MeInMaine Blog

Tag: living simple in maine

  • Epicurean | Simple Living In Small Town Rural Maine

    Epicurean | Simple Living In Small Town Rural Maine

    Epicurean, simple living in small town rural Maine.

    The direction, how you chose to live your life happens slowly. My Dad told me there are two basic groups of people. And like the soft serve ice cream, a blend flavor of the two chocolate and vanilla. There are vocation and vacation folks. The two pursue and craft their lifestyle around what they love but the source of joy is not quite the same.

    small maine town living
    Simple Living In Rural ME. The Take Away Is Different For What’s Important In Life. Basic Needs Met More Than Enough For Inner Joy.

     

    For many, a job is a means to an end and fought tooth and nail to keep the wolf from your door.

    Making ends meet is easier if your financial obligations are few. For some, the spark of creating a local business that provides a community service or produces goods is the end all. Your purpose in life is usually what you are good at and derive enjoyment from for work. If you find pleasure in your career employment labor, they say you never have to work a day in your life. Because work does not feel like toil or the love, sweat and tears is the satisfaction. You take home more than a pay check. You also enjoy the people you work with and serve in the public.

    Your grit, stick with it determination and reinventing what you do to make it new and different pays dividends.

    Everything we do in our Maine real estate primary job is all about the user experience. Not wasting anyone’s time. Making the delivery more efficient, far reaching for providing information on properties for sale with a taste of the local area community flavor. When you can mix business with pleasure on say a trip accomplishing more than one goal, that is win win too. Coronovirus has made all of us “cool our jets”. The Governor, the state of Maine REALTORS are directing us to stop face to face public showings for everyone’s safety sake. Appraisers in Maine have the go ahead to do only exterior inspections and don’t go in. But study images, MLS descriptions, videos if the real estate broker provides them for the public online consumption.

    When you are lucky enough to live a simple small town rural Maine lifestyle. If you volunteer and provide something for work that benefits your community, that is highly satisfying. When you see many others working just as hard all together for a common goal, that is a beautiful thing. People choosing simple small town living in rural Maine are very very fortunate. The case just gets stronger when something like the coronovirus pandemic hits. Smaller but tighter Spartan like trained communities are tighter, fiercely connected for survival, for family, for purpose.

    So who was Epicurus? What does epicurean mean?

    For starters let’s take the latter term. Epicurean means the pursuit of pleasure, especially in the area of the food, comfort, whatever luxuries you add to your daily existence. The simpler your life, the more you achieve pleasure and comfort. It is like you leave room for the small things that more than enough to satisfy. My mom preached moderation which sounds like a wet blanket approach to anyone that races through life full throttle and with wreck-less abandoned. But the easy does it, first things first structure and routine is boring and controlling for some. It makes life so much easier for others. Epicurus, who was he? Was his family from Vanceboro Maine? NOooooo, take the island of Greece. That’s a few time zones away from the Pine Tree state. A philosopher who knew deeply ingrained thought took a lot of energy and patience to change for the better in shuffling your life outlook priorities. (more…)

  • Listening To Maine Public Radio’s NPR Heading Up Interstate 95.

    MeInMaine Blog Author Andrew Mooers, Off To Blog With 8 Crayons Not A Lap Top Days
    Maine Blogger Andrew Mooers, Few Years Earlier.

    Traveling north on Interstate 95 with youngest son and tuned in to Maine Public Radio’s NPR as we zip along in the jeep on I-95 Sunday.

    And Prairie Home Companion had just wrapped up another radio show when programming shifted to a piece about how the country developed a spend it if you got it attitude.

    There were a number of experts on people, society that gave their two cents about how folks work, what makes them tick these days. The sentiment that it used to be your happiness and contentment was inside, internal. That joy came from running a tight ship with your household finances and not over spending. Being frugal and everything in moderation under each and every home roof. But the shift to you have equity in your home and why not tap in to it to improve your life by loosening up a little happened.

    In other areas of the country the new found source of wealth in refinancing your home, tapping in to cash locked in your assets became in style. Maybe to compensate for the go go helter skelter living pace that emptied, tired and bewildered in urban areas is part of how it happened too. Something missing in your life and the attempt to replace the basics with items off the shelve that were shiny, new, shrink wrapped, high cost because it was the latest and greatest Daddio.

    The show illustrated the happiness module becoming external and tied to spending money, resources to strive for more material things.

    Sometimes to impress your neighbor or because you neighbor had this and that and darn it, you should too thinking. But the final analysis is the shift back to down sizing. Trying to get out from under that second and third mortgag, the expenses. To finally have no debt living at all.

    A Maine home that is within your means and living, striving to not be over extended. Humble living, not ego stroking and stoking tied to more and more out of sight spending. Maine is living simple, not calling attention to what you have. But knowing you have savings to sleep better nights for that twist in life, that next rainy day set back. And you could buy it if you wanted to but deciding that you just don’t need it. So more often than not you don’t dip in to the pocket or wallet. It is the exception not the norm when you do spend money and having way way better buying impulse control.

    In Maine we watch this exercise and remember our local roots. That we take money out of the equation easily because we live in a vast, unspoiled state. Up here in the right hand cornrer of the world bordering Canada on three sides. The ocean blesses us on a 4th. Because we are not over populated, there goes the traffic, paying for parking, high auto insurance. Because our small towns are run with volunteers and a home grown approach not store bought, the communities are tighter, more connected. Happier living because it rests on each and every local resident in Maine’s shoulders and we all have a role in the day to day.

    Natural resources and four seasons outdoor recreation, beauty for free when you live here in Maine. Low and no cost fun that does not involve whipping out the plastic, signing on the dotted line for that third mortgage. Maine, it is not about the money. It’s family, communities and local pride in where we live. Self sufficient living, not expecting a hand out and fierce local fire in our belly joy. Because we are lucky enough to live in Maine and know it, feel it every day. Maine, the way life should be.

    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers
    207.532.6573