Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 425

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.

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:

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

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:

Professional best man 
Double date companion
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 advisor

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

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.
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. Spontaneity, a disregard for photogenic conventions and  an authentic smile will make a selfie almost acceptable.
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.
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 not-so-good 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.

The Moth: Battle Outside Big Sky

The following is a story that I told at a Moth StorySLAM at Housing Works in New York City earlier this year. 

The theme of the night was Interference.

I told a story about my attempt to break up a fight outside my gym.

I finished in first place.

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.