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 remember the first time I got in trouble at school. It was in the cafeteria. Grade school. We sat at those massively long tables, 8 rows of ’em, with the teachers patrolling the edges like border collies.
I’m not sure how it started but Matty P, my best friend in the… Read more...
“I appreciate you.”
I hear it all the time now, a new closing statement, presumably evolved from the more impersonal “I appreciate it,” or “Much appreciated.”
Hooray! We’ve replaced the “it” and the understood “you” … Read more...
My daughter caught me gazing lovingly at my dry-erase board, which was covered with multi-colored to-do lists.
“I can erase the stuff that’s crossed out, if you want,” she offered in a way children often do when they’re trying to be involved in that stuff d… Read more...
I normally go right onto the freeway after I drop off Hazy, but I decided to go left today, which is the direction I used to go to drop Evs off at high school; the same road I took to drop Ziggy off at the groomers.
Maybe it was because I was digging the radio guy’s Irish ac… Read more...
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...
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...
Scene: Dusk. Me, outside washing my car in the driveway, which crosses completely across the sidewalk. A passerby approaches.
—–
THE WAY IT COULD HAVE GONE…
Passerby: Rude! I have a disability, you know.
Me: Easy, lady. I’m just washing my car.
Passerby: Well,… 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...