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
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...
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people that he could come up from the depths of hell and climb inside our enemies, fill them completely, take them over so that there is nothing left that is good.
When we consider someone to be evil, (i.e. full of satan, ig… 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...
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...
No one wants to be in this place but we all sort of end up here – in the hole. All of the books, all of the rituals, all of the practice, they can’t protect us absolutely.
This rule of gravity, this inevitability of falling back down no matter how high you’ve bee… 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...