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 woke into a groggy half-sleep with a pain in my chest.
Seduced by the warmth of the covers and the elusive intoxication of drowsiness, I convinced myself that the best thing to do was to stay put and do some deep breathing.
I breathed in and out, and in my sleep-stupor, I imagine… Read more...
I ran into one of the girls I coach in soccer. We’ll call her Sachi. It was off season and we hadn’t had practice in months, so we were both sort of openly delighted to see each other.
She was with a friend.
Sachi introduced me as her soccer coach, which made me feel al… Read more...
My daughter caught me gazing lovingly at my dry-erase board, which was covered with multi-colored to-do lists.
“I can erase the stuff that’s crossed out, if you want,” she offered in a way children often do when they’re trying to be involved in that stuff d… Read more...
When I was young and complaining about having nothing to do, my mom would tell me, “Hush up. Your Great Gramma Lena started bowling in her 80s.”
My youthful brain would think to myself: “What’s that got to do with anything?”
My mom, as if hearing my th… Read more...
I want to share a moment I often think of, but never openly talk about.
I can’t remember her face or her clothes, but I remember her voice and the delicate hand on my knee as I sat cross-legged next to her on my friend’s living room floor.
I was in my early 20s, employe… Read more...
Scene: Dusk. Me, outside washing my car in the driveway, which crosses completely across the sidewalk. A passerby approaches.
—–
THE WAY IT COULD HAVE GONE…
Passerby: Rude! I have a disability, you know.
Me: Easy, lady. I’m just washing my car.
Passerby: Well,… 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...
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...
I really hate this term.
I prefer a different phrase for something so inevitable that happens to all of us at the same point in our timelines.
Doesn’t it make sense that halfway through our lives we’re going to self-evaluate?
Just because we take the time to recognize th… Read more...
Ironically, it’s the absence of words on a page that makes people read the words.
It’s the white space between these lines that makes you want to read the next one.
Designers call this “visual rest.”
We could stand to do this more in conversation:
add
a
little
wh… Read more...