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 normally wouldn’t pick up during normal business hours, but I knew she’d be excited.
“I’m calling you from my new phone!”
“That’s awesome, Mom!” I would have faked excitement, but I didn’t have to.
“I love my new phone. Y… Read more...
After Hazel’s Power Tools Class (I love saying that!), we went to our fave Italian joint in El Cerrito, run by an Indian couple.
It’s become sort of a tradition.
There are only 4 tables in the restaurant, but there are always at least a few people sitting up at the bar … 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 hope I’m always the type of person who turns off the Hollywood drama ‘based on true events’ to pick up the imasciated chapbook of poetry and prose written by a self-published high school student.
One is a bacon-wrapped hot-dog of drama and conflict; the other i… Read more...
As I take in the trash cans for the billionth time, a general malaise washes over me, and I wonder if it’s this moment in time we’re in.
Uncertainty, everyone says. What’s next? And the people in the control tower tell us, once again, to hold on while the ship go… Read more...
It was feminists who had the courage to diagnose the world around them, to take the glaring light that was shining on them and turn it around to blind their accusers.
“We are not the problem,” they said, tired of being labeled anxious, depressed, hysterical. “We … 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...
I’ve had to limit my dog walks to the nearest block. Ziggy’s getting older, and the three hills we used to do together are too much for him now.
So I’m treading a path that I’m getting to know quite well.
There’s one corner where the intersection is o… 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 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...