Escape Adulthood

Live with Less Stress & More Fun

You & Improved

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Time Machines Are Real (and How to Make Them)

Last November I took a retreat at a monastery. I brought a box of old journals, some almost twenty-five years old, and read through them. I jotted down things that struck me. I call it "reverse journaling," although I’m not sure that's the best name. It’s basically journaling about what I’ve journaled before. Pretty meta, I know.But surprisingly useful.People say there’s no such thing as time machines. I don’t know about that. Re-reading my old journals brought me back in time to events and feelings I’d long forgotten. And I uncovered a few instances where my past self had written insights that felt eerily relevant to my present self, as if they'd been sealed in a capsule and sent to the future.As I reviewed these old messages from a younger me, I was able to see themes and storylines that unfolded over a series of years that were unnoticeable in the day-to-day. To be frank, it was depressing at times, but I came away with several observations: I am a slow learner.  Sometimes I …

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How to Change the World

Quote by Anonymous | Photo by Jason Kotecki Over the holiday break, my family bought a cow, two goats, and four chickens. No partridge, but we did also buy a fruit tree. In what has quickly become my new favorite tradition, after a turkey dinner on New Year’s Eve, my family sat around the table to discuss how we’d spend money we’d be donating to Compassion International. When we started our business twenty years ago, I knew I wanted it to have a charitable component. Most companies give from their profits. I didn’t know how long it would take us to be profitable (spoiler alert: seven years!), so I came up with a different plan. I decided to build giving into the cost of every product we sold. It started at three percent, so if I sold one hundred dollars worth of books, we’d donate three dollars. Eventually, we bumped it up to five percent and expanded it to include my speaking fees as well. This year, we donated more money than we made in our entire first full year in …

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How Weird is Too Weird?

"93% Weird." 24"x24" Oil on canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available here. Many fruits have a similar vibe. You get some variations in color and texture, but "round" is pretty much the regular shape. Even the tomato, which I grew up being taught was a vegetable, wants to get in with the fruit group. And upon a quick glance, we say, “Sure, whatever, you seem to fit the description." And then there’s the pineapple. Compared to most fruits, pineapples are weird. Unfortunately, weird isn’t usually a compliment. Before I take the stage for a speech, at the very end of my introduction, there is a passage that talks about me "spending time with my beautiful wife and three weird kids." It’s always fun – and telling – to see how the introducer handles this bit. Sometimes they read it as is, but other times they are quick to uncomfortably interject, “I didn’t write that!” I’ve even had some who eliminate it altogether.  Ultimately I exclaim to them that, in our …

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Here Goes Something

"Here Goes Something" by Jason Kotecki. 24x30 Oil on Canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available. “Here goes nothing.” It’s a phrase we often use when we’re not sure how something will turn out. In fact, since it tends to come from a sense of desperation, we use it to admit that there’s a pretty good chance of it not working. It’s our little way of softening the psychological blow of failing. It makes me think of the pass play in football referred to as a “Hail Mary.” The team with the ball is losing, and time has nearly expired. They need a touchdown but they’re so far from the goal line that their only hope is to launch a long pass into a sea of waiting defenders. It’s a pass with a very low chance of success, but at that point, you’re out of options.  Here. Goes. Nothing.  However. This isn’t a football game. Trying things that might not work is not nothing. It takes tremendous courage, vulnerability, and faith. Dare I say it’s the most …

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Why You Need More Cowbell

This video is a collaboration I did with American Family Insurance about 3 rules you should totally break if you are serious about achieving your dreams. Inspired by my book, A Chance of Awesome: How Changing the Way You See Changes Everything. In the early 2000s, a comedy skit turned the phrase “more cowbell” into a cultural phenomenon. And although it’s considered comedy gold, it’s also a good metaphor for looking at things from a different perspective. …

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3 Rules You’ll Need to Break to Achieve Your Dreams

This video is a collaboration I did with American Family Insurance about 3 rules you should totally break if you are serious about achieving your dreams. Inspired by my book, Penguins Can't Fly +39 Other Rules That Don't Exist. Although a little bit of structure is good when it comes to planning out your future and working towards your goals, certain ‘rules’ can hold us back. Think about it, who says you have to go about your life a certain way? Who says following the rules is the recipe for success? Remember, everything is impossible…until it’s not. …

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Outgrowing Our Sense of Wonder

C Plane by Jason Kotecki. 20x20 inches. Oil on canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available. Remember alphabet soup? I ask you to remember because the last time you had it probably wasn’t yesterday, or last week. It may have been a decade or four. Something about alphabet soup brings out a sense of wonder and curiosity in us as kids. We stir it around to see if any secret messages emerge randomly, like a vegetable fueled Ouiji board. We use our spoon to carefully arrange our own words, spell our name, a simple sentence, or maybe a dirty word...Just me? But then we outgrow alphabet soup. Why? Are we afraid our sophistication will be challenged? That we’ll be considered immature? That people won’t take us seriously? in a seemingly unrelated note, it’s impossible for me to see an airplane and not think of my father-in-law Gary. He loves airplanes. He used to drag his wife and four daughters to air shows. Their reviews of the regular excursions are mixed, but one thing was …

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Hope in the Desert

"Hope in the Desert." 16x20 inches. Oil on canvas.Original and prints available. When Kim and I started this adventure, we were optimistic. Very. When we decided to abandon my career as a freelance illustrator and designer, we felt very strongly that my comic strip Kim & Jason was going to hit the big time. We planned to live on Kim’s kindergarten teaching salary, which we knew would require sacrifice, but we were fairly certain that within a year, Kim & Jason would take the world by storm and we’d be exchanging phone calls with Oprah and her people. We had no idea it would take five years before we’d be able to earn a living with our business. And by earning a living, I mean simply replacing the Kim’s robust $23,000 teaching salary.  It didn’t take long for the optimism that launched our big dream to fade. For much of those five years, it felt like we were living in the desert. Any encouraging email from a reader, or an order on our store that …

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Don’t Stop Believin’

"Don't Stop Believin'" by Jason Kotecki. Oil on canvas.Original SOLD. Prints available here. My family went to Mexico to see whales.  That’s not the only reason we went to Cabo, but then again, the whales weren’t in Mexico because they were hoping to be seen. The tour company guaranteed we'd see them or our next ride was free, but we were told that we had a one in five shot of actually seeing one breach. It was recommended that we improve our odds by booking several excursions. Our itinerary and budget forced us to take our chances.  As we skipped across the waves on our small vessel, my little family prayed to St. Francis, the patron saint of animals, and we invoked St. Anthony with the words, “Tony, Tony, look around, there is something to be found.” I had faith that our little excursion was in the right twentieth percentile. Maybe our prayers were answered, maybe it just turned out to be our lucky day, but we saw this guy (or gal, I forgot to check) do this several …

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How Old Were You When…

I remember one day when my son Ben signed a piece of his art with a big number 5, informing me it was “so you’ll know how old I was.” I chuckled at the time, imagining myself adding a “40” next to my signature on each of my paintings. But I actually think it's a good idea. Maybe if we saw a drawing from a five-year-old Leonardo da Vinci, we’d be surprised to see that it wasn’t very good. But it wouldn’t surprise us that a drawing from when he was nine showed considerable improvement, and perhaps even contain a spark of his genius.  And maybe if we lined up all of his paintings by age, we’d more clearly see the journey he took in his career and clearly observe the process of one thing leading to another, with new discoveries opening up new areas to explore. And maybe in the work he made as an old man, we’d see ghosts of his five-year-old self, reminding us that we really are all the ages we’ve ever been. I spend too much time focusing on how I don’t measure up, rather …

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