriter. We don’t write together, but we frequently talk about our writing projects and share our work with each other. We listen to some of the same podcasts. We alternately encourage and berate each other when needed.

Though the tendency to anchor a friendship on an activity or a goal seems to be a more male-dominated trend, I have female friends with whom I share similar relationships.

Andrew’s wife, Kim, for example, was probably my friend before Andrew was. She is Charlie’s godmother, and she is also in a book club with me. She is also a Speak Up storyteller, and other than Elysha, has attended more Moth events with me than anyone else. She has also been an early reader of my fiction (Andrew has yet to read any of my novels), and when her children were in my classroom, she would spend a couple hours each week volunteering.

My friend, Donna, and taught together for the last 15 years, and except for two years when we were purposefully separated, we have always been in the same grade level. Donna and I golf together. She’s a character in my most recent novel. She’s old enough to be my mother, so there is a generational gap at times (she just learned how to text with reliability), but we still manage to do things together.

Admittedly, however, Kim and Donna are the exception when it comes to my female friendships, and even these friendships seem less dominated by activities and projects than my male relationships.

I’m not sure why this is the case. Maybe it’s just a male tendency. 

Regardless, these are some of my closest friends. As you can see, our relationships are very much centered around the things that we do. Though there have been some heart-to-heart conversations with these men and women over the years,  these talks often happen on the golf course, the basketball court or in the car on the way to a football game.

Bengi and I recently spent the day together driving to and from the Berkshires to pick up some furniture for my home. We talked for more than five hours about many things.

Some topics were silly. Others were serious.

But all of this conversation happened in the midst of driving, carrying couches and squeezing in a burger at McDonald’s.

We would never even think about meeting for coffee or lunch or talking about these things over the phone.  

Coffee and lunch can be too easily skipped. Too easily rescheduled. Too easily avoided. Too many things can take priority over coffee or a phone call.

Besides, the idea that we would sit across from each other at a table without a deck of cards or something else to do while we are eating is ridiculous.  

Killing a mean teacher with the help of Santa and a pony

Except for the location, date and the gender of the teacher referenced in this newspaper clipping, there have probably been a few students over the years who would’ve written this about me.

That said, I think Garnet Thompson and I would’ve gotten along marvelously.

My 2013 Christmas haul

Another Christmas and another outstanding haul of gifts from my amazing wife, who understands me so well.

Some people wish for cashmere sweaters, brand new video game systems, stylish watches and jewelry. My hope is often for the least pretentious, most unexpected, quirkiest little gift possible, and she never fails to deliver. 

For the past four years, I’ve been documenting the gifts that Elysha gives me on Christmas because they are so damn good. Every year has been just as good as the last, if not better.

For point of reference:

• My 2009 Christmas haul

• My 2010 Christmas haul

• My 2011 Christmas haul

• My 2012 Christmas haul

This year was just as good.

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In case you can’t tell from the photograph, my collection of gifts from this year includes:

• A remote controlled helicopter (the #1 item on the 2013 Matthew Dicks Holiday Gift Guide, which I have yet to be able to fly without crashing, and which my 18 month-old son keeps trying to take away from me. whenever he sees it.

• A rubber moose with an orange nose that can be shot across the room at an unsuspecting target

• Superman Band-Aids

• An 11 function survival tool (apocalypse preparation device)

• A book entitled Now I Know: Revealing Stories Behind the Worlds Most Interesting Facts. The back of the book reads:

“…the ultimate challenge for any know-it-all who thinks they have noting left to learn.”

I’m not sure if she’s trying to tell me something.

• A pin. The perfect pin, really:

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• A small bag of blue candy with a fantastic marketing plan (and from an Etsy seller in New Mexico, no less):

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A writer’s worst enemy

The plan was to spend the afternoon in the library, toiling away at the manuscript. But as I was packing the laptop, this was happening, which means that progress on my book ceased around 1:30.

I’ll regret the lost time in a few days when I am pecking away into the wee hours of the morning, attempting to polish a modicum of perfection from an ugly slab of granite, but at the moment, I don’t regret a damn thing.

   

The only thing I want for Christmas is a tiny scrap of paper

Yesterday a friend and I were scheduled to drive a U-Haul up to my in-laws’ home in the Berkshires to pick up some living room furniture for my home.

An hour before we were to depart, my friend’s wife texted me, telling me that her husband was doubled over with a stomach bug and unable to help.

I picked up the phone to cancel the truck. It was 9:00 AM. Two days before Christmas. It was raining. We would be gone for at least five hours. I needed to leave within the hour.

There was no way that I would find anyone to help.

Still, I decided to give it a shot. I sent a text to five of my closest friends, explaining the situation and asking if anyone was willing to help.

Within 15 minutes, three of the five had offered to surrender their afternoons to help me. A fourth is out of the country and has yet to receive the text.

I couldn’t believe it.

I thought it would be a miracle if I found one person to help.

I found three.

When I awake on Christmas morning and peek into my stocking, the only thing I should find inside is a scrap of paper that says, “Your friends.”

Aside from my family, they may be my greatest gift.

I have a lot of jobs. I have a lot of jobs that I still want. And I have a lot of occupations that I wish to pursue. Here is my 2014 list.

I wear many hats. I do many things. I collect many occupations. At the moment, my list of jobs for which I am paid include:

• teacher
• tutor
• author
• wedding DJ
• minister
• public speaker

In 2013 I was also paid to serve as a life coach, though I am currently without clients.

Despite my large number of jobs, I always have my eyes on future careers. Perhaps prolonged periods of poverty have caused me to keep as many options open as possible in the event of economic disaster.

Maybe I simply have a variety of interests. Or I’m incapable of saying no.

Three of these possible future careers (that I’ve written about before and am still seeking) include:

1. Professional best man
2. Double date companion
3. Grave site visitor

Potential clients have actually attempted to hire me twice as a professional best man, but both times, distance prevented me from taking the job. One offer was from London, and the other was from San Francisco.

I’m still hoping to find a local client someday.

As 2014 approaches, I have decided to add two more jobs to the list of those that I am currently (if not actively) seeking:

1. Productivity consultant

Here is my dream:

Hire me for a two week period to improve your work or home life productivity. Based upon my experience and success with my own personal productivity and my lifelong commitment (and possible obsession) with doing more in less time, I believe that I am highly qualified to help any client who has an open mind and is willing to make changes in his or her life in the spirit of efficiency and time management.

During the first week of the two week period, I would follow my client through their day as a silent observer, noting responsibilities, routines, barriers to productivity and choices being made that assist or hinder a client’s personal productivity.

Based upon these observations, I would design a plan of improved productivity, and during the second week, I would follow my client through his or her day again, implementing the plan. This would include building routines into the day to save time, prioritizing tasks based upon long-term outcomes, highlighting moments of inefficiency and suggesting changes in the choices being made that will ultimately lead to increased productivity.

I believe that this training would be effective for everyone from corporate executives to teachers to salespeople to stay-at-home parents. I also believe it would be highly effective for both individuals as well as larger organizations.

I could save people a lot of time.

2. Public speaking coach

This idea has been suggested to me by a number of people, and by one person in particular a number of times.

Here’s one example of how this would work:

In today’s competitive, oversaturated publishing world, authors need every advantage possible in order to connect with readers and build their platform. Part of this process often includes public appearances, but far too often I attend a reading and watch an author fail to connect with the audience, or worse, alienate or bore the audience altogether.

I believe that if given the time (and not all that much of it), I could convert an author who is shy, inexperienced, off-putting or an ineffective speaker into one who is entertaining and endearing to his or her audiences, primarily through the use of story. Earlier this year I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about differentiating the speaking that authors do into into four distinct categories: The signing, the reading, the book talk and the author talk.

In my role as public speaking coach, I would be training authors to deliver author talks, which I believe are exceptionally effective at building a loyal base of readers. I would essentially be teaching storytelling, but I would also be teaching the ways in which storytelling can be used to begin an athor talk, recommend a book, transition into another section of the talk or answer a reader’s question.

I believe that this type of training would be effective and helpful for many kinds of professionals, including salespeople, educators, business leaders and anyone who relies on clear, effective, meaningful communication in order to be successful in their job.

But I’m willing to start with authors, because they give us books to read, and they deserve to be read more often.

They are my people.

In terms of other jobs on the horizon, I recently read about a company in France that offers designer kidnapping and similar services for thrill seekers:

For £1,000, customers of Ultime Réalité, a company in Besançon, eastern France, can buy a basic abduction package in which they are seized by strangers, bundled into a car bound and gagged, and kept in a dank cellar for four hours.

If that sounds too tame, boat chases and helicopter escapes can be added to the tailor-made experience, and customers kept for longer periods, depending on the budget.

Customers explain exactly what they want and once the scenario is established, they sign a contract and liability waiver, but have no idea exactly when or where their abductors will strike.

"We follow you for a few days. At an opportune moment, in the street or elsewhere, we kidnap you," the contract stipulates.

While I’m not ready to commit to anything yet, this concept upon which this company is founded has given me some ideas that I will continue to think about in the coming year.

In addition to these jobs, I also have a list of more formal, time consuming occupations that I would like to pursue at some point in my life, perhaps when I decide to leave teaching someday. This list includes:

• Behavioral economist
• Bookstore owner
• Camp director
• College professor
• Financial analyst
• Firefighter
• Inspirational speaker
• Professional poker player
• Sociologist
• Therapist

My wife is not pleased with my desire to become a firefighter, so that may never happen. She would, however, like to own a bookstore someday, and we have discussed our vision many times, so perhaps this is more likely (and financially disastrous).

I’ve also done some inspirational speaking over the past couple years, but I’ve never been paid to do so, and there was a time when the profits from my poker playing may have qualified me a a professional, but my books have kept me from playing seriously for at least a few years.

I’ve also debated about the necessity of formal training in order to become a therapist (I think I would be excellent in this role) and sociologist, and I’ve even partnered with an actual sociologist to write a book in hopes of working in the field and exploring my interests without needing any credentials.

I have a lot to do.

My 3 completely biased, overly judgmental and fully valid rules of selfies

1. Try to avoid saying the word selfie aloud. You will always sound at least a little dumb when doing so. Even writing the word makes you sound a little stupid.
2. Any attempt to look sexy or alluring in a selfie is only going to make you look a little desperate. This includes pursed lips, well framed cleavage and obvious attempts to conceal large noses, receding hairlines or oblong chins through awkward and strained poses. We all know what you are doing. Spontaneity, a disregard for photogenic conventions and  an authentic smile is the only way to make a selfie almost acceptable.
3. A selfie is only immune to ridicule and assumed narcissism under the following circumstances:

• You are taking a selfie with another person in the photograph as well (which, by definition, no longer qualifies as a selfie).
• You are taking a selfie in order to show someone a new haircut, a new item of clothing or a similar change of appearance (the utilitarian selfie).
• You are taking a selfie with the express purpose of demonstrating the uniqueness of your locale as it appears the background (Grand Canyon, Brooklyn Bridge, football stadium, North Pole)
• You are taking a selfie in order to update your image on a social media or similar online profile, and you have not updated the image in this profile in at least three months.

Below is a blurry, poorly framed selfie that I took of myself and my daughter this weekend as we rode the historic carousel in downtown Hartford together, thus qualifying it as acceptable in two of the above categories.

Unfair assumption #18: Not every girl-kissing-girl moment is equal

People who prefer Katie Perry’s “I Kiss a Girl” to Jill Solble’s “I Kissed a Girl” have clearly lost their minds.

 

Contender for best golf shot of the year

The thing about this unbelievable golf shot is that my friends would call me an idiot for ever attempting such a shot. But here is a professional golfer, making it work better than even he could’ve imagined.

See. Maybe I’m not such an idiot after all.

Also, I would’ve never been able to make this shot.

Not in a million years.

And would’ve likely hit myself with the ball in the process. 

Still…

Bigots are better than naked priests

Methodist minister Frank Schaefer was defrocked on Thursday for violating church law by presiding at his son’s same-sex wedding.

Obviously the Methodist Church sucks for doing this.

But in addition to ending their bigotry and buffet-style application of Biblical law, I would also suggest removing the word defrock from the church’s lexicon as well. 

I understand that defrock means to “deprive a holy person of ecclesiastical status,” but since a frock is an item of clothing and the prefix de- is used to add the meaning “opposite. reduce or remove,” the word also engenders the image of stripping a priest or minister of his or her clothing.

At least it does for me.

I don’t think that any church should allow the mental image of a forcefully stripped, naked priest to stand.

Why not just say that you fired the guy because the leaders of the church are apparently a bunch of stupid bigots who only read the passages of the Bible that most conveniently support their bigotry and ignore those passages that prevent them from eating bacon cheeseburgers, watching football on Sunday or wearing cotton blends?

I honestly think a statement like this would sound better than defrocking.

But perhaps it’s only a writer and wordsmith like me who would deconstruct the word defrock and end up with the image of a forcefully stripped naked priest.

Future scientist? Or future member of Metallica?

There are two possibilities here:

1. He is studying the gravitational and centrifugal forces that cause the plate to wobble and fall similar to the way a scientist might study a similar phenomenon.

2. He likes to make noise.

As his father, I’m not sure which one would be better.

They both sounds pretty great to me.

I would love to play the role of Gandalf the Grey and stop trains. Just not at this moment.

I see this kind of hilarious brilliance (make sure you watch until the very end), and I think three things:

1. I wish I had thought of that first.
2. With my luck, I would’ve been arrested on suspicious of terrorism.
3. Despite how much I love and admire this, I’m not sure that I would want to invest the amount of time and energy required to produce a single minute of video that will likely be forgotten in a month (even one as amazing and daring as this).

I’m kind of glad that someone else is doing this for me, even though part of me desperately wants to try something like this myself.

Maybe when my kids are older and can do it with me…