Are you getting everything you can out of this life?
A self-less, feel-good blog about love, life, and work by career coach and existential adventurer, Cliff Flamer
I was hard at work prepping for a school fundraiser at my house.
I had just finished calibrating the stereo and microphones. I still needed to set up the auxiliary A/V system (just in case), make blackberry rosemary syrup for the cocktails, trim back the ivy on the stoop, vacuum t… Read more...
When someone breaks something of ours – a thief cracking our window, a boss changing our schedule, a loved one not showing up — we blame them for disrupting our way of being. We villify them.
And perhaps we are right. Maybe they are the evil in our hero’s quest.
B… Read more...
Even as a child,
I’d leave behind the chaos of the monkey bars at recess
and go lay down in the shaded dark green grass by an abandoned remnant of playground equipment: a lone pole with a chain attached at the top.
And I’d listen to the sound of the chain clanging into t… Read more...
I had a dream where I was back in college, with all the knowledge and memories of a middle-aged man but surrounded by people trying to discover themselves.
I saw a friend and walked alongside her, trying not to stare. We didn’t actually spend much time together in college; i… Read more...
I am pain.
I cannot survive in the light
so I scurry into the corners, into the depths of souls,
swimming in guts
where it’s blacker than the darkest night.
And there, I molt and grow, whether I want to or not.
See, that’s the thing about me:
I’m not trying to hurt any… Read more...
Our public school system shut down for a week and a half so teachers could strike for a living wage and continue living in the city where they teach.
They fought for a lot of other amazing things too, selfless things, like making sure the families in the district have a say in wha… Read more...
Is it possible that the feuds between Red&Blue and Black&White and Black&Black and White&White and Rich&Poor and Rich&Richer and Tenant&Landlord and Boss&Employee and North&South and East&West and City&Country and This&That and That… Read more...
You can learn a lot about humanity when picking out images for your blog.
Plug in the word “kind” and you’ll see a bunch of people with animals.
(Hey! What about people with people?)
Put in “listen” and you get a bunch of people with headphones
(the exac… Read more...
Whether good or bad,
dreams get into us.
We’ve all had the experience of waking up
or being woken up
in the middle of a dream,
forced to put that dream aside
for reality.
Incomplete dreams are like incomplete conversations,
a puzzle still in pieces.
Freud called them unfulfilled wis… Read more...
My friend found old news footage of a fire in our 7th-grade classroom. The teacher, one of my favorites, was trying to take chlorophyll out of a leaf. Alcohol got on the hot plate and, BOOM, big explosion.
In the newscast, after some panning shots of the charred classroom, the re… Read more...