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 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...
Southwest. Seat 22A.
That’s the one I pick. I wanted a window seat. I was feeling reflective and drowsy — it was late evening — and I was hoping for a window, so as to not be disturbed by bathroom requests and the rustling of snack bags at snack giveaway.
I pick a… Read more...
I’m a visual person, but I’ve come to realize that the appearance of something is much less important than the story behind it.
My house is evidence of this.
It’s… eclectic.
We tiled our backsplash with something that looks more like a butter dish. Our couche… 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...
Everyone loves Molly.
If you’ve met her, then you agree.
We can’t walk a block without some serendipitous meeting. Yesterday, we were in a HomeGoods parking lot 3 cities away, and we ran into someone cutting across the credit union drive-thru. She gets along with everyo… Read more...
I’m reading a book in bed with my 8-year-old. It’s meant for 9-year-olds, but that’s not why I’m reading it to her. I’m reading it because it’s one of the only books my 18-year-old (the older one) liked. And I never read it with her. It was her… Read more...
4th and 5th grade was my soccer heyday. We were good and mostly all friends. We’d won the state championships. And when we had each other over for playdates, all we wanted to do was play soccer.
Dave, one of my besties, invited me over and we almost immediately begged his da… 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...