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
I’ve always felt that someone is watching me, particularly in times of great decisions, not necessarily life decisions, just those little moments of personal risk when the ego is worried about its edges.
Jumping off a cliff
Dancing at a wedding
Playing on a playground
Speaking … Read more...
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...
Bukowski, one of the most widely read poets in the world, a craftsman of language, left behind only two words on his tombstone: “Don’t try.”
I got this same advice from my creative writing teacher (who has also passed): “Stop trying so hard, Cliff!”
I … 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...
My daughter is picking her high school – 2 good options – and she’s tormented by it.
We all are.
I’ve made a career out of helping people make decisions. I know the exercises, I have the tactics, the methods, the rubrics.
That doesn’t make the actual de… Read more...
The Elements of Happiness are obvious.
We all know what they are:
healthy food, rest, exercise, sobriety, nature, connection, work, love, fun, self-expression.
We have the map. If we just charge after these things and do them often, we have a greater chance of being Happy. It’… 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...
A white man looked out his window and saw a black woman in her yard, pulling her house apart. He noticed her doing this every day, sometimes just a single brick took all afternoon. She was using a spoon.
He couldn’t stay away for very long.
“Why are you destroying your … Read more...
My grad school professor, in describing my laid-back ambition said it was as if a fireball were blazing down the street and there I am jogging gingerly after it, big dopey smile on my face, looking around at the sidelines.
I think of this jogging metaphor often.
It’s widely b… Read more...