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
I arrived to pick up my daughter at after-school-care at 6 on the dot, which means Hazel was the last kid left. She was cleaning off the tables with the 3 teachers. It was a peaceful scene, a real contradiction to my own hurried state.
The program coordinator stopped her sponging … Read more...
I listened to a 15-minute podcast yesterday about two men hugging in a hallway.
They’d both lost their moms.
One was a young man, a high school student who had shut himself down in every way. The other was a football coach who “didn’t normally do that sort of thin… Read more...
My friend has this great story.
One day he woke up and decided he wanted to go to the beach. The only issue is he had no money and no car and he lived in Pasadena. That’s about 20 miles away.
But he was feeling stagnant so he packed up 6 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and… Read more...
As adults with full lives, this often becomes our mantra:
I wish I had more time in the day.
We carry the belief that we need more time. We work hard with the hope that we’ll free ourselves by day’s end and capture that elusive extra time we know is out there somewhere.… Read more...
Whatever side you’re on, we all can agree on one thing: we’re splitting apart in the middle. And nothing can survive that’s torn through the center.
Yet, somehow, this knowledge is not enough for us to make it stop.
Quite the opposite actually. We’re aggress… Read more...
We’d be a lot better off if the people with microphones would commit to saying positive things more often.
Oh, the progress we’d make if we chose to CREATE rather than CRITIQUE!
It’s okay to not like something.
But does that dislike have to be said out loud, into a… Read more...
The world moves so quickly.
Prices and temperatures rise, stores change hands, technology reinvents, products cycle out, hip people become unhip, language evolves…
And all of us chasing after these things, trying to stay on top of it all, to be in the know.
I get overwhelmed a… Read more...
The Art of Chill evolves over time. It’s a craft I’ve been practicing since birth.
In youth, it’s about taming your anxiety about the future, being okay with not knowing what lies ahead, taking your hits gracefully. It’s remaining poised and relaxed while … Read more...
My mom is starting to lose her memory.
Sometimes there are sweet moments, like how she reveres a sunset from her balcony while we drink Budweiser tall-boys.
And then there are the hard moments, like when I watch her forget where she is while walking down the street, when she messe… Read more...
Freedom is a weird thing.
When we declare one freedom, we take away a bunch of others.
If I’m free to drive any speed I want without stopping, then pedestrians lose the freedom to cross the street.
If I’m free to put a stake in the ground and declare a piece of land my h… Read more...