Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 638

Resolution update: January 2011

As a means of holding myself accountable, I post the monthly results of my New Year's resolutions here.

1.  Lose 23 pounds, bringing me down to my high school track and field weight. 

I lost half a pound in the month of January.  Not quite the pace I was hoping to start off the year.  But now I have tendinitis in my left knee.  That should help matters considerably. 

2.  Do at least 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups a day.

I missed the first three days of the month but have not missed a day since. 

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

Did not practice once in the month of January.  To be honest, I forgot about this resolution.  I need to bring my flute home from work in order to make this happen.

4.  Find a wine that I can drink every night or so.

I drank two glasses of wine in January.  I liked one quite a bit but it was a wine that is no longer made. 

Of course. 

5.  Complete my fifth novel.

MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND (my fourth novel) is complete.  I am currently writing two different stories in hopes that one will take off and become my next novel.  A sequel to MEMOIRS is also not out of the question.  This is actually the first day that I do not have a story to definitively work on and I am feeling a little lost.

I should be able to make a more informed decision once I have an American publisher for MEMOIRS. 

6.  Complete and submit one children's book to my agent.

Not yet, but perhaps now is the time to write one. 

7.  Complete the book proposal for the non-fiction collaborative project that I began last year.

Not yet.    

8.  Complete an outline for my memoir

Work continues on this project.  I am considering outsourcing some of the work to friend and family by asking them to recommend stories about my life that should be included in the memoir. 

9.  Convince my sister to write on http://107federalstreet.blogspot.com at least once a week and do the same myself.

No progress.  My sister lives a topsy-turvy lifestyle, and so far I have not been able to focus her on the task at hand.  

10.  Drink at least four glasses of water every day.

I actually did this for about a week and then forgot about the resolution entirely.  This kind of thing happens a lot during the first month of the year.

11.  Complete at least one of the three classes required for me to teach English on the high school level.

Nothing done yet.  But it's looking like another snow day tomorrow.  Perhaps I'll call the state and get that list of classes.

12.  Try liver.

Nope.

13.  Publish an Op-Ed in a national newspaper.

Nope.

14.  Participate in The Moth as a storyteller, at a live show or on their radio broadcast.

Nope. 

15. See our rock opera (The Clowns) performed on stage as a full production or in a dramatic reading format.

Earlier this month we completed another round of revisions and conducted a reading in my home.  Interested parties operating at least two different theaters have the rock opera in hand and we await their verdict.

16.  Organize my basement.

Significant progress was made this month.

17.  Land at least one paying client for my fledgling life coach business.

Nope.  Anyone? 

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

Still waiting on the funding.

19. Replace the twelve ancient windows on the first and second floor of the house with more energy efficient ones.

Still waiting on the funding.

20. Make one mortgage payment from poker profits.

I actually earned about 20% of my mortgage in the month of January, and a large percentage of that money came from live games rather than online poker. 

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

Done.

Top Gun and Homer Simpson? Whats next?

I have a hard time fearing the economic power of China after learning that China Central Television ripped off explosions from Top Gun in order to show off a Chinese J-10 fighter plane firing a missile during maneuvers and destroying another aircraft.

I realize that the Chinese are famous for ignoring copyright, but this is ridiculous. 

And not the first time.

"In a previous case in 2007, China's state-run Xinhua news agency issued a news story about a discovery related to multiple sclerosis, which was accompanied by an X-ray showing the head of cartoon character Homer Simpson."

What's next?

Moonraker footage to support claims that they landed men (and scantily-clad women) on the Moon?

Just because women choose not to contribute to the assemblage of all human knowledge does not make the medium any less egalitarian

The Daily Beats asks:

How egalitarian is this? According to a recently published study, only about 13 percent of those who edit or write articles for Wikipedia are women—the average Wikipedia contributor is a male in his mid-20s.

Actually, Daily Beast, Wikipedia is entirely egalitarian. 

Anyone is allowed to write or edit for the online encyclopedia.  Even I have edited articles in the past.  Simply because the predominant contributors of Wikipedia are twenty-something men does not make it any less egalitarian than the National Football League, Maxim magazine or bull riding.

Some things just appeal more to men than to women. 

And while it might be slightly more palatable to ignore football and bull riding and Maxim than the world's largest and most utilized storehouse of human knowledge, the fact remains that women have simply failed to show an interest in it.

And not because of a lack of equality.    

The Daily Beast goes on to mention:

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, has declared it her goal to raise that number to 25 percent by 2015.  The move to include more women isn't about feminism or equality, she says, but an effort to make the encyclopedia as good as it can be."

I was pleased to hear that Gardner's goal to increase female participation in Wikipedia has nothing to do with feminist intent since no woman is being denied the opportunity to participate in the online encyclopedia.  And since the encyclopedia's business is conducted entirely online, the sex of a Wikipedia editor does not play a role in a woman's willingness to participate. 

Women are not being asked to walk into a boys' club and demand to be heard. They simply need to login and press keys on a computer. 

This is not a failure of opportunity.  This is a lack of interest or desire.

And honestly, are we surprised?  I have known a hell of a lot of twenty-something men who would be excited to spend hours in front of a computer screen, writing and fact checking articles about their favorite topics. 

I cannot think of a single woman who would be willing to do the same.    

Like it or not, nerds and geeks are predominately male. 

Still, Gardner's goals are noble.  A more balanced view of the world's information would be good. 

But if women have demonstrated a disinterest in the writing and editing of Wikipedia during its first ten years of existence, I am intrigued as to what Gardner has planned in order to change this. 

Does she plan on tapping into the vast hordes of female geeks out there, just waiting for the opportunity to sit in front of their computers for hours at a time, fact-checking articles on ancient Babylonia and the reproductive cycle of the horseshoe crab?

If so, I hold out little hope for the future female participation in this noble endeavor. 

Inexplicable and clearly disturbed palate runs in the family

My daughter refused to eat macaroni and cheese and hotdogs tonight.

For a moment, I thought that she might be the only child in the history of the world to reject food like these.  

Then I heard my wife reminding her mother over the phone that she wouldn't eat pizza until she was ten.

So the lunacy clearly runs in the family.

 

Why didnt someone show me before I went to college?

Based upon yearly income, elementary school teacher is the worst paying of all college degrees (according to the infographic below).

While I believe that teachers are underpaid, I am also quick to remind colleagues that teachers work about 185 days a year, whereas most professionals (and perhaps all other professionals) work 240-250 days a year.

If an elementary school teacher earning $33,000 a year (the national average) went from 185 to 250 working days in a year, he or she would probably be earning an average salary in the neighborhood of $45,000. 

Still not enough considering the importance of the job and level of ongoing education required (it costs more for a teacher to become licensed in the state of Connecticut than it does an attorney), but enough to get the elementary teaching profession out of the top five worst paying of all college degrees and into the top paying jobs without a college degree.

Uhg. 

I love teaching and cannot imagine doing anything else, but when I see these income statistics and continue to write checks for education loans that I am still paying as a result of the Master's degree that was required in order to keep teaching, I have to wonder what the hell I was thinking.  

You say yes. I say no. But do I really mean no?

I am wrapping up a book.  Final revisions (I hope) went off to my agent last night, which means I must now choose the next book to write.  I have solicited the counsel of several friends, and one of them is dead set against one of my ideas.  After reading the first two chapters of this proposed novel, she has outlined in great detail why this would not make a good story.

Her husband, upon hearing about her protests, asked why she continues to lobby so hard against the idea.  "It will just make Matt want to write it more," he said. 

I smiled at his supposition, but since she related it to me, I have been thinking:

Is this really what people think of me?

Yesterday I was attending the birthday party of a two year old, and as I attempted to scientifically debunk the superstition that it's bad luck not to taste the birthday cake, Elysha explained, "Matt's not happy unless someone is annoyed with him."

Again, I was left wondering:

Is this what people, including my wife, think of me?

And even worse, is any of this true?

Suddenly I find myself questioning my motives at every turn.

For example, I was talking to someone recently about my belief that teachers should have the right to allow their students to call them by their first names.  I have yet to make this offer to my students because of possible  administrative and collegial ramifications, but to enforce the formality of titles upon students has always seemed arcane, artificial, distancing, and unnecessary to me.

But is this really my rationale?

Perhaps this desire is born from personal experience.  In high school and throughout college, I was permitted to refer to many of my teachers and professors by their first names, and almost all of my favorite teachers from this time allowed this.  Maybe my desire to have my students call me Matt is simply an unconscious attempt to replicate something that I enjoyed as a student.  Or perhaps I am attempting to emulate the behaviors of those I admired the most. 

Or worse, maybe this desire is simply an attempt to do what others would not want.  Maybe my contrarian streak runs so deep that I can no longer distinguish between something I truly believe and my unwavering desire to swim against the stream and, in the words of my wife, annoy people.

I find this possibility terribly disconcerting.  While I have no qualms with assuming a contrarian position and annoying people in the process, the last thing I want would be for my life to be unconsciously ruled by this desire. 

I like to think that any unpopular or divergent positions that I hold are the result of logical reasoning and my willingness to look beyond social norms, tradition and expectations, regardless of what others may think of me as a result. 

But could I have become a simple input-output device?

You say A.  I say B.

You say yes.  I say no.

You believe.  I believe that.

I would hate to think that I have spent this much time annoying people, suffering their spats of vitriol and enduring their occasional acts of vengeance, all because of an automated, unconscious, and previously unknown response to external stimuli.

Have I become the equivalent of a human Venus fly trap?

No silly exercises from this life coach

I'm still looking for my first paying client, and I have almost no experience in the field of life coaching, but exercises like this strike me as a hell of a lot more style than substance. 

From the Mommy Beta blog:

Take a few minutes and fill out The Wheel of Life (below). The eight sections of the wheel represent balance. Rank your level of satisfaction with each area of life by placing a number from 1 to 10 in each (10 being very satisfied and 1 being not so satisfied). It's way to see where you're most satisfied and where you could focus your attention on a little more.

 

 

Are you kidding me?  A Wheel of Life?

This strikes me as the kind of activity I was required to do in high school during Peer Education when class discussion sucked.  A time-wasting filler for those awkwardly silent days. 

Your life may not be balanced, but if so, you should damn well know which areas need more attention and which areas do not, particularly if balance is being determined based upon your own personal preferences (which, by the way, seems like a rather stupid way to evaluate balance in the first place).

If you can't tell which areas of your life leave you the least satisfied without the use of this wheel, we need to discuss basic cognitive functioning and self awareness. 

Or perhaps we should just hit you over the head with a wheel.

What should one expect from the Wheel of Life expect?

"Why look!  I rated myself rather low in the areas of Romance and Personal Growth.  I had no idea that my levels of satisfaction were disproportionately lower in these areas in comparison to the rest.  Perhaps I should join Match.com and start taking pottery classes.  Thanks, Wheel of Life!"

Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

And as a life coach, how is this Wheel of Life supposed to be helpful?  If my client rates his satisfaction at a  10 in the Health section of the pie but is grossly overweight and has high blood pressure, am I supposed to be pleased? 

If my client has no plan for retirement but is happy with his Money section because he wants to live in the moment, should I pat him on the back and send him on his way?

And could someone please tell me what the hell Physical Environment means and how I expected to achieve balance in this regard?  I have four feet of snow on my front yard and cannot play golf for at least two months, so my physical environment sucks right now.  But what am I supposed to do about it?  Plan a trip to Florida?  Take a hair dryer to some of the snow banks around the eighteenth green?

And more importantly, I didn't need a Wheel of Life to tell me that my Physical Environment sucks, if this is what Physical Environment even means.  I can just use a window, which requires considerably less effort and time and doesn't make me feel like such a dumbass for using.

I know.  I might be a little rough around the edges, but admit it.  You want me as your life coach. 

You need me as your life coach.

Right?

The enemy within

Figures released by the armed services last week showed that for the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It would seem that if we are interested in saving soldiers' lives, we may want to invest more in mental health care and less in tanks.

Overslept

My wife woke up and looked over at me.

"I've never been in bed with you when it's light outside."

She's right. 

I climbed out of bed at 5:30 this morning, but upon realizing that I had somehow developed a sore throat and headache overnight, I went back to bed in hopes of staving off the illness.  

But this may be the first time in a long, long time that I slept after sunrise.  

A few minutes later my belly growled in a way that I have never heard it growl before. 

I swear it was asking me if I had died in my sleep.

It does not stand for quintessential.

How have I managed to get through life without questioning what the Q in Q-tips stands for?

And how have I managed to get through life without discovering that the Q stands for quality, which is completely stupid.

Quality tip?

Even so, it's better than the original name of the product, which was Baby Gays. 

I could find no explanation as to the origin of this name.

Oh, and just for the record, you are not supposed to clean your ears with Q-tips.  In fact, I have yet to meet a doctor who won't tell you that sticking anything in your ear is a bad idea. 

Even Q-tips own website does not list the cleaning of the inner ear as a recommended use.