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...
Is a writer who doesn’t write still a writer?
Is a musician who doesn’t play still a musician?
What about a filmmaker? If they’re not making films, are they still a filmmaker?
In other words, does being an artist run deeper than the deliverables?
Are artists walking… 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...
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...
I want to share a moment I often think of, but never openly talk about.
I can’t remember her face or her clothes, but I remember her voice and the delicate hand on my knee as I sat cross-legged next to her on my friend’s living room floor.
I was in my early 20s, employe… 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...
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 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...
AI has made cheating almost irresistible for students: to be able to get a 10-page paper done in 30 seconds is certainly tempting. There are some subjects students just don’t care to learn; they just want to get that grade (B is fine), check the box, and move along. I had c… Read more...