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
Are we innately driven to be kind? Or do we have to work at it?
Is kindness linked to some greater purpose or is it just another goal.
Why am I so obsessed with it?
Where did it come from?
My parents are certainly kind. My mom was a nurse, not just in profession but in her heart. She… Read more...
My daughter calls it “Talking about the world.”
Daddy, can we talk about the world?
This means she wants me to pick something she doesn’t know about and explain it to her. And she doesn’t want kid things. She wants adult things. It started when I needed to e… Read more...
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...
When we’re going from point A to point B, our instinct is to plug into a podcast. It’s become our thing.
I guess we feel less like we’re wasting time if we have information flowing into our heads, especially when we’re doing something mundane, like cleaning… 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...
I wouldn’t say I grew up in a bar…
But there were a few formative years where I spent a lot of time in one.
Fiddler’s Green: a dive bar with an attached restaurant on Center street.
My dad’s best friend was the bartender, so he always sat at the bar and order… Read more...
If I hadn’t stopped scrolling, I wouldn’t have started petting Ziggy.
If I hadn’t pet Ziggy, he never would have put his head in my lap and looked at me with those eyes to take him for a walk.
If I hadn’t gone for a walk, I would not have run into the Italia… Read more...
I agreed to play 30 consecutive games of Castle Mania with Hazel, or “The Troll Game” as we call it. (She had advocated for 50 games but I talked her down.)
Castle Mania is a simple but surprisingly suspenseful card game where you team up with each other to prevent a p… Read more...
It’s one of our favorite things to do: blow off the day and go to Six Flags.
For me, it’s a way to remember I’m alive, that I’m in control of my destiny, and that I value fun, awakedness, and spontaneity more than the other stuff.
For her… well, I̵… Read more...
I got lucky. Or the opposite.
Whatever… I’ve created a mechanism that draws people to me who are in a dilemma and ready for something new.
And they ask me with the passion and wonder of a child shouting to the ocean,
“What should I do?”
What a gift: to be brou… Read more...