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
The choices we make for our kids really show, and test, our values.
My teen is in a prestigious multi-year STEM internship. We literally danced when she got in.
But, she hasn’t been learning anything for a year. She’s bored and says everyone is bored. We checked it out … Read more...
My daughter is an empath of the highest order, Jedi-level capabilities.
When it comes to emotions, she’s as absorbent as a sponge, silently sitting there soaking up the mood molecules around her.
There is a disturbance in The Force, father.
She knows when the conversation is h… Read more...
There’s that trope that teens rebel.
As if, they do it for no reason, like they actually want to make both of us miserable.
It’s not like that.
They’re the new ones.
We, as the adults, are slowing down, partially because we want to and partially because we have to.… Read more...
We bought a ridiculously huge Slip N Slide.
Technically, it’s not even a Slip N Slide. It’s a commercial grade, 40-foot long inflatable blue water slide with 7-foot tall inflated rings that spray water down on you as you slide through. It takes up our whole yard.
(Fortu… Read more...
I wouldn’t say I grew up in a bar…
But there were a few formative years where I spent a lot of time in one.
Fiddler’s Green: a dive bar with an attached restaurant on Center street.
My dad’s best friend was the bartender, so he always sat at the bar and order… Read more...
My mom is starting to lose her memory.
Sometimes there are sweet moments, like how she reveres a sunset from her balcony while we drink Budweiser tall-boys.
And then there are the hard moments, like when I watch her forget where she is while walking down the street, when she messe… Read more...
When someone you love is struggling, it’s easy to make the mistake of sending too much help too quickly.
Your commotion, though with good intention, is likely causing more waves and people don’t need more waves when they’re drowning.
They need your steady, reliabl… Read more...
Since roller coasters aren’t an option anymore due to my proclivity for dizziness (sob), I went to the water park with my daughter, instead.
We hit the Big Kahuna, The Typhoon Lagoon, and the wave pool.
But it was 70 degrees, not nearly warm enough for a water park. Even a la… Read more...
On the way to camp this morning, we passed Hazel’s elementary school and she started sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, though I already knew.
“I miss Miss Zimmerman,” she said from the back seat. And then she cried real hard, as if the words out loud were tell… Read more...
A Park Squirrel crosses the Road and goes into the yard where she sees two House Squirrels. She knows they’re House Squirrels because they don’t have stripes on their backs.
The two House Squirrels spot the Park Squirrel immediately. They know she’s a Park
Squirr… Read more...