Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 110

All of my favorites!

Ask and you shall receive!

Behold… the image I wished for two days ago, including logos for:

New England Patriots
Boston Bruins
Boston Celtics
… and yes,  the New York Yankees

Designed by the reader, podiatrist, and fascinating human being Erik Feigen.

Not only did Erik design the logo, but he sent me a design large enough to have it printed on a shirt, a hat, and maybe even a flag.

Readers really are the best people.

Why golf?

There are lots of reasons to love golf.

Exercise. Particularly for those of us who walk with our bags on our backs.

Quality time spent with friends.

The opportunity to meet new people.

An endlessly challenging game.

Ceaseless competition, against yourself, your past performances, and your fellow players.

Time spent in the outdoors, under clouds and sky, sometimes alongside wildlife.

Unforgettable memories.

Hilarious hijinks.

Occasionally moments of glory.

If none of this appeals to you, there is always this, too:

Spectacular views like this one, which I enjoyed last week on a public course where I often play. This was one of many that I blessedly witnessed last week.

It was even better in real life.

Logo retrofit

Having grown up outside of Boston, I’m a die-hard fan of the Boston sports teams.

Except for the Red Sox, of course.

When it comes to baseball, I’m a Yankees fan.

I fell in love with the Yankees in 1984. My stepfather and brother were Red Sox fans, but being a contrarian who didn’t exactly get along with either one of them, I began turning television to channel 11 out of New York whenever possible, which was broadcasting the Yankees games on WPIX.

It began as a simple attempt to annoy my family members, but while watching players like Don Mattingly, Willie Randolph, Ricky Henderson, Dave Winfield, and Ron Guidry, I quickly fell in love.

It wasn’t easy being a Yankees fan in the Boston area. Not only is the area filled with rabid Red Sox fans, but sports in Boston is life. I once explained to Elysha that in Boston, the workday is simply the means by which people kill time between sporting events.

It’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

So walking around the Boston area, or almost anywhere in Massachusetts, wearing the hat of the most hated team in Boston sports history, was rough, but it also suited me. Conflict, confrontation, and contrarianism are some of my favorite things.

On Sunday, as Elysha and I ascended the ramps at Gillette Stadium to watch the Patriots defeat the Lions 29-0, I saw someone wearing a sweatshirt with this logo.

Clever. The logos of the Celtics, Bruins, Patriots, and Red Sox, all wrapped in one.

I asked Elysha about the chances of this same logo existing with the Yankees interlocking NY in place of the Red Sox logo. It was a dumb question, of course. If a store even attempted to sell an item of clothing with such a label anywhere in Massachusetts, it would probably be burned to the ground.

But wouldn’t it be great to own one?

A combination of shock and sacrilege that would prompt a level of conversation, controversy, and conflict that I adore.

More than just an apple

In the spirit of needing very little to make something special, here is Charlie, personifying his apple, turning it into a frightened piece of fruit.

Little things. Big results.

Matt Tom Jim

Homework For Life is my trademarked method of finding and recording the stories of our everyday life.

I’ve written about it in my book, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the power of Storytelling.

I’ve spoken about it many times, in workshops, interviews, college classes, and corporate retreats. My TEDx Talk on the topic has about 75,000 views and counting.

Thousands of people do Homework For Life today. They’ve created apps and workflows and automation to make the job easier. It’s taught in high school and college classes and has been included in curricula across the country.

Even if you never plan on telling a story… even if you plan on never speaking again for the rest of your life, you should still be doing Homework For Life.

I first started Homework For Life for myself back in 2014 (and I’ve been blogging daily since 2005), but my friend, Bengi, recently gave me a notebook that we used for communication back in an age before text messages and email, when we lived together from 1989-1992 in a home we affectionately called The Heavy Metal Playhouse.

For a short time, our friend, Tom also lived with us.

The notebook isn’t exactly Homework For Life. We weren’t seeking to capture the storyworthy moments from our days. But reading through the book resurrected so many memories.

I managed to recapture so much of my past.

The book is filled with our concerns of the day. Money and mice. Hamsters and parties. Household chores and friends. Girls and vacation planning. Notes from others who passed through our home and our lives.

It’s the power of the written word. The record of our days. The reclamation of a time long, lost to time, now returned.

It’s not Homework for Life, but it’s incredible just the same. It represents an opportunity to return to one of the best times of my life, when I was soul-crushingly poor, frequently cold, occasionally hungry, and absent of any meaningful, perceivable future, yet I needed so little to be happy.

I had been kicked out of my childhood home and sent to live the rest of my life on my own, yet I was awash in friendship, love, and joy.

These notes – passed back and forth between friends and roommates – brought back to my mind people I haven’t seen in decades, singular moments in time, and the feelings I had about my newly found independence, our seemingly endless struggle, and the building of a friendship that remains today.

It’s a reminder to all:

Write stuff down. Capture your days. Hold onto the preciousness that every day has to offer.

Homework For Life is the way I suggest you do so, but whatever you choose, don’t let a single day slip away again.

How to improve your net worth

This graph is not to say that cord cutting, coffee at home, or coupon clipping are bad things.

Actually, coupon clipping might be a terrible way to spend your time if it does not yield a proportionally profitable result.

Spending two hours seeking and clipping coupons to save $3 would be a disastrous use of your time, unless, of course, you enjoy clipping coupons more than time spent visiting friends, walking in nature, or even watching reruns of Law & Order.

And if you do, no judgment. I believe in making relentlessly thoughtful choices about how we spend our time. If you can look back on your life and be content with the time spent clipping coupons, then it was time well spent.

But making coffee at home does not require any more time than coffee purchased at a coffee shop (in fact, it probably saves time), so go right ahead and save that money.

And cord-cutting might require an initial investment of time and money, but it will continue to yield financial returns month after month, so go right ahead and cut that cord.

We did, and we couldn’t be happier.

But these are tiny ways to improve your net worth, as this chart rightly demonstrates.

Investing in yourself, expanding the boundaries of your life into new and uncharted realms, and building your circle of meaningful contacts are always the best and most profitable means of increasing your net worth.

They are also very likely to make you the happiest.

In the end, net worth is a lot less about the money saved over the course of your life and a lot more about the investments that you make in yourself and your earning potential.

Linguistic complaint

Am I the only one who does this?

When someone says that they are nearsighted, I immediately assume they can’t see things up close.

Then, after a second or two, I remember – for the one-millionth time – that I must think counter-intuitively when it comes to vision impairment. Nearsighted people can only see things near them, and while this makes sense based on the actual meaning of the word, we don’t typically indicate someone’s impairment by what they can do.

People are partially deaf. Not “slightly hearing.”

Individuals have attention deficit disorder. Not “occasionally attentive ability.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is stupid. Not microscopically smart.

When someone is suffering from a deficit, we typically identify the deficit by what it prevents the person from doing.

This is true even when it comes to vision. People who are blind are visually impaired.

But not when it comes to nearsightedness and farsightedness. In both of these cases, we identify the deficit by what the person can do instead of what they can’t.

This both confuses and annoys me constantly.

Am I alone on this one?

I accidentally bought cool shoes

I once owned a pair of 1985 Air Jordan sneakers. I purchased them when I was 14 years old with money earned from babysitting.

If I still owned them today, they would apparently be worth anywhere from $3,000-$30,000 depending upon their condition.

I don’t own them anymore, of course, because I wore them out. Played thousands of hours of basketball with them strapped to my feet. Hiked and climbed and did all the things that kids did while wearing the sneakers they owned back when I was a kid.

Before keeping your sneakers looking pristine was a nascent thought in anyone’s mind.

Those 1985 Air Jordans were the last pair of sneakers that I cared about in any way whatsoever. Since then, my purchasing decisions regarding footwear (and everything else) shifted from style and name-brand appeal to comfort, support, and durability.

The fact that I was exceptionally poor and for a time homeless helped this philosophy along considerably.

But if you know me or have ever seen me, you may have noticed that even today, my focus on clothing is limited at best and centers very much on function over fashion. Simplicity over style.

In the words of one of my students last year:

“You really don’t put any thought into your clothing. Do you?”

If I’m ever wearing something that you perceive to be stylish, it was most assuredly a gift of some kind.

Except for last month, when I accidentally bought a pair of Nike sneakers that are apparently cool. I thought I was purchasing just another pair of black Nike sneakers, but I somehow stumbled upon something impressive in the minds of people who bizarrely spend time looking at other people’s feet:

Nike Air Max 270

I only know these sneakers are considered cool because half a dozen kids and two adults have already commented on my sneakers, which really annoys me.

I’m not a sneaker guy.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m a sneaker guy.

I’ve worked hard to burnish an image of someone who cares little about style, despises outwardly facing brand names on any item of clothing, and finds the whole focus on fashion needlessly superficial, a waste of time, and oftentimes classist.

But now I have ten-year-old boys and grown-ass men somehow taking notice of the mix of leather, fabric, foam, and rubber on my feet and saying weird things to me like “Hey, cool sneakers!” and “Nice kicks!” even though I didn’t design these sneakers, make these sneakers, or even knowingly choose these apparently stylish sneakers.

It’s surprisingly frustrating and exceedingly annoying to be accidentally, unwittingly, and undesirably cool, even if it’s only below the shins.

I’ll need to wear them out quickly.

Great new… some things never change

I spent the weekend at Camp Workcoeman, a Boy Scout camp in New Hartford, CT.

Charlie and a handful of Scouts from his pack spent the weekend hiking, earning badges, and experiencing an overnight camping trip for the first time while their parents tagged along.

I spent hundreds of nights camping as a Boy Scout, but this was the first time I had attended an overnight Scouting event in more than 25 years.

I wasn’t sure what to expect.

At one point on Saturday afternoon, I found myself speaking to four young men who were members of the Order of the Arrow, an organization that recognizes Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives. You’re nominated for the Order of the Arrow by Scoutmasters and voted on by members of your troop.

I was inducted into the Order of the Arrow back in 1987. In those days, Order of the Arrow nominees participated in something called an ordeal as a right of passage. It involved a weekend camping trip under the stars – rain or shine – where nominees were fed bread and water for all three meals, forbidden to speak, and required to do hard labor for a day. During my ordeal, I spent 12 hours on Saturday in September blazing new trails through a forest. About a dozen other OA nominees and I fell trees, removed boulders, leveled ground, and cleared brush.

It was exhausting.

Then we returned to camp for another meal of bread and water before sleeping once again under the stars.

On Sunday morning, we awoke to an enormous breakfast and permission, at last, to speak.

It was a difficult weekend, for sure. Friday night was cool and clear, but around midnight on Saturday, it rained for an hour or two, leaving us cold, wet, and shivering on the parade field. I was achingly hungry from Friday night through Sunday morning, and I was exhausted after my day of labor. I went home with scratches, blisters, and a throbbing headache.

But I also look back on the experience as an important one. A defining moment in my life. Proof positive that I can do hard things.

When I told Charlie about my ordeal, he asked if they still have ordeals today. I told him that they probably have bubble-wrapped versions of ordeals, complete with sundae stations and naptime, so when met the four young men who were also OA members, I asked them about their ordeal, and I was thrilled to learn that little has changed.

The only real difference between their ordeal and mine was that they were fed a meal on Saturday night after their day of hard labor rather than waiting until Sunday morning. Even that difference, we thought, could have been a difference between one Scout camp and another and not a generational difference.

Otherwise, our experiences were nearly identical.

I was thrilled. Some things don’t change.

In fact, the whole weekend represented that realization for me. I was amazed at how the simple raising of the Scout sign by a leader could bring 650 Scouts fooling around on a parade field to complete silence. This was absolutely the case when I was a Boy Scout, but I was once again thrilled to see it still working today. When the flag was lowered at the end of the day, the entire camp came to attention. Scouts saluted, and all remained silent for the five minutes it took to slowly lower two flags and watch a team of Scouts fold the American flag the proper way.

I have a hard time keeping 19 kids silent for the 45-second walk from the classroom to the gymnasium, but on Saturday, hundreds of young boys stood silently at attention, paying respect to the flag without a single reminder to remain silent.

It’s how I remember my days of Scouting, and it’s blessedly how Scouting remains today.

There were other moments like this. The procedures and sounds of the dining hall were exactly how I remembered them. I knew most of the songs and skits at the Saturday night campfire. Many of the skills that Charlie was learning were skills I had learned long ago.

There were some differences, too, of course.

Girls can now join Scouting, so a mother and daughter from the pack joined us on Saturday as we hiked through the various stations.

There was a disability awareness lesson, where a Scoutmaster with several physical disabilities as well as autism (which he, my daughter, and many others do not label as a disability) took the Scouts through several activities designed to simulate specific disabilities and increase awareness and empathy.

The lesson related to “duty to God” steered clear of endorsing any specific religion and make it clear that “duty to God” can also mean a duty to yourself and others for the atheists in the crowd.

But these changes were good. Welcomed and necessary.

But at its core, very little had changed when I was a Scout, and that pleased me so very much. Elysha has often said that she thinks I learned more in Boy Scouts than I learned in school, and she might be right. Scouting didn’t teach me to read or calculate or write, but it taught me discipline, leadership, tenacity, cooperation, tolerance, and grit. It helped me develop an enormous storehouse of self-confidence and optimism. I found ways to connect with others and make new friends. I learned to struggle and endure, both physically and mentally.

And Scouting taught me an immeasurable mountain of skills that I still use on a daily basis.

I’ve worried that Scouting might have changed since my days as a Boy Scout. I worried that Charlie might find himself engaged in a softer, easier, gentler version of the Scouting that I loved so much.

From all appearances, this isn’t the case. The Boy Scouts have held onto the traditions, expectations, and rigor that helped me become the person I am today.

I’m so happy that Charlie will experience the same, and with Clara now in Scouting, too, maybe she will, too.

Sink signage saddness

There’s a sign in my workplace lunchroom that forbids people from leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

Every time I see this sign, I’m saddened.

Do we really need this sign?

What kind of monster leaves dirty dishes in the sink? Do I really work with the kind of people who would commit such a thoughtless, heinous crime against humanity?

Honestly, who leaves dirty dishes in the sink? What kind of person leaves the detritus of their meal behind for others to clean?

Maybe it’s just one soulless monster who has necessitated this sign. I hope so.

Even if that’s true, it still makes me sad.