As I sat typing on Daisy, my Mac, waiting for the car to get some fresh oil, I couldn't help but smile to myself at the psychology lesson that was unfolding right before my eyes. Folks were coming in to drop off their cars for everything from oil changes to big money repairs. To say that "attitude is everything" at the mechanics is an understatement. First a thirty-something woman came in, very Eeyore-like. Although she wasn't elderly, she sure seemed to be moving at a pace that would get her some significant discounts at Arby's. Her presence was gloomy and grey, just like America's …
Archives for August 2007
Yep, Tag is Way Too Dangerous
Ok, this topic is coming up so often, I've now deemed it an official category of this blog: Adults Are Ruining Everything. Not to be content with suffering the effects of Adultitis in their own life, we have an epidemic of stupid people trying to spread it to everyone. Childhood as we knew it is in danger. If this keeps up, an outbreak of Juvenile Adultitis is on the horizon. Curt Rosengren of Motto Magazine points us to an article about an elementary school that has banned...tag. …
New Eyes
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." --Marcel Proust By default, children are born into this world with new eyes. That's why they get so excited by the little things. Years of living can build up thin layers of film over our perspective. Our vision gets cloudy; life becomes a boring shade of gray. Part of what it means to escape adulthood is not to seek ever more elaborate and expensive experiences, but to wake up to the small treasures all around you and see the world with new eyes. …
Own Your Feelings
As I mentioned last week, I am compiling a list of lessons to help adults move "Beyond the Elementary," in order to overcome stress and acheive success. Lesson #1 was "Smile and say hello." Now for lesson #2. 2. Own your feelings One of the social emotional development curricula I was required to use while teaching focused on "I feel" statements. The lessons required students to look at photos of people showing exaggerated emotions. After they identified the emotions I would model the language, such as "Tommy feels sad because his dog is lost." Eventually, after lots of practice …
A Cheap Way to Fight Office Adultitis
I have never worked in a cubicle (I'm not counting my nightmares), but I have worked in quite a few jobs in which I swear the hands on the time clock were engineered to go backwards every few hours. Fortunately, those jobs were stepping stones for me; catalysts that would inspire me to never slip into a career that bored me. So far, so good. If you're stuck in a job that started out as a stepping stone but has morphed into a well-worn rut, you may want to take a long hard look at your life. Seriously, follow those last three links and read up. For those of you perfectly content sticking …
Walking For a Change
"Everything has changed now, except our way of thinking. And we've got to find ways to change our way of thinking." -Albert Einstein Chris Clarke-Epstein, our friend and colleague, shared this quote in her recent "Thinking for a Change" newsletter. (I highly recommend signing up for this weekly bite sized nugget of wisdom.) This quote really spoke to me because as you know we recently underwent a big change in our business, moving into our new office space. In a way it does feel like "everything has changed." It's now time to start asking some uncomfortable "why" questions. If you've ever …
One Blog, Two Voices
After many discussions and a long walk by the lake today, we have decided to combine blogs. From here on out, all of our posts will appear on this blog. Plus, the Club K&J blog is also going to get merged into this blog.The cool thing about this is that if you use an RSS reader, you can now get all the Kim & Jason news fit to blog about in one feed, which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/escapeadulthoodblog. (You can also get blog updates by e-mail via the "Get Blog Updates" section of the sidebar over there on the left.) It also should help us keep our heads from spinning, …
Beyond the Elementary, Lesson 1
When I spent my days with five-year-olds, I was one of the most patient people in the world. Seriously, it was a gift from above, and I don't claim to take any credit for it. Now if I would've taught for thirty-five years instead of five maybe my patience would've been a bit thinner, but regardless my ability to remain calm and contained amidst the chaos of rugrats was something that now enables me to look back fondly upon my years sitting on very short chairs and cleaning up spilled milk in the carpet everyday. So, I'm patient with kids, big deal in the grand scheme of things. It's the adults …
Top 10 Posts From the Summer
Dang, where did the summer go? We've still got some time left, but once the kids start going back to school you can smell fall in the air. I'm gonna be busy over the next week putting the finishing touches on the latest issue of the Escape Adulthood magazine (you can get it mailed to your door if you're a Club K&J member) so posting may be a bit sparse. I'm taking this opportunity to present my favorite 10 posts from the summer. Maybe you're new and haven't read any of them. Or maybe you somehow missed a few of them because you were on vacation (good for you!). Consider this either a …
The Importance of Mirth
Several weeks ago I came across a post on the Church of the Customer blog entitled, Products of Mirth. It featured a photo of some interesting shoes, pictured here. First, I had to ask Stinky what "mirth" meant. He told me that it was a noun that meant "gladness and gaiety, especially when expressed by laughter." Got it. (I'm so glad he is a connoisseur of the English language.) Apparently, the high-heeled flippers are not for sale. They're a simple art project. I think they're pretty funny, but I like even more what Ben McConnell had to say about them: …