Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 555

What happened to bunnies and kitties and cookies?

My wife was tucking my three year old daughter in last night.  She asked her what she thought she would dream about while she slept.  

Clara's answer: "Hmm… Triceratopses."

My daughter is a science nerd.

Resolution update: January 2012

In an effort to hold myself accountable to my yearly goals, I post the monthly progress made at the end of each month.  

Here are the results for January.  They are not impressive. 

1. Don't die.

So far, so good.

2. Lose ten pounds.

I'm off to a great start in 2012.  In the month of January, I managed to add three pounds.  Now I have to lose thirteen pounds. 

3. Do at least 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups five days a day.  Also complete at least two two-minute planks five days per week.

Done. The decision to reduce this goal from seven days a week to five has made a big difference.  Those two rest days make the workout days much more palatable, and there is considerably less exercising taking place after midnight. 

4. Practice the flute for at least an hour a week.

I failed to accomplish this goal in 2011 and little has changed in 2012.

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

Progress continues. The deadline is still well within reach. 

6. Complete my sixth novel.

Though I am not currently working on my sixth novel, I have about 12,000 words written already during a period of uncertainty over the summer.  

So that's a start.

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

I have three children's books in various stages of revision.  I met with my writing group last week and received some solid feedback.  My focus remains on my adult novel at the moment, however, so this goal will have to wait a bit.

8. Complete the book proposal for my non-fiction, photographic  collaborative project.

This project will be tackled during the summer. 

9. Complete three chapters of my memoir.

This project is taking a backseat to my novel. 

10. Complete at least twelve blog posts on my brother and sister blog.

Computer problems on my sister's end prevented anything from being posted in January.  Hopefully these problems will be rectified in February. 

11. Become certified to teach high school English by completing two required classes.

Elysha is currently working on finding a college that is offering the two courses that I need to complete in order to become certified. 

Oddly enough, completion of the courses seems to be the least of my problems.  The challenge appears to be in finding a school where they are being offered at a time when I can attend.

This has been frustrating to say the least. 

12. Publish at least one Op-Ed in a newspaper.

Nothing done on this goal as of yet, but it is likely that I will be publishing pieces as part of the promotion for my new book.  I don't expect the completion of this goal to be a problem. 

13. Attend at least five Moth events with the intention of telling a story.

I told a story earlier this week at a Story Collider event at the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca.  The Story Collider is a live story telling organization in New York City that focuses on stories with a connection to science.  Unlike The Moth, it is a non-competitive event, but Moth regulars have also told stories for The Story Collider, and Moth superstar Erin Barker is a Story Collider producer. 

I don't think I will count this event toward my goal of five Moth events in 2012 unless I appear to be coming up short at the end of the year.

The next Moth StorySLAM that I plan to attend takes place on Monday, March 5th in Brooklyn.    

14. Complete the necessary revisions of our rock opera (The Clowns) so that it can be staged as a full production in the fall.

My partner continues to work on securing a commitment from a local playhouse, and once we have a deadline and my novel is complete, work on this progress will commence.  

15. Rid Elysha and myself of all education debt before the end of the year.

Incremental progress has been made on this front in January.  

16. Give yoga an honest try.

I have signed up for yoga classes being taught after school by a colleague who also happens to be a yoga instructor. I await the first class.   

17. Meditate for at least five minutes every day.

I have done a great deal of reading on this subject and feel like I probably know enough to at least begin the process.  I plan on starting my meditating on my birthday (February 15).

18. Agree to try at least one new dish per month, even if it contains ingredients that I wouldn't normally consider palatable.

On New Year's Even, I tasted and liked the cauliflower potatoes and butternut squash risotto served at our friend's wedding.

I'm not sure if I ate these foods before or after midnight, but it counts for January. 

19. Conduct the ninth No-Longer-Annual A-Mattzing Race in 2012.

No date for the next race has been set, but I would like to target early May if possible/ 

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

I am four days late posting, but a series of events caused me to take a two day hiatus from my blog.  I will explain the reasons in a subsequent post, but suffice it to say the excuses are reasonable.

If youre going to ask one question in an interview, perhaps it should be, Tell me about your parents.

There's an adage about entrepreneurs that goes like this:

The more skin you have in the game, the greater your commitment.

In other words, the greater the personal risk that a business person faces, the greater his or her commitment to that business will be.

While not always true, I believe this to be true more often than not, and as a result, I would like to suggest applying this rule to all hiring decisions as well.

During an interview, I suggest that questions be asked about an applicant's family.  Specifically, I would want the interviewer to determine the current financial state of an applicant's parents, specifically if the applicant is young.

Does the applicant still live with Mommy and Daddy?

If the applicant is living on his or her own, would the applicant's parents allow the applicant to move back home if finances became a problem?

How did the applicant pay for college?  Did Mommy and Daddy fund the entire education or did the applicant make a significant financial investment as well?

If the job doesn't work out, are Mommy and Daddy in a position to assist the applicant in the event that money becomes tight?

A friend recently suggested that the people who are most successful in the first five years of their careers tend to be those who have no other choice but to be successful.  If there are no parents to provide a home or financial support, student  loans in need of repayment, and maybe even a family of their own to support, then an applicant is more likely to do whatever is required in order to be successful.

Issues like pride, arrogance, laziness, a lack of focus and a sense of entitlement are less likely to become a problem when a person has only himself to count upon for the next meal.

Naturally, I do not think that this is always the case.  I know many people with enormously supportive parents who are very successful in their careers. 

But I think my friend is right.  If the only thing standing between you and homelessness is your success, you can't help but have more skin in game, and therefore, you are more likely to be committed to your job.       

I also believe that the people who have little or no parental support tend to people who complain a little less, work a little harder, adapt to change a little more willingly and accept the role of a boss a little better. 

When you can't call Mom or Dad to complain, you are more likely to just do your job.

Gratitude journal: Visiting the fish

Tonight I am grateful for the enormous aquariums positioned outside The Rainforest Café, a restaurant located in Westfarms Mall in Farmington, CT.

My daughter adores those fish.  Tonight she specifically requested to visit them, and wanting to dine out, we obliged. 

As a parent, there's nothing better than seeing joy plastered on your child's face.  Those tropical fish do it every time.   

My goodnight kiss

Oddly enough, the quality of the goodnight kisses from my daughter improves considerably when I am not actually there.

Note how Clara blows kisses to me.  She hasn't mastered the concept fully yet. 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: A great movie tragically marred by Steven Spielberg's failure to engage in unprotected sex:

I've been watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind again, a little bit at a time, as I respond to email and complete other similarly mindless tasks in the evening. 

I have always thought of this film as flawless.

Slate's Bill Wyman recently watched all of Spielberg's films and rated Close Encounters of the Third Kind as one of Spielberg's best.

While I still agree that the film is excellent, fatherhood has unexpectedly changed one component of the movie for me, and unfortunately, it's a big one.

Richard Dreyfuss' character, Roy, in case you don't remember, is the protagonist whose brief encounter with alien spaceships leaves an image implanted in his mind of the location where the aliens intend to land and make contact with representatives of the US and world government (an unnamed mountain in Wyoming).  There are hundreds of people who are implanted with the same vision throughout the world, but Roy is one of only two people who actual make it to the mountain and manage to dodge the military in order to witness the arrival of the aliens.

It turns out there is a reason why the aliens want Roy at the landing site:

They want to take him with them.  Although there is a team of jumpsuit-clad, government-trained soldiers ready to go with the aliens, these military bozos are rejected by the aliens. 

Instead, Roy is the only one permitted to go. 

He does.  He boards the ship and the film ends with it lifting off into outer space.

One problem:  Roy is married with kids. 

Even though the marriage seems to have been going well until Roy becomes fixated on his vision of the mountain, I'll give him a pass on abandoning his wife, since she leaves with the kids when Roy's obsession causes him to build a ten foot tall dirt model of the mountain in his living room.

It's not much of a pass, but I'll give him a pass. 

But Roy also has two kids. Sons. Boys who will not only never see their father again but will never know where he went. 

Prior to being a father, this detail washed over me without notice.  But with a daughter of my own, this bit of plot now looms large in the film for me, and it causes a character who is supposed to be likable, honorable and revered to be considerably less so in my eyes.

As Roy prepares to board the ship, the lead scientist turns to him and says, "I envy you."

Sitting alone in my living room, I actually said aloud, "Don't envy the bastard. He's abandoning his children.  Probably forever."

It's an example how how parenthood can change your perspective on life forever.   

Spielberg was not married did not have children in 1977 when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released.  He would not have children for another decade, so it's likely that the prospect of children had not even entered his consciousness yet.

I can't help but wonder if things might have been different for Dreyfuss' character if Spielberg had children at the time he made the film.  Roy's sons could have easily been removed from the film entirely with nothing substantial lost in terms of the story. 

I suspect that Spielberg had a blind spot in 1977, and that allowed him to send his protagonist to space while his protagonist's family remained behind, utterly forgotten. 

There isn't a single moment in the film when Roy even thinks about the prospect of leaving his family.  

In a 2007 interview, Spielberg confessed that if he had a chance to make this movie today, Dreyfuss' character would never have abandoned his family to go to outer space. 

Was Spielberg blind to this flaw in his film because he did not have children of his own?

I suspect so.  I suspect that I might have done the same thing. 

If asked if I would abandon my wife and daughter today in order to be one of the first human beings to visit an alien world, I would say no without having to think twice.

But if asked ten years ago, prior to  my marriage and the birth of my daughter, if I would have considered abandoning a hypothetical family in order to make a historic visit to an alien world, I might have said yes.  I can envision myself making arguments about the magnitude and scope of such a journey in comparison to the commonality and frequency of fatherhood and marriage.

And I would have been foolish and naïve and wrong.

Just as I suspect Spielberg was in 1977 when he sent his protagonist into space, leaving a family behind.

Gratitude journal (with a sprinkle of spite): Fountain soda and NOT COFFEE

Tonight I am grateful for the joy of the unexpected Diet Coke that was delivered to me this afternoon.

It was having an especially challenging day at school, mostly the result of an unexpected deadline and significantly reduced timeframe in order to meet the demand, when my colleague surprised me with a large, plastic cup of fountain soda from Burger King.

There's something about a fountain soda that makes it far superior to any Diet Coke found in a can or bottle.

It was just what I needed.  My mood improved almost immediately and I found myself better able to power through the rest of the day, easily meeting my unexpected deadline and teaching the hell out of the rest of my day.

Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference.  

Perhaps this is how most people feel about about coffee, except I have never spoken ad nauseum about my love for, need for or addiction to fountain soda.  This is the first time I have ever written about the subject, and it was not expressed by something like this:

Need. Fountain. Soda. Now.

Or this:

If I don't get a fountain soda soon, look out!

Or this:

This is what I call a two cup, 64-ounce fountain soda day.   

So yeah, I was grateful for that fountain soda surprise today. 

But more importantly, I'm also grateful that I've never spoken about coffee or any other beverage as if it is a legitimately interesting subject for discussion or something that anyone wants to hear.

A tickle. Not a tissue.

Clara had been in her crib for about fifteen minutes when she began calling for Mommy.  Elysha thought that she was asking for a tissue, so she went upstairs to give her one.

It wasn't a tissue that she was requesting.

It was a tickle.

Much cuter but considerably less okay since it was well past her bedtime.

I am an upright, though occasionally marginalized, Pacific Islander.

When I am asked to indicate my race on an official form, I almost always check Samoan, or if not available, Other Pacific Islander.

If none of these are available, I usually go with Other.

When asked for my position on an official form (the intent being to  determine my occupation), I usually write Upright, though I have used Marginalized in the past as well.

I'd like to say that I'm taking a stand against artificial attempts to codify or classify me, but in truth, I just like being a pest.

An instigator, my mother used to call me. 

And the best thing about these answers is that I have been doing this for years and no one has ever commented on any of my responses.

Gratitude journal: Many hands thrust Budo and his friends into the light

Tonight I am grateful for the many, many people around the world who are working hard to put my next book, MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, into readers' hands.  

Today I exchanged emails with my Spanish translator, who wanted to better understand the intricacies of, among other things, bathroom bowling (the act in which you hold someone's head in a toilet while flushing it).  Her attention to detail and desire to get the translation right is greatly appreciated. 

And from Australia comes this amusing tee-shirt design, which is planned along with a similar postcard campaign, as part of the launch of my book Down Under.

 

So many smart, creative and clever working on behalf of me and my characters leaves me feeling but humbled and incredibly fortunate this evening.