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
You’ve been diving in the same place for a while now.
With time, you’ve collected the prettiest of all the rocks. You keep them underwater because you don’t like how they look above the surface.
Your rock pile.
Each day, when you submerge, you notice (and have come… Read more...
I’m the hero of my dreams.
I’m talking about anxiety dreams, the ones we all have and talk about in the waking world. You know the ones…
The naked-in-public dream: I beat that one by giving up the search for clothes and just being naked. Fuck it. I even started to… Read more...
When I was in high school I got my heart broken and I listened to Every Rose Has Its Thorn ad nausum for 3 days straight.
It was a dark time. Literally. I covered my walls in black satin and traded in soft white light bulbs for red floodlights. Total fire hazard, but who really ca… Read more...
It took a while, but it came.
I thought I was immune, but no one is.
There is a tree with thick, knuckly roots driving into the soft green earth. Its branches do all sorts of interesting things: hold nests and tire swings, block the hot sun, reach into other trees, click against on… Read more...
Riots are not the problem.
In Family Therapy, the person who acts out — the cheating husband, the depressed wife, the son who threw a brick through the neighbor’s car window — this person is not to be vilified, not to be punished. Quite the opposite, actually.
If … Read more...
When you’re feeling positive, it can seem like the world is more negative. You notice all the negative things people say, about themselves and about each other.
People don’t mean to be mean; it’s usually just a habit, conditioned by the generally accepted grievan… Read more...
Early evening yesterday, after looking at a fallen tree in the yard and a deflated basketball, I snapped at my daughter. A loud snap, from the stomach and lungs.
Crap.
I was having such a good day, perfect marks for the peaceful dad – and then BOOM! This happens. There goes m… Read more...
I stole candy from little kids on Halloween.
This is one of my worst moments.
Those who know me, those who have a collection of great Cliff moments, will forgive me. They will cover this faded fragment with the glitter of my good-doings.
Those who don’t know me, well, they hav… Read more...
You put it on because it felt good at the time: that giant velvet cape with the impenetrable, high-grade nylon on the outside. It’s comforting. It protects.
But when you walk around the corner — usually the same corner — where the sun drops down and the wind kick… Read more...
We rarely hate those with less.
We reserve our hatred for people who have more than we do, who have the things we secretly desire or wonder about.
Hatred is big and vague like a dark sheet over furniture, like a handkerchief over a gun. You have to peel it back to see the thing you… Read more...