Matthew Dicks's Blog

I was the deer.

From 1994 through 1999, I attended college full-time.

First, I attended Manchester Community College, followed by Trinity College and St. Joshpeph’s University simultaneously, where I earned degrees in English and elementary education.

I was also managing a McDonald’s restaurant on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut full-time.

I also launched my wedding DJ company.

I also worked in the Writing Centers at both Trinity College and St. Joseph’s University.

While attending Manchester Community College, I also served as President of the National Honor Society, Student Council Treasurer, and a columnist for the college newspaper.

While at Trinity College, I was a writer on the school’s newspaper.

I also graduated near the top of my class at every school I attended. I did so well at Manchester Community College that Trinity, Wesleyan University, and Yale University all offered me full scholarships.

Looking back at that time — two full-time college degree programs, a full-time job, launching a company, and diving into extracurricular activities — I sometimes wonder how I managed to do it all.

Then I read this quote and understood.

“In a race between a lion and a deer, many times, the deer wins because the lion runs for food and the deer runs for life.”

I was the deer.

Purpose is more important than need.

When I stepped into that college classroom for the first time, I was running for my life. I knew exactly what I was running away from.

In the two years before making it to college, I was homeless. Arrested, jailed, and tried for a crime I did not commit. For a time, I struggled to eat and stay warm.

I was also the victim of a horrific, violent crime that would leave me with a lifetime of PTSD.

The lion had nearly caught me on several occasions.

But when I set foot on a college campus for the first time, I had managed to put a little distance between me and that lion of my past. I was going to be sure it never caught me again.,

Attending college full-time. Working full-time. Launching a company. Engaging in all kinds of campus leadership opportunities and extracurricular activities.

All of that seemed simple compared to the past I had just escaped.
It felt necessary to keep that lion as far away as possible.
I had no choice. I either flourished or died.

I was the deer, running for my life, so nothing was going to stop me.

It wasn’t even a difficult time in my life. Compared to the past, it was glorious.

I’ll add my own adendum to this metaphor of the deer and the lion:

The lion often ends the day with an empty belly. The deer finishes the day filled with joy. It’s still alive and able to live another day. It’s overwhelmed by gratitude and appreciation.

Maybe even a little pride.

After escaping death, nothing ever seems quite as challenging for the deer anymore.

Every day thereafter feels like a precious gift.

We should all be lucky enough to be chased by a lion at least once in our lives. Maybe even a few times.

And escape, of course.

Why I write letters

I’m in the letter-writing business.

From 2018 through 2023, I attempted (and succeeded) in writing at least 100 physical letters every year.

Since 2023, I’ve increased my goal to 150, and for the past two years, I’ve also succeeded in meeting and exceeding it.

Last year, I wrote 222 letters, and this year, I’ve already written 159 letters.

I’ve written more than 700 letters over the past five years to a variety of people:

Students and former students. The parents of students and former students. My former teachers, professors, and bosses. My children’s principals and teachers. My wife and kids. My father. Friends. Colleagues. Clients. Business owners. Storytellers. Authors. Servers. Politicians.

Responses to readers and storytelling fans who send me letters.

More than 95% of my letters are written in the spirit of kindness and enthusiasm, designed to convey information or express a positive message.

Occasionally, I write a letter for other reasons. When I do, it’s usually a letter directed at an unethical politician, a business that has done me wrong, or an administrator who is making decisions without a fundamental understanding of the issues at hand or is too lazy to take action.

I like writing those letters, too. I also have a pile of small, envelope-sized pride flags that I send to bigots along with my letters.

This makes me especially happy.

Why do I do all this?

I think Albus Dumbledore said it best:

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both influencing injury and remedying it.”

That’s it.

I write letters because they make the recipients feel good and often strengthen our relationship. Writing to someone takes time and effort. Addressing an envelope and affixing a stamp are things that many of us no longer do. Receiving an actual letter in the mail is both surprising and appreciated.

Also, writing letters has produced remarkable results.

Thanks to writing letters, I’ve reconnected with some amazing people:

At least four former teachers,
Two former principals
Half a dozen former college professors
Two former bosses
An endless number of former students

I exchange letters with many of these people regularly.

I also managed to reconnect with two former teachers, less than a year before they passed away. I let each one know how much they meant to me and continue to mean to me today.

I feel so lucky to have sent those letters before their passing.

And while these ongoing connections mean a great deal to me, it turns out that they might mean even more to the recipients of my letters.

New research suggests that casually reaching out to people in our social circles means more than we realize.

“Even sending a brief message reaching out to check in on someone, just to say ‘Hi,’ that you are thinking of them, and to ask how they’re doing, can be appreciated more than people think,” said Peggy Liu, an associate professor of business administration with the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business.

Dr. Liu is the lead author of a new study — published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — that found people tend to underestimate how much friends like hearing from them.

The more surprising the check-in (from those who hadn’t been in contact recently) tended to be especially powerful.

Physical letters arriving in a mailbox, I suspect, might be the most surprising of all.

Dr. Liu noted that many people feel awkward about reaching out due to a phenomenon known as the “liking gap,” or the tendency to underestimate how well-liked we really are.

People may also hold themselves back due to a phenomenon known as the “beautiful mess effect,” which suggests that when we are vulnerable with others, we worry we will be judged harshly.

According to the study, this kind of negativity bias tends to permeate all aspects of friendship and can have a tangible impact on how we behave and interact.

In writing as many letters for as long as I have, I’ve discovered one absolute certainty:

Except for the critical and angry letters I rarely write, no one is ever upset or confused about receiving a letter from me. They are universally happy, excited, pleased, and grateful.

“The liking gap” isn’t a bias that has thankfully never plagued me. I start with the assumption that a person will like me if they get to know me, and I assume I can almost always win them over through kindness, wit, and a willingness to extend myself.

And the beautiful mess effect?

Forget it.

I’ve been sharing stories about me and my past for years — really vulnerable moments of embarrassment, failure, stupidity, and shame — and every time I do, people don’t judge me.

They grow closer to me.

My suggestion:

Write a letter today. It need not be long or elaborate. Write a simple expression of friendship, appreciation, or love to someone not expecting it, and drop that letter in the mail.

It will likely mean the world to the recipient, which is a beautiful thing, but it may also result in something beautiful for you, too:

A new friend.
A stronger friendship.
A timely message to someone whose time might be running out.

Go ahead. Write something today.

I can’t recommend it enough.

Single restroom nonsense

I’m in a single-use restroom. The door is locked. 

Someone on the outside jiggles the handle to see if it’s locked. 

It’s locked. 

Then comes an act of utter stupidity:

They knock. 

Even though the person on the outside has discovered that the door is locked, they knock anyway, which is crazy, because there are only one or two possibilities:

A human being is occupying the restroom, which I am. The door is somehow locked with no one inside, which happens when?

Either way, the knock is stupid because it yields nothing. It only puts the person inside the restroom in the awkward position of having to say something like, “I’m in here!” or “Occupied!” or one of my favorite options:

“The door is locked, but no one is in here!”

I’ve admittedly only used that response twice in my life, but both times were glorious.

I’ve also used “Hello?” and “No one’s home” and “Bring me a shuberry!”

Most often, I simply say nothing and let the knocker stew in their stupidity. 

Seriously, who are these people who find the door locked but knock anyway?

Probably the same morons who flush toilet paper and sanitary supplies down the toilet, forcing our lives to be littered with signs advising against it. 

Nostalgia incarnate

I’m a fan of nostalgia.

The closer the past remains to me, the more my life seems to be connected from beginning to end.

I also love reminders of bygone days. The ability to look back and see with expansive clarity is a beautiful way to be happy and satisfied about the journey you’ve taken thus far.

So many people forget so much and then wonder where the time has gone, or even worse, feel sorrow for not doing enough, seeing enough, and being enough.

So often, they simply don’t remember a life well lived because most days are forgotten.

Nostalgia — the wistful remembrance of the past — can give us clarity into that past. When an object is imbued with nostalgia, it can serve as an anchor to that time.

It often contains a window onto the past we have left behind.

All that said, I saw these in a Christmas store in Quebec City. For me, they are nostalgia incarnate.

Replicas of my childhood televisions containing animated snow globes of nostalgic Christmas scenes.

When I saw them, I was instantly transported to a different time, and I was immediately reminded of my childhood living room, Jiffy-Pop, the television shows I watched as a child, the wire coat hangers that replaced the broken antenna, the circular UHF antenna, the plastic cups from which I drank cherry Kool-Aid, the green container filled with Oreos, the Easy Chair, and more.

So much more.

I could go on and on.

I didn’t buy one of these television snow globes. They’re large and unwieldy. We were on our way to dinner, so it didn’t make sense.

But I’ve dreamt about them a few times since we’ve come back home.

I kind of wish I had bought one.

The vinculum

I’m teaching about the vinculum.

“What is the line that separates the numerator and denominator?” I ask my class.

No one knows.

Most people don’t know.

You probably didn’t know.

“It’s called the vinculum,” I say. It’s the line that separates the numerator and the denominator in a fraction.”

I write the word on the board.

“What might you compare the vinculum to?” I ask. “To help you remember what it does?”

At least three children simultaneously shout out the word “Divorce!”

I didn’t see that one coming.

But I’m struck by how open and honest my students are about the topic, and how much the world has changed since I was a kid. Surprisingly, divorce rates have decreased significantly since their peak in the early 1980s, falling from approximately 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people in 1981 to around 2.3 today.

But divorce was a taboo topic when I was growing up. We didn’t speak about it as openly and easily as my students do. Even though divorce was more common, we avoided the topic whenever possible.

We certainly didn’t use it as a metaphor for the vinculum.

Pasta playlists

Someone at Barilla pasta is my hero.

A clever marketing genius.

For zero dollars, Barilla pasta has created nine Spotify playlists that match the cook times of their products, with names like:

Absolute Carbonara
Nine Minute Spaghetti
Boom Bop Fusilli
Modern Day Linguini

… and five more.

You can see (and listen) to their Spotify playlists here.

The playlists likely aren’t driving many sales, but they’ve accumulated tens of thousands of spins. More importantly, this simple marketing play earned Barilla a ton of free marketing and publicity by news organizations that thought the idea clever enough to report on to their audiences, and it establishes Barilla pasta as a brand that is separate from its stodgy competitors.

Again, all for about zero dollars.

Air Bud

In 1997, “Air Bud” — a film about a dog capable of playing basketball — landed in theaters.

It did fairly well, I assumed, since I can still remember the existence of the movie almost 20 years later, even though I didn’t see it. While most movies come and go without anyone noticing, “Air Bud” retains a sliver of the zeitgeist.

It was popular enough to stick around for a while and not fade into obscurity.

I read this week that a sequel to “Air Bud” is being made, which wasn’t surprising. Legacy sequels are all the rage these days.

Why make something new when you can rehash something old?

But what did surprise me was this:

The upcoming film will indeed be the fifteenth movie in the “Air Bud” franchise.

Fifteen!

That’s fourteen sequels I didn’t know existed.

Fourteen sequels of a completely ridiculous concept.

Fourteen sequels that likely netted producers tens of millions of dollars or more.  Employed hundreds — maybe thousands — of people.

And dogs.

The sequels included movies like:

“Air Bud: Golden Receiver”
“Air Bud: World Pup”
“Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch”
“Air Bud: Spikes Back”

Basketball was apparently just the beginning for this remarkable dog, which has likely been replaced at least three times based on the average lifespan of a dog.

Screenwriting legend William Golding famously said about Hollywood that “no one knows anything.”

I believe that the success of the “Air Bud” franchise is proof positive that Golding was absolutely correct.

Getting through the day

Being one who suffered from a relentless, existential crisis, constantly thinking about death, my only means of getting through the day is by convincing myself that I will never die.

It sounds ridiculous, but it’s necessary and true.

The phrase I’ve become fond of using to express this sentiment is this:

“I plan to live forever or die trying.”

It’s exactly how I feel.

But I’ve recently stumbled upon another that I also like a lot. The artist David Hockney says:

“I’ll go on until I fall over.”

I like that one, too.

The upside-down model of management

When I managed McDonald’s restaurants — for nearly a decade — one thing always struck me as foolish:

The goal for most store managers — based upon systems established by the company —was to eventually be promoted out of the restaurant and into some corporate office, far away from the burgers, the customers, and the profit centers of the business, in pursuit of higher salaries in more prestigious positions far less critical to the company’s profitability.

In fact, the only way to significantly increase your pay at McDonald’s was to leave the restaurant and land a job that could often disappear tomorrow without significantly impacting the actual company in any way.

When a restaurant loses a store manager, it’s always in trouble. Service suffers, systems collapse, and profits diminish until a suitable replacement is found.

Store managers are the heartbeat of every restaurant.

If you lose a corporate executive, you would be hard-pressed — with certain exceptions — to even notice a difference for quite a while. They may claim to be impacting many restaurants significantly from their ivory towers, but if you placed the most capable, competent, accomplished person in the company in charge of every restaurant, profits would soar.

When you can stay home sick for three days and not even be noticed, your role just isn’t that important.

This has always struck me as an upside-down model of leadership. Instead of increasing the pay of people who exit the restaurant to the corporate offices, the highest-paid person in the company should be the store managers, where sales, service, brand, and reputation are paramount.

The company does not exist without its restaurants. They should be the shining cities on the hill.

Want to leave the restaurant for a corporate position?

No problem. But you’ll need to take a pay cut because you’ll be far less important to the company now.

Education operates similarly. Promotions in school districts eventually result in principals, vice principals, and teachers leaving their jobs for administrative positions far away from the place that matters most in all of education:

The school.

Also, and more importantly, the students.

The people who matter most.

This is also very much an upside-down model.

If a school loses its principal, it suffers mightily until a replacement is found. The principal’s role is critical to the school’s functioning, and the workload on a principal far exceeds the demands of any school district administrator except perhaps a superintendent.

Even losing a teacher causes enormous problems in a school. The result is an enormous crater in the classroom that isn’t easily filled but must be at all costs. Without an effective teacher in every classroom, schools teeter. Students suffer. Instruction deteriorates rapidly. Children’s futures are compromised. The purpose of education collapses.

But lose a central office administrator?

The impact on student achievement would take a long time to be noticed and would be minimal compared to losing a principal or teacher.

Want to be promoted from a position in a school to a job in the central office?

No problem, but take a pay cut. The highest salaries should be reserved for leaders who work with students and families on a daily basis, where the biggest differences can be made.

This should apply to teachers, too, since no one impacts student success and achievement more than teachers. Ideally, a school district should base its pay scale on how much direct contact an adult has with students:

The more contact you have with students, the greater your pay since you are by far the most important part of any school district.

Sound crazy?

If a teacher needs to miss a single day of work for any reason, a substitute teacher is required. Plans must be made. If you have an especially challenging student in a classroom, meetings take place to manage the class in the teacher’s absence. Support staff are engaged. Principals frequently check in on substitutes throughout the day to ensure things run smoothly. Teachers often spend their sick days or personal days agonizing over what might be happening in their classrooms.

A classroom teacher cannot miss a school day without someone else taking their place and considerable planning ahead of time.

In fact, a classroom teacher can’t even arrive ten minutes late to school without someone taking their place to ensure the safety of kids and the continuation of learning.

But if an administrator misses a day of work or arrives an hour or two late, no replacement is ever needed, and not a single child suffers their absence.

No one even notices.

If every central office administrator in a school district took a month off from work, teachers would continue to teach, learning would proceed, and kids would continue to be safe and happy.

But eliminate even one-tenth of the teachers in a school district for a day, and all hell would break loose. Children would suffer, and learning and safety would be seriously compromised.

Pay schedules based upon student contact would right size school districts and prioritize positions that matter the most:

Those in direct, daily contact with children.

This would also reduce the incentive for people to climb that inexplicable career ladder farther and farther away from children.

McDonald’s and education:

Two places where the incentives do not match the value and importance of the people working within the organization.

Upside-down leadership.

Organizations where people are incentivized to exit the places that matter most.

I’m sure there are more examples in the world, but these are the two I know best.

Delight your customers

It doesn’t take much for a business to delight its customers, and whenever it does, it ensures that customers remember that business for a long time.

Three examples from our recent trip to Canada:

The restroom in one of the restaurants had eight small, single-occupancy stalls. In the center of the room is a large bathtub with hoses hanging from the ceiling, serving as sources of water for washing your hands. I found myself standing with four other people around a communal bathtub, washing our hands, and engaged in conversation.

A great way to promote conversation and community in a restroom. 

I actually chatted with a man who only spoke French. The oddity of the bathtub somehow seemed to pierce the language barrier. 

It was a delightful surprise that I will likely never forget. 

While traveling by scenic train up the St. Lawrence River, our train went through a long, dark tunnel. As it entered, a disco ball came on, bringing light and festivity to the train car. The conductor later told me it was a new addition to the train car. 

A simple but brilliant one, too. It turned a darkened train tunnel into a fun and memorable experience for almost no money.   

While dining in Quebec City, we looked across to the restaurant on the opposite side of the street and saw flower pots on the second story of the establishment, decorated to look like the bottom half of people, hanging off the balcony.

It made us laugh. Simple, creative, and memorable.

Also costing almost nothing. 

We ate in at least 25 different restaurants on our trip. Most were excellent. Some were outstanding.

One stunk.

A few, like the two mentioned here, were undeniably memorable. I know precisely where these restaurants are located and can recall most of the meals and experiences because these restaurants delighted us in a fun, unexpected way. 

Surprise and delight.

Make it your mission — regardless of what you are doing — and people will notice and remember you.