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
A creative writing professor once told me, “If you’re bored with one of your characters, try giving ’em a beard.” It became a thing. When something was off in one of our stories, he’d slam the paper down and yell out “Give ’em a beard!… Read more...
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...
Oh, I wish I hadn’t read the comments section.
All I wanted was to read the news.
I scrolled down too far, and BAM, there they are:
Angry people with differing views.
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Oh, I wish I hadn’t read the comments section.
It’s such a sad sight to see.
Opinions are flyi… Read more...
Be careful when you hear someone say “I’m just telling it like it is.”
This is a shrouded sentence, a hedge to hind behind.
They’re incorrectly inferring there is a singular truth and that they are the brave one who is willing to utter that truth, even if it… 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...
Sometimes I wonder how I can possibly be well-equipped enough to guide people in finding meaning in their lives and careers when I can’t even remember which one of my laundry baskets is socks&underwear and which one is pants&shirts. I still can’t remember whic… Read more...
Something that’s always bugged me: name prefixes.
Why is it that doctors and politicians and judges are allowed to change their prefixes but no one else is?
I know these folks work hard — extremely hard — but so do CEOs and sanitation workers. I know that becoming… Read more...
People tend to hold back in making transitions.
We get safely stuck in planning, worried that the first step we take will be in the wrong direction.
Ironically, we waste time by worrying we’re going to waste time.
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Don’t wait to become what you want to be.
Start liv… Read more...
I don’t give discounts but I almost always have a pro-bono project on hand.
There are plenty of people down on their luck or just struggling with where to go and how to get there.
This time.
How lucky I am to have a skill that can make that all go away.
30 minutes on the phone … Read more...
I like to take notes in a blank sketchbook. I’ve always hated lines and boxes, and writing by hand is more fluid… (see what I did there?).
My notes are thought fragments, shorthand, just enough to remind me what I was thinking.
And in this process, I’ve developed… Read more...