Are you getting everything you can out of this life?
An insightful, feel-good blog about work, life, and the elusive balance between the two, by career counselor, award-winning resume writer, and existential adventurer, Cliff Flamer
One of my most vivid young adult memories is with my high school girlfriend. We were 17, on the verge of graduating, each of our colleges already determined.
My mom was home and we wanted to get away but it was raining outside. With some arm-tugging, my girlfriend convinced me we … Read more...
One of the things that make self-isolation hard is that I can’t visit my gurus.
My gurus don’t have websites. They don’t tweet excerpts from their books. They don’t have a thousand likes. They’re usually not available anywhere else but in the world.
An… Read more...
When you’re feeling positive, it can seem like the world is more negative. You notice all the negative things people say, about themselves and about each other.
People don’t mean to be mean; it’s usually just a habit, conditioned by the generally accepted grievan… Read more...
Early evening yesterday, after looking at a fallen tree in the yard and a deflated basketball, I snapped at my daughter. A loud snap, from the stomach and lungs.
Crap.
I was having such a good day, perfect marks for the peaceful dad – and then BOOM! This happens. There goes m… Read more...
My grad school professor, in describing my laid-back ambition said it was as if a fireball were blazing down the street and there I am jogging gingerly after it, big dopey smile on my face, looking around at the sidelines.
I think of this jogging metaphor often.
It’s widely b… Read more...
I sing songs to my daughter as part of her nighttime ritual.
My wife does it too.
She sings show tunes.
I sing rock ballads and alternative – Aerosmith, Poison, Radiohead.
I don’t get the lyrics right but she doesn’t seem to mind. The music quiets her down more than… Read more...
Nobody likes an elevator pitch.
It doesn’t reveal you. It sells you, or, rather, someone like you.
So don’t do it. Don’t rifle out a prepared speech full of buzzwords nobody uses in real life. You won’t be remembered. Your business card will be one of many… Read more...
A global pandemic is as big as it gets.
Bigger than a tectonic shift (an earthquake only affects a city or two).
Bigger than landing on the moon. (Only a few competing nations care about that.) Bigger than a political scandal, a stock market crash, and the fall of an empire.
The who… Read more...
Mysteries drive us… to peace and to madness.
Sometimes, we can never truly know the source of our pain.
Losing someone, falling out of love, getting laid off, being ignored. These things hurt us deeply. They stab at us in the most tender of places, and the pain persists becau… Read more...
A friend of mine said it and we both became small:
We are a species.
Yes, like a Songbird or a grove of great Oaks.
Homo Sapiens:
Upright, even-toothed descendants of the other species that didn’t make it, one of the most pervasive, diverse, and dominant species in existence, o… Read more...