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
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...
I was moping around the house, half-sick and taking stock of all of the things I should have been doing but wasn’t.
Clean off the bookshelf
Leaky showerhead
Touch-up paint for the door trim
Laundry
“Can we read tonight, Daddy?”
Hazel’s to-do list is a mile long … Read more...
A lot of beer drinkers will never drink Bud Light again because the company aired a trans woman. Once. That was 2 years ago, and judging from the comments sections in a Fox News bit done on it last week, the vitriol toward Anheiseur Busch (or ABInBev as they now call themselves) … Read more...
I don’t get get. How can you smile in here?
Because smiling is better than frowning.
But we’re locked in this room all day and beaten and tortured at night. We’re fed the same rotten food every day. We are ridiculed and yelled at. We are forgotten.
This is all true… Read more...
Her church was the first to call.
“She’s forgetting things.”
It was sort of blamey, at least that’s how I took it — me, one of two sons, 22 hours away. Or two flights and a long shuttle ride, which has to be coordinated ahead of time.
The last time I we… Read more...
“Hey, just checking in. How you doing?”
Man.
So few words, so much impact.
So much love around you in an instant.
Whether you’re good or not so good, you feel seen, remembered, and held.
And if you haven’t gotten one of these sweet sweet checkins in a while, th… Read more...
What if Love was actually Science…
…Our minds subconsciously and frenetically working to line up our own idiosyncracies and aspirations with those of another, resulting in an explosive neuro-chemical overload, caffeinated synapses, an emergency signal to the body to br… Read more...
I was just about to sit down and look up the latest political nightmare when I got the text I’d been waiting for.
“Okay. We’re back.”
I threw on my shoes and ran down my steps. As I hit the sidewalk and saw their dusty car sticking halfway out of the garage … Read more...
Nothing can amplify or transform a mood like music.
John Coltrane can lull you into a trance. Taylor and Olivia can help you feel less alone. Nirvana and Alice in Chains can work you through a bout of angst you can’t shake. Michael Franti can turn a tired day in the hammock … Read more...