Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 112

The lifespan of “Leaving on a Jet Plan”

Making stuff is a circuitous and oftentimes unpredictable route. Doing the work, every day, again and again, when the outcome is uncertain and unknowable and seemingly impossible, is most important.

Do the work.

The rest is almost entirely out of your hands.

Case in point:

“Leaving on a Jet Plane” was a song written and recorded by John Denver. It’s one of the most iconic songs of his brilliant career.

But the road to this song’s popularity was both circuitous and ridiculous.

Denver wrote the song during a layover at Washington Airport in 1966 and recorded it on his debut demo John Denver Sings. At the time, the song was titled “Babe I Hate To Go.”

Denver made several copies of his debut album and gave them out as Christmas presents that year. He had no record contract and no distributor. It was a simple, self-made album of the songs he was playing in shows. 

One year later, in 1967, Denver’s then-producer Milt Okun convinced him to change the title of the song to “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

In that same year, Peter, Paul and Mary – friends of Denver – recorded the song for their 1967 studio album, Album 1700, The song quickly went to #1 on the Billboard charts, making it Peter, Paul, and Mary’s only #1 hit.

After seeing Peter, Paul and Mary’s success with the song, Denver recorded it again in 1969 for his own debut studio album, Rhymes & Reasons. It was released as a single in October 1969 by RCA Records.

Although it has become one of John Denver’s best-known and most beloved songs, his version of the single failed to enter the Billboard charts and received very little radio play that year.

Yet today, Denver’s version of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” has been streamed more than 100 million times on Spotify.

Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version has just 43 million streams.

A lesson for creative people everywhere:

You just never know how or when or why something will work.

Just keep making stuff.

Teachers, this is our time…

My fellow teachers:

I would like to humbly suggest that given the massive teacher shortages that school districts are experiencing around the country, we must recognize that our value to our school districts and society has never been higher.

People have long claimed that teachers change the world. They assert that education is the backbone of our country. Then they fail to demonstrate this belief in any meaningful way.

They fail to provide the basic essentials for a classroom, for example, requiring teachers to use their own money to purchase supplies for their students.

In fact, it’s become quite popular these days to use social media to offer to help a teacher pay for the needs of their classroom. This is exceptionally generous but also absolutely insane. Teachers should not depend upon the kindness of others in order to do their job. Americans are not offering to purchase legal pads for attorneys, stethoscopes for doctors, adding machines for accountants, drafting tables for architects, or pocket protectors for computer programmers.

Why are we tacitly acknowledging that teachers are using their own money to purchase classroom supplies but not trying desperately to change a clearly broken system?

Elysha was purchasing supplies for her classroom last month when someone in line heard that she was a teacher and offered to pay for her purchases. It was an act of kindness that brought tears to her eyes, but rather than hoping to bump into a teacher in line at Staples and helping out a bit, how about this instead:

Demand that your local schools be funded to a level that meets the needs of every student. Vote for candidates who promise to do these things. Fight like hell to support professionals who are educating the next generation of Americans. Treat teachers like the highly educated, highly trained, critically important professionals that they are.

No other professional is required to purchase the basic supplies needed to complete their job. It’s a disgrace, and it’s been going on for decades.

Today teachers face many new challenges:

The politicization of our profession. School districts are now faced with people who believe that their mere existence gives them permission to dictate what and how we teach in our classrooms.A lack of adequate staffingThreats of violenceSchool shootings

As a result, teacher shortages are real. Vacancies have never been higher. Administrators are struggling to fill classrooms with highly trained professionals. Staffing shortages exist nationwide.

With this in mind, my fellow teachers, I would like to suggest that we demand to be treated like the highly educated, highly skilled professionals that we are. When you have leverage, use it. Right now teachers have an enormous amount of leverage.

For example:

If you’re spending your own money on classroom or student supplies, stop. It should shame and humiliate a superintendent to know this is happening in their school district, and they should do every damn thing in their power to end this practice and ensure that teachers have the materials needed to teach their students.

If your school or district has arbitrarily expanded your workload to meet staffing shortages absent any form of compensation, push back hard on this decision. Professionals are not required to work longer hours without additional compensation or advancement of any kind.

If you work for an administrator who doesn’t allow you to leave the school during your lunch break to pick up food, run an errand, stop at home to kiss your child, or do anything else, challenge this asinine absurdity. Professionals are permitted to use their free time in any way they see fit. If you work for one of these administrators, you work for an infantilizing fool who doesn’t understand the basic principles of management and professionalism.

Push back hard. Demand that your time is recognized as your time.

Or how about this one:

Your administrator gives you the last two hours of professional development to work on report cards but forbids you to leave the building to do this work at home. Even though the completion of your report cards only requires a laptop and a connection to the internet and can be done anywhere on the planet (and will most assuredly be done at home on your own time as well), the two hours of professional development given to complete this task during the work day must be completed within the walls of the school.

This is asinine. Professionals are not treated like this. It should not matter where you complete this kind of work. Having worked with a multitude of clients in almost every possible sector of business, I can assure you that when work can be done remotely, people are permitted to work wherever the hell they want.

Many of these problems are the result of the way that so many schools are run today:

Administrators, who are often little more than glorified teachers lacking any formal management training, treat their staff in the same way they once treated their students. They impose the same strategies and limits on adults as they did on kids because the only way they know how to manage people is to pretend that their school is one big classroom, filled with much older, much larger children.

The primary reason teachers leave the profession?

Dissatisfaction.

The reasons cited for this dissatisfaction?

Unsafe working environments. Micromanagement. Not being treated like a professional.

I’m lucky. I have worked for (and currently work for) administrators who avoid most of these pitfalls. For most of my career, I have been treated as a professional, and when I was not, I was able to demand that policies be changed with a fair amount of success. I’m not always pleased with the way my school district is run, but most of the people to whom I report have treated me like the highly trained professional that I am.

This is not the case for many of my fellow teachers. The infantilization and degradation of the teaching profession is a real thing. Untrained, unskilled, uninformed administrators routinely chase outstanding teachers from the profession through their inability to support and manage their people effectively.

But today teachers have leverage. Our skills are in demand. Schools across the country are placing thousands of untrained adults in classrooms because they cannot find teachers and staff to fill open positions.

If you’re working in a school that does not treat teachers like professionals, the time has come to let your thoughts be heard.

Teachers deserve better. They have always deserved better. We may now be in a position to demand better.

The proper response to a bad handshake

Earlier this year, a man reached to shake my hand after I congratulated him on winning a storytelling competition. As his hand clasped mine, he squeezed much harder than was necessary or expected, causing me pain, so I responded in the way I always do when a man (it’s always a man) attempts to crush my hand for no earthly reason:

I cried out.

“Ow!” I whined dramatically, in a voice both reedy and high-pitched. “That hurts!” The man immediately released my hand, looking almost panicked, but I continued. “Ow,” I whined again, shaking my hand. “Why did you do that?”

The man stared at me in both anger and disbelief. The fact that several other storytellers were witnessing the moment may have played a role in his reaction, but I’ve done this many, many times to many, many people, and the reaction is almost always the same:

Panic followed by embarrassment and anger.

But I don’t care. If you’re a man, you know that a certain segment of the male population feels the need to squeeze your hand to the point of pain when shaking it.

I have no idea why they do this.

Perhaps no one has ever taught them how to shake a hand properly, but it’s hard to imagine that someone could be painfully shaking hands for three or four decades without anyone pointing out the error of his ways.

Perhaps it’s an attempt to exert physical dominance over another person. A sign of strength. But even this is nonsense because these crushing handshakes are never expected. They amount to a sneak attack. An unexpected, unwarranted assault.

Of course you can crush someone’s hand in your own if they aren’t expecting it.

But give me a heads-up that you’re about to act like a jerk, and I promise that I can respond with a crushing handshake of my own.

So what am I to do? Just allow these monsters to crush my hand while I silently wait for the handshake to end?

Pretend it’s not happening?

Act like their crushing handshake means nothing to me?

Live my life accepting the fact that my hand will be crushed every now and again?

No, I say. Not on my watch.

So years ago, I adopted this strategy of whining like a baby when a man crushes my hand. I really play it up, trying to sound as weak, fragile, and loud as possible. I toss aside all my concerns about appearing weak and pathetic in an effort to make my counterpart look foolish and ridiculous.

If you’re going to crush my hand, I’ve decided, I’m going to stomp on your public persona. I’m going to let the world know that you hurt people when you shake their hands. I am going to respond to your sneak attack with one of my own.

A friend recently witnessed this strategy in action and had to walk away, claiming that the moment was incredibly awkward.

Exactly.

It’s the least I can do to someone causing me pain.

I suggest you try it sometime. I know it sounds awkward for everyone involved, but I never feel anything but great joy and enormous satisfaction.

 

Pivoting toward Lizzo

Elysha and I were discussing marriages wherein one spouse takes a sudden turn towards the ultra-orthodox version of their religion, oftentimes attempting to impose new rules and patriarchal gender roles into the relationship as a result.

Better, we thought, for your spouse to abandon religion altogether than to have them suddenly pivot toward the most conservative or orthodox version of your religion, or even worse, adopt some new, orthodox religion entirely.

In our limited experience, these pivots have been ruinous to marriages.

I am not a religious person, but Elysha pointed out that if I ever declared my adherence to some conservative, patriarchal orthodoxy, she would “put Lizzo on Spotify and take the kids.”

I thought it was funny, but I also found the brevity, specificity, and immediacy of her plan somewhat disturbing.

Like she’s been planning for this contingency for a long time.

 

“I’m too old for pronouns.”

I was speaking to someone who told me that he was “too old” for the changes in the way we use pronouns to treat people respectfully.

I felt bad for this person. Obviously, his brain has atrophied to the point that a shift in simple, everyday language was beyond his level of cognition.

I also found it odd since my children seem to have made this shift in pronouns rather easily, and though I admittedly stumble from time to time while trying to adopt someone’s preferred pronouns, I, too, am navigating these respectful changes without great difficulty.

I’ve also changed my vocabulary in a multitude of ways over the course of my life, eliminating words that were deemed offensive and expanding my vocabulary whenever possible.

It’s language. It’s supposed to be fluid, evolving, and dynamic.

If you’re too old to make this adjustment, you must be wicked old. Ancient, even. So stodgy, decrepit, and creaky that a simple request for a respectful shift in pronouns is too much for your already overly-taxed brain.

You must be practically dead.

Do me a favor:

If I ever become too old to accommodate someone’s request for a respectful shift in language, please berate me in every possible way. Call me names. Throw eggs at me. Send me letters with the word “Stupid!” scrawled across the page in crayon.

I’m serious about this.

I never want to be so unaccountably stupid.

Shortcomings and Flaws: 2022

More than a decade ago, a reader accused me of being materialistic after I wrote about my lack of a favorite number, specifically criticizing me for saying that when it comes to my salary, my favorite number is the largest number possible.

After properly refuting his charges of materialism, I acknowledged that I had plenty of other shortcomings and offered to list them in order to appease my angry reader. Then I did. Then I added to the list when friends suggested that I had forgotten a few.

Nice friends. Huh?

So began an annual tradition of posting my list of shortcomings and flaws, starting first in 2011 (the list only had 10 items that year), and continuing in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and now 2022.

I’m happy to report that although the list remains relatively long, I’m removing three items from the list this year:

I have an unreasonable fear of needles.

Though I’m no fan of needles (primarily as a result of my allergy to bee stings and a near-death experience), I’ve found strategies that allow me to manage injections in a reasonably calm way.

Sharing food in restaurants annoys me.

It no longer annoys me. Not really sure why, but I’m happy to share.

I wear my wireless headphones way too much.

I wear them constantly, but Elysha recently acknowledged that the enormous amount of content that I consume via my headphones has changed our lives in countless ways.

So it’s no longer a shortcoming. It’s now a strength.

I also tried to remove these two from the list, thinking I’d made significant progress in these areas, but Elysha emphatically said no:

It is hard for me to empathize with adults with difficulties that I do not understand or difficulties that I would’ve avoided entirely.

I have difficulty putting myself in another person’s shoes. Rather than attempting to understand the person, I envision myself within their context and point out what I would’ve done instead.

I have no additions this year, though it was suggested – somewhat in jest – that my lack of coffee and alcohol intake is a problem.

With all of that, I present:

Matthew Dicks’s List of Shortcomings and Flaws – 2022

1. I have a limited, albeit expanding palate (though I’d like to stress that my limited palate is not by choice).

2. It is hard for me to empathize with adults with difficulties that I do not understand or difficulties that I would’ve avoided entirely.

3. I have difficulty putting myself in another person’s shoes. Rather than attempting to understand the person, I envision myself within their context and point out what I would’ve done instead.

4. I do many things for the sake of spite.

5. I become angry and petulant when told what to wear.

6. Bees kill me dead.

7. I become sullen and inconsolable when the New England Patriots lose a football game that they should’ve won.

8. I lack adequate empathy for adults who are not resourceful or are easily overwhelmed.

9. I am unable to make the simplest of household or automobile repairs.

10. I eat ice cream too quickly.

11. I am uncomfortable and ineffective at haggling for a better price.

12. I am exceptionally hard on myself when I fail to reach a goal or meet a deadline that strikes me as reasonable.

13. I drink too much Diet Coke.

14. My dislike for ineffective, inefficient, or poorly planned meetings causes me to be unproductive, inattentive, and obstructionist at times.

15. Disorganization and clutter negatively impacts my mood, particularly when I cannot control the clutter myself

16. I am overly critical of my fellow storytellers, applying my own rules and standards to their performances.

17. I lack patience when it comes to assisting people with technology.

18. I don’t spend enough time with my best friend.

19. I have a difficult time respecting or celebrating someone’s accomplishments if economic privilege, nepotism, or legacy assisted in their success in some way.

20. I believe that there are right and wrong ways of parenting.

21. I love saying, “I told you so” so freaking much.

22. My blog entries contain far too many typos, despite my loathing of typos.

23. I am far too confrontational in moments when it would be safer and wiser to avoid the confrontation entirely.

Happy Charlie

Sometimes I stare at these photos of Charlie, cracking up during a game of cards, and remind myself that I should constantly, relentlessly, incessantly be seeking this level of joy in my life whenever possible.

Yesterday, I turned a plastic bag with a single bagel inside into a weapon and attacked Charlie, swinging it like a mace and smacking him in the butt.

He defended himself and ultimately launched a counterattack with a plastic pizza platter and a plastic sword.

This battle went on for a long, long time.

Joy at the level pictured in these photos was attained and sustained for quite a while, which was another good reminder:

You don’t need much to be happy.

Make some enemies

Clara started reading a new book today. The first page contained an epigraph.

She read it aloud:

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill

Then she turned to me and said, “Dad, that’s how you’ve lived your life!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know,” she said. “You have lots of enemies. Lots of people don’t like you because you stood up for stuff in your life.”

It was a sweet moment.

I think.

The fact that my daughter thinks I have many enemies was a little odd, but she’s certainly not wrong.

My successful lawsuit against Donald Trump certainly produced enemies in large, digitally vocal, numbers.

I’ve engaged in more than my fair share of verbal battles with folks over the years, including a large number of strangers.

Two of my previous school superintendents and one of my principals did not like me one bit.

A small band of stupid cowards once attempted – through enormous effort – to destroy my teaching career.

I also have my fair share of people who say terrible things behind my back to friends and allies who then report back to me.

So yeah, I guess I have enemies. I’m not sure if it’s always because I stood up for something. Sometimes I think it’s simply the result of me being me, but if my daughter sees me as a crusader, I’ll take it.

By the way, the quote is misattributed. There’s no evidence that Churchill ever uttered those words. It’s believed that Victor Hugo is first responsible for that quote, though even that theory is in dispute.

Churchill probably hates me now, too.

Incrementalism is real

I agree wholeheartedly with Truth Potato.

A little bit of progress, made each day, amounts to something enormous over time.

This is known as incrementalism. I wrote about it in my new book, Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life. 

Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small incremental changes instead of a few large jumps.

This is how most things worth doing get done, which is why so many people fail to do anything worth doing:

They’re always looking for the large jump. The big gulp. A magic pill.

Being told that if you cut just 100 calories from your daily diet, you’ll lose roughly 10 pounds in a year—without much of an effort on your part—sounds appealing, but losing less than a pound a month doesn’t feel worth the effort for many.

But 100 calories is equal to:

Three crackers with cheeseSix pretzel sticksOne apple

It’s not much to give up, and less than a pound per month won’t feel like much, but the results of incrementalism will be obvious when you look back after a year.

People just don’t want to wait a year.

Similarly, write about 200 words every day for a year, and 365 days later, you’ll have written a novel. I can’t guarantee if it’ll be any good, but you’ll have written 73,000 words, which is the length of many novels written today.

A couple of hundred words aren’t much, but for some, the everyday grind is simply not rewarding enough.

They don’t want to write a novel. They want to have written a novel.

Drive by a construction site every day for half a year. The progress made on any given day will likely seem nonexistent, but when you look back on the empty lot six months later, you’ll find yourself staring at a new home or bus station or goat rental company.

The problem with incrementalism is that it requires faith, which is what Truth Potato is trying to instill. You must believe – despite the lack of evidence – that your small changes, made daily, will result in something extraordinary in the future.

Incrementalism is a real thing. Making a dream come true often requires a thousand tiny steps. Each step is just as valuable as the rest, and they all must be taken.

But if a potato gets it, perhaps you can, too.

Dominos Pizza vs. The Catholic Church

Back in 2009, Domino’s Pizza’s new president, Patrick Doyle, publicly announced in a commercial that his pizza sucked. He acknowledged that the Domino’s pizza of old simply was not very good — it didn’t use real cheese, its crust was terrible, its sauce was terrible, it tasted like cardboard, and it was an extremely horrible product.

The commercial shared some reviews of its product:

“The sauce tastes like ketchup.”

“Domino’s pizza crust is to me like cardboard.”

“Worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had.”

“Totally void of flavor.”

Doyle promised that the problems would be corrected and Domino’s would become a pizza that you could love.

In January of 2010, when the transformation began, Domino’s stock price was $8.76 per share.

By 2015, its stock skyrocketed to $104.52 per share.

Today, it stands at $392 per share despite a 25% sell-off during this current bull market.

Had you invested in Domino’s at any point over the last 12 years, you would be a very happy investor.

Part of this turnaround was the improved ingredients and recipe, of course, but it was also Domino’s willingness to be transparent:

We suck. We promise to do better. Then they did better.

So few organizations are willing to be so bold.

It’s no surprise that the Catholic Church has suffered enormous damage to its reputation and public trust as a result of the rape and sexual abuse committed by priests, as well as the church’s willingness to allow those crimes to continue and their repeated attempts to cover it all up.

Asa result, Catholicism has experienced a greater net loss due to religious switching than any other religion in the United States.

Catholics have fled their church in large numbers.

Catholics also express a strong desire for the church to reform.

According to the most recent Pew survey, more than  60% of Catholics think the church should allow priests to marry and allow women to become priests. More than half of U.S. Catholics say the church should recognize same-sex marriages. More than half support abortion in all or most cases. More than 75% of Catholics believe that the church should condone contraception.

In response to declining membership and a desire for reform, the Catholic Church has decided against transparency. Rather than addressing their problems in a clear, honest, and public way – the Domino’s Pizza way –  the church has opted for concealment, obfuscation, and distraction.

As a result, priests have become the butt of many jokes. I’ve heard parents joke about never leaving their child alone with a priest, and I’ve also heard parents say with absolute earnestness that they would never even consider leaving their child alone with a priest.

Many of these parents are Catholic.

If the Pope wanted my advice and counsel, I would advise taking the same road that Domino’s Pizza took in 2009:

Transparency. Openly acknowledge the criminal behaviors that took place in your church in every way possible. Make amends. Make enormous, overwhelming, astounding amends. Listen to your parishioners and respond to their wants and needs. Reestablish your reputation by being honest with the people who are looking to you for moral support and guidance.

As long as the Catholic Church continues to avoid responsibility, its reputation will falter and people will leave the church.

Also, the public will respond.

Recently, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization Propublic announced that since the Catholic Church in the United States does not have its own public, centralized list of “credibly accused priests, they made one of their own.

The announcement went viral. The website has been accessed tens of millions of times.

Catholics are now using this list to determine if their priest has been credibly accused of rape or sexual assault.

Once again, the Catholic Church has lost control of the story.

You have a choice in a crisis:

Control the message through honesty, transparency, and doing the right thing, or cede the high ground and allow others to control the message for you.

This is a perfect example of that reality.

My mother was Catholic. I was born Catholic but left the church after learning in my first CCD class about the existence of The Pope.

I’m far too anti-authoritarian to accept that one man – and only a man – could be in charge of so much. Even as a boy, I saw this was nonsense. Eventually, I devolved into the reluctant atheist I am today, but my mother loved the church. I have many Catholic friends. I think the Catholic Church does good work. Despite my opposition to its ridiculous, vile patriarchal structure and many of its core tenets related to contraception, abortion, and sexuality, I hate to see it so maligned.

But it deserves to be maligned, You can’t turn a blind eye while your employees rape children for years. It’s a terrible, evil, and heinous thing that leaders of the church did and condoned.

But there are plenty of good people in the Catholic Church who want and deserve better.

But I don’t think they will do better until the church takes aggressive, proactive responsibility for what had happened, creates transparent systems through which these crimes can never happen again, and makes overwhelming amends to anyone who was harmed.

Oddly enough, the Catholic Church would do well to take the Domino’s Pizza approach:

Brutal, transparent honesty followed by an unrelenting commitment to reform.

Also, because the church has done so much damage, astounding, overwhelming amends.