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
The radio people love to ask provocative questions.
This time, they asked if people could go back to college, would they? And what would they do differently?
The answers generally fell into 2 categories:
1) Party more.
2) Party less.
So, what about me? Would I go back?
My immediate th… Read more...
As I take in the trash cans for the billionth time, a general malaise washes over me, and I wonder if it’s this moment in time we’re in.
Uncertainty, everyone says. What’s next? And the people in the control tower tell us, once again, to hold on while the ship go… Read more...
It was feminists who had the courage to diagnose the world around them, to take the glaring light that was shining on them and turn it around to blind their accusers.
“We are not the problem,” they said, tired of being labeled anxious, depressed, hysterical. “We … Read more...
One of my best friends from high school once pointed out how I like to think about my thoughts.
He’s right. I like to think about my memories too. And in both cases, I often misinterpret and misremember. I’m often wrong.
But, as it turns out, that’s not a bad thin… Read more...
When I was 5, my mom made me wear corrective shoes.
It was a special brand: Markell Workboots. They had a thick white (glowing?) sole and bright yellow showelaces. They looked like something an old-time cobbler made. No one else had them. I tried to cover them with my pant legs as… Read more...
I feel like the villains are scheming to blow up the planet from their rocketship, and I’m trapped in a basement tied to a sewer pipe.
I feel like someone cut off my hands, and they’re laughing at me through the walls.
I feel like the bomb shelters were not dug deep eno… Read more...
We tend to strive for the other side of our achievements.
A clean in-box
An empty desk
The celebration after the speech
The exhale after the test
But then, we get there, to the other side, and after the euphoria subsides, we tend to resent the emptiness and crave the clutter again.
In… Read more...
It doesn’t take talent to destroy things.
Only ego.
And a deaf ear to the screams of the architects and the residents.
Even the ugliest of buildings has some good bricks, some ingenuity worthy of replication.
Innovation comes from working above and beyond the thing before it.
No… Read more...
Sometimes I feel like I was dropped on the wrong planet, born into the wrong species.
I am a butterfly among birds, living trustfully by the lessons I received at birth.
I flutter instead of soar. I chase rainbows instead of treasure.
With reverence for the wind and warmth, I swoop … Read more...
AI has made cheating almost irresistible for students: to be able to get a 10-page paper done in 30 seconds is certainly tempting. There are some subjects students just don’t care to learn; they just want to get that grade (B is fine), check the box, and move along. I had c… Read more...