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 was taking one of those long showers when no one is home and I can use all the hot water without even thinking about it, and I don’t have to worry about a knock on the door. I was getting really lost.
Then he showed up. The spider.
(Even just a few years ago, I would have j… Read more...
My daughter twisted her ankle walking up our steps. She’s 13 which means the agony of it shone on her face but no tears were allowed to come out.
I know her well. I could see the tears start to come and then I watched as she swallowed them up and reverted to other things … Read more...
There’s a place we all forget to look when we’re trying to spread our good vibes:
Customer Service.
Yeah, I said it. We’ve all expressed the many other emotions that go with being on hold and not getting what we want, but how often have we stopped to compliment gr… Read more...
All the light in the world and it’s never enough.
The sun, as generous as it is, must also cast shadows as long as there are things to illuminate.
Here’s the problem: sometimes we feel the coolness of the shadows more often than the heat of the sun. Not by choice, of co… Read more...
It becomes so apparent when I’m traveling: we live alongside each other.
We occupy the same space, take the same bus, wait in the same room, stand on the same curb, but we’re a million miles away from one another. We don’t know our neighbors. We rarely break bre… Read more...
We’re all in need of the same thing:
Acceptance.
In love, at work, with family, with friends, in the presence of God. We’re hoping our jagged little pieces will make sense to someone else, that they’ll fit into something important and prove our life’s work w… Read more...
A moth at my window tries desperately to get inside. He’s attracted to the glowing, white screen of my monitor, a sharp contrast to the blackness of 5am.
In haste, it scrambles into the stringy membranes of a spider web in the corner of the window. The spider wastes no time,… Read more...
I think we like having enemies.
It’s an unfortunate trait that’s carried over from the primitive days of survival, a tribal necessity: we band together to win.
Bonding is a biproduct of two people pushing against a third. It’s the cheap way to reach love, the pave… Read more...
The greatest thing you can do upon meeting someone new is to recognize that you do not know them.
What you see, how you feel… these things will mislead you. We are manipulated by patterns and repetition. Once we see 5 trees grow to the same height with the same fruit, we sta… Read more...
[NOTE to my beloved die-hard daily readers: I’m going to switch to a weekly post delivered every Monday, so I can work on some longer pieces that I will surely let you know about. Thanks for welcoming me into your in-box this past year and sharing your support and epiphanie… Read more...