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
Epiphanies can be deceiving.
Once we figure out the way – Eureka! I’ve found it! – we tend to disregard all other paths. It feels good for a while but, in the fog of euphoria, we stop looking around. Holding tightly to our compass, we become crotchety.
Simply by t… Read more...
I have a teenage daughter who loves everything about the human body so I get to relearn all the facts I forgot in high school.
Everyone knows that breathing helps you calm down but I think we forget what’s actually happening on the inside to make the outside more bearable. I… Read more...
I do this trick where I make it look like I’m levitating. I found it in a magic book as a teenager. Took me years to perfect it.
My daughter loves it, tells her friends, begs me to do it.
But I don’t do it that much.
I save it.
And when she’s with one or two of her… Read more...
It’s counterintuitive.
The more intensely you search, the more you underscore that achy feeling that something is missing.
It’s like when you misplace your keys…
It can ruin your morning.
You would have been much better off not knowing they were gone.
Or at least not… Read more...
Our instinct is to resent constraints.
All of us struggle with telling our life’s story on a single page. And all of us wish we had more hours in the day…
Under such constraints, we often give up and then blame these limitations for our failure.
But if you can put all th… Read more...
It was our mom’s idea:
to lug the sofa-bed mattress out of the living room, through the kitchen, and out onto the back porch.
The porch was small (before the renovation), so the edges of the mattress curled up against the railing and house, rolling me and my brother to the c… Read more...
After a broken heart, it seems like everything and everyone reminds you of that person. That’s because you’ve been there and back with love, you’ve experienced all of its tantalizing phases – the flutter in your stomach when you met, the tickle in your hea… Read more...
Not accomplishing enough in your day?
Upon examination, you will likely see sabotage in your list-making.
As you check off your to-do’s throughout the day, if you’re like the rest of us, you’re probably adding more things to the bottom of that same list. Cross off… Read more...
Boat trips, hotel suites, and private beaches are nice but it’s moments like these that make my heart full and put me at ease.
ACT 1:
[Husband and wife in kitchen, standing around table.]
I guess we could make the salmon.
Yeah, it’s gonna go bad.
[Man pulls out salmon. Put… Read more...
There are remnants of Halloween around the house.
White crumbly dust on the floor from sawing styrofoam balls in half with a hacksaw.
Orphaned swatches of tape hanging off the edge of the sill
Dresses laid over chairs in the corner
Hardening paintbrushes on the back of the sink
At lea… Read more...