Archive for April 2023

Singer and songwriter Billie Eilish has sold 41.5 million digital singles and 5 million albums. She’s won seven Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. She is the youngest artist in Grammy history to win all four general field categories—Best New Artist, Record…

Someone sent this passage to me via social media. I read it and thought: “Wow. This is great. Whoever forwards this to me really gets me. I wonder who wrote this little bit of brilliant. I need to read this book.” The problem? It’s my book. It’s page 185 of Someday Is Today: 22 Simple…

Jessica Grose writes an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled: “Millennials are hitting middle age — and it doesn’t look like what we were promised.” Promised? What exactly were millennials promised? Also, who made these promises? When and how were these promises made? Perhaps Jessica Grose has confused the concept of promises with…

I had just settled into my seat, preparing for the second leg of my flight from Hartford to Victoria, British Columbia, when the pilot emerged from the cockpit and introduced himself to us. He told us his name, briefly described the length and trajectory of his aviation career, and expressed his sincere love for flying.…

While flying to British Columbia a couple of weeks ago, I heard this message over the intercom while sitting in the airport: “Would the passenger who left their goldfish at security please return to pick it up immediately?” If you’re not a writer of fiction, you should know: This is exactly the kind of moment…

Big weekend for our family. A weekend of firsts and more. On Friday night, Charlie left for his first weekend of camping with the Boy Scouts. It was a big moment for him, but it was a big moment for me, too. We’ve been camping together with the Cub Scouts, but this was the first…

Exciting, thrilling, over-the-moon announcement: On July 30 and 31, I’ll be performing (and recording) a solo show at Theaterworks, a beautiful theater in downtown Hartford. The title of the show is “You’re a Monster, Matthew Dicks.” The description of the show is this: Matthew Dicks wants to live forever. His fifth-grade student (and most of…

On Friday, I found myself walking down the hallway of my school, minutes away from picking up my students at Spanish class, when I heard over the intercom: “Hello? Hello?” It was unlike any announcement I have ever heard in my 25 years of teaching. The voice was unknown to me. It was abrupt. It …

My school has a brand new playground. It’s lovely. The students are enjoying it quite a bit. A couple of kids expressed concern over an apparatus that seemed a little too frightening to navigate, at least for them. So I showed them these photos, of actual playgrounds in the early twentieth century, and told them…

One of my goals for the last five years has been to write at least 100 letters each year. Old-fashioned, snail mail letters,  written or printed on paper or cardstock and mailed via envelope and stamp. I managed to achieve and exceed this goal in 2021 and 2022, and I’m well on my way to…