Tag: maine blogs posts

Maine, Keeping Up With Life, Not Letting It Get Ahead Of You

Life picks up speed or maybe you realize the velocity of it all when you find chunks freed up turning one of its corners.

Child rearing full time if done right should and does consume a parent. So will building a career. Getting it off the ground. But when empty nest happens, or retirement knocks at the door, a person notices in their life the miles per hour radar check print out. Shows we all have been speeding. Going way way too fast.

Unless poor health takes over standing at the time clock check in and out daily ritual, sometimes the issue is the habitual living for tomorrow mode we are stuck in. When this won’t be a problem, when this is paid for, when you fool yourself you’ll have more time. You have the time now. It is how you chose to use it. Fill your days. Reach for the bottle of moderation. Crack it open, pour a little out to season your daily activities diet.

Maine is a place where community involvement happens. Each of possess gifts, talents that make us unique, distinct.

We are taught the value of simplicity. The importance of solitude built into your daily hokey pokey of sensory stimulating events. Natives, full time Maine residents live in a state many only outside get to visit once in a life time. Or that try cramming the entire state into a seven day vacation capsule annually during the return visit. Experiences harvested to take back to the hustle bustle of city living that they have to strap on the other fifty one weeks of the year. Maine is the band aid for their gunshot wound, inner city bruises in rough neighborhoods. A temporary fix, a something to do when they have more time destination. Some day is too late to land here. Once a year or lifetime does not cut it.

Life is simple, we are the ones guilty of making it too complex. The happiest days are when we had little, were starting out and full of wonder, excitement, hope, faith and ambition. Everyone was poor financially but did not know it. Because of being grateful, rich in appreciation and saddled with an attitude of having more than enough to accomplish much. Kids, youth know how to have fun, apply a sense of fairness to keep everyone in the game. Not taking their bat and ball and heading home.

Discovering in our own Maine backyard all we need to thrive is right here.

No need to travel to mountain tops and spend time with gurus, monks, wise hermits to unlock the life keys to happiness. Cook your food on an open fire camping at Baxter Park’s South Branch Pond. With the full moon shimmering on the smooth as a bottle lake top. As a moose to your right feeds on reeds, chutes, new growth of shoreline tree branches. Sharing the landscape as you hear an occasional Maine loon call, the constant sound trail of crickets in concert. After a never fade memory making day besting Mt Katahdin, a yearly trek as important as a doctor’s check up.

Pick a season, lock and load a back pack. As you lace up, secure hiking boots to explore a Maine trail. As you swish swish on boards to cross country or down hill ski powdery new fluffy snow. As you rack focus your tripod camera studying a Maine light house offshore, birds in their natural habitat, the fall foliage explosion of colors Jack Frost controls, conducts.

Come meet the people of Maine, the spark, the drive of one of the 108 small towns that makes her special.

Learn what locals already do about life, balance, moderation, volunteerism and family. Maine, the way life should be. Used to be like every other place until that simple honest approach to living was lost. Thanks for following our Me In Maine blog posts!

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
Email info@mooersrealty.com

September 24, 2013
Maine, Less People, More Natural Space For Other Things To Fill The Landscape.

Start Fresh. Maine, Get Healthy. Grab Hold, Turn The Knobs On A New Life Screen.

Ever think of your life as one junk layer after layer? The stuff that’s unwanted, toxic, distracting, that only serves to rob. All chopped, sliced, diced and whipped, mixed up with the good, the bad, the ugly?

Smothered, darkening layers being piled on high, stacked, teetering. Where everyone has a hand at the lasagna making. You, me, Uncle Sam and others add to the heap, mess, clutter. As the pace of the day’s RPM increases, adds to the theft of time during one very short life? The low rattle and hum becomes a roar.

What’s that you say? (Hand cupping one ear, cocked to the side to try and follow along with all the mixed messages bombarding the bloated world population.) And that you, I, society, Hollywood, Madison Avenue marketers, lawyers, politicians, the elite media all add to the spin filters. Making it harder to squeeze out the 100% good for you natural juice. To develop an honest, sane perspective around you of what is seen, blinding arch welder bright. Right before your eyes. Heard, going in at a thundering screech in both your ears.

Honest, real, natural. The Maine way that it really is playing out on the screen in front of you.

Keeping it simple, doing some control, alternate, delete helps level the playing field. Removes much of the clutter of unwarranted, unneeded. For enriched, longer, better living. That goes hand in hand with the safe, picturesque natural surroundings. The taking better care of your physical, mental, spiritual and even financial health that falls in line. Just snaps in to puzzle piece place oh so well. In this state that should by all rights be in Canada. Almost is on three sides.

Maine, shake your own personal in your hands Etch A Sketch.

Get back to a blank silver lining life canvas to create your lines to follow. It is your life. Lead it, see it unfold unfiltered, all natural with less people and more outdoor four season beauty. That kind of more elbow room surroundings, positive attitude has got to make your outlook improve. Your awareness, clarity and paying attention ability heightens. So what’s really important to happen surfaces. you can see and connect the dots. For something deep inside to kick in. Stir, click, lock on and light up.

Maine, 108 Small Towns, Villages, Vibrant Communities.

Maine, The Feel, Sound, Sight And Smell Of Water Is Part Of The Experience.

Maine Moose, Not All In The Woods, Ankle Deep In Cat Tails, Reeds.

Moo. Lunch, Snack Time On The Maine Farm.

See more images of Maine.

Lay them down face up, one at a time to do the show and tell.

Where words don’t hit the mark.

Do the job.

Pure, simple, Maine.

Don’t keep her waiting.

Try not to stay away so long the next time.

You are no the real you when you are not knee deep in the upper right hand corner state almost in Canada starts with a capital “V”.

Dubbed Vacationland.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

September 8, 2013
Maine, The Place For Fine Tuning Around The Rough Edges, Life’s Sharp Corners.

Get Seconds, Third Helpings Of Pure Natural Outdoors In Maine. Improve Your Attitude.

Your surroundings set the stage for whatever comes next.

Oh sure, snarky folks, negativity drama centers happen depending on the people you hang with but plenty of space, beau coup natural beauty is the conveyor belt to ride. To hop on for a deep rich life. Loaded with extra helpings of clarity and awareness. To keep it coming. Understand how it works, shake and bakes.

My mom called for moderation with her tribe of four boys and my Dad as co partner. But also to avoid stinking thinking. Your surroundings if the population is not sardine tightly packed, strait jacket squeezed. If the four seasons roll with outdoor recreation and unspoiled natural settings all help what comes out the end of your day to day.

Taking ownership of it is your choice to be happy or not is easier if you like where you are on the third rock from the Sun, planet Earth.

Free to be me, safe. You can work on the personal areas you have the combination to unlock, improve. Let out into the bright sunshine of daylight. And to let go, roll with what those around you do in words, actions, attitude and in the events unfolding that you can not, should not pick the lock.

Despite the good, bad, ugly playing on your life power point slide show, you can still end up on your feet. Smiling, thinking you and I are pretty darn lucky overall. Gladness, gratitude, happy happy happy. Filled with that Eagle’s condition called a peaceful, easy feeling. Without having to sleep in the desert tonight. Or catch a ride in a flatbed Ford coming out of Winslow Arizona. Heading to the Hotel California, passing Cadillacs with Dead Head, rows of colorful dancing bear stickers plastered on the bumper. After the thrill is gone.

Right Action, Franz Ferdinand Music Video.

Why not plan, set a place at the table for rock free, smooth fertile soil bed happiness? To plant the seeds of less stress? Cultivate, weed and feed for better bigger bounty harvest results?

By adopting an approach of positive thinking to get more out of life. That angle becomes second nature, a habit like air, water, love, family. An inside job, the activity radiating from within oozing out. Not able to be contained. Rather than sought from without, far reaching around yourself yourself. Soliciting others who don’t want to be written into the script. Are in there own productions.

The mental attitude to see the bright side of things is the deep well of pure joy. The kind that no matter how sideways or upside down life becomes, hang on loosely, let go of the past and live in the moment. Enjoy the season and calm seas that precede, follow any storm or correction in life. Glean, seek, harvest the take away. That opens you up, makes you less narrow and uptight. From lack of control which means others can not be free to be themselves.

A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health, and favorable results. Maine, the place with all this space. Unplug, recharge, enjoy the lack of spin, insincerity and embrace our simple living approach to life. The way it should be, used to be everywhere but not so common anymore if eight out of ten people live in cities, urban area.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
mooersrealtymedia@gmail.com

If you adopt this mental attitude, you teach your mind to expect success, growth and favorable outcomes.

September 1, 2013
The Call In Maine Comes In, Heading Out Into The Night Happens.

LL Bean Knapsack, Used For More Than Trail Mix Gorp, Camping, Hiking Supplies.

Only a few times of the year does it occur, but when the phone rings, vibrates it is a call from a dealer.

Are you up for a mission he asks? You’ve been through the steps, know the drill. Can be trusted with a knapsack of large bills, plenty of cash. As you leave town from a Maine truck stop.

Climbing up into the shot gun seat of a large, shiny 18 wheel semi cab over trailer truck. Turn up the Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr, Judds and Clint Black please. As the chorus of “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” gets tuned down low to talk.

After just finishing an Alan Jackson song before that crooning “It’s okay to be itty bitty”.

That’s a big 10-4 good buddy. Where you heading the driver asks? Glad to have someone to make conversation with besides whoever usually gets dialed up on the head set. To ease the monotony of reflectorized Interstate 95 highway road markers. To pass the time as white line fever runs its course. The miles recorded with a ruler and counting on fingers to keep the log book current, legal.

You travel light, just barely dressed for the season.

Hanging on tightly to the $15,000 that is filled to the brim. Stashed with cash, no clothing items in the slightly worn dark green LL Bean knapsack. Except a neon yellow brush, small tooth paste tube and push up stick of red original Old Spice deodorant. The knapsack the one tool item that will never wear out, comes with a life time warranty to be replaced for free. No matter what. Even if it was abused, ridden hard and put away wet so to speak. Nothing the manufacturer could have protected the user from out in the willy wags of Maine. But stood behind with a rock solid promise to each and every customer anyway. Neat.

You end up in upper state New York. Smelling of diesel. Pine tree hanging air freshener. The driver shakes your hand, watches you climb down out of the air conditioned cab. Going out into the night. Blending into the shadows. Wished good luck. Ten hours later, give or take a few minutes after linking up with the road jockey sitting on an air ride seat. His own chain drive wallet filled with cash for tight places too. For the long ride out and back to Northern Maine. The top of the world.

You made a series of cell phone calls as you got closer to the pick up destination target.

Text messages pinged back and forth between your contact. Who does not want to meet you at the truck stop with the goods as you suggest. He clearly, efficiently instructs you to meet him in a dark, off the beaten path place. With only a lonely pay phone, park bench. You doze, nod off waiting. Slumped on the only available hard maple seating to be found in these desolate parts. As you wait, text, call, check where Mickey’s big and little had are now. But nothing. No show from Billy Bob or whatever he said his name was. Just not happening as you grow worried, concerned.

Until dawn when a truck pulling a trailer with a loud motor. Combined with the sound of loose, flying disturbed gravel jars you awake. Out of the trance where the sand man put you. Mixed with road fatigue, anxiety all taking its toll. Droggy, a long way from home. And the man you had never set eyes on before, nor will ever again is in one major hurry. Nervous, kurt, okay rude. Barking “Got the money?” and not explaining where he has been for the last eight hours. While you were stood up, cut off and a tad edgy about the knapsack contents to worry about losing. Keeping it intact, used for it’s one and only purpose is pretty much all you have thought about since leaving the nice clean bed. The picket fence and attractive home with attached garage. Where the prettier feminine half of the partnership equation awaits your return. Safe and sound. In one piece and alive. Hopefully.

To pick up a vehicle found online by the car dealer back in Maine.

What did you think we were leading up to? (Smile). Bought off Ebay this time, not Craig’s List. Not an online rental car depot auction. After careful study of the eighty images of the good, bad and yes ugly. Scanning the car fax, running the VIN and generating a few phone calls, a couple emails. Then setting up the details of the meeting rendezvous.

With answers to initial vehicle queries going smoothly. No bumps in the road. And it’s why you got the call. To see if you were up for another adventure, a little road trip. As an Army of one. Hitching a ride to the drop off point.

To bring it in, after the drop of cash released. Getting the keys to fire her up in the exchange. Backed off the trailer behind the pickup with the lift kit, big mudder tires. Sliding across the leather driver’s seat, behind the wheel of the car chased down like Dog the bounty hunter. Without the video cameras, bright lights, boom mic, trench coat and long blond hair dye job. The new to you wheels destined for a dealership parking lot back in Maine. But not staying there for long. Because after a good cleaning, some Texas sunshine being applied with a razzle dazzle of polishes, detailing to make it the prettiest belle of the ball, she’s going to her forever home. Already has a buyer looking for just this kind of ride. In this price range, color and build list of options.

The last retrieval done a few months back in the heart of Manhattan armed with a larger stack of big bill currency.

Reeling in something more exotic. A Porsche. The setting more to your liking. Out in the open and in familiar surroundings because you had spent time there as a young buck. Most of the neighborhoods feel deja vu familiar. Carrying cash because your checks are not the legal tender that will cut it. To get a set of keys and then bounce. To high tail it home. With just enough money to pay the highway tolls. Plastic to swipe for the reinbursed gas fill ups. A bite, snacks to eat along the way.

Maine, a little ways up the pike, but worth the extra two coffees, one bathroom break to get to Vacationland. If it was an easy hike, everyone would be doing it all the time. And something would be lost in the place still unfiltered, natural, unspoiled by man. Unplug, recharge in Maine. Are we there yet?

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

August 4, 2013
Do You Really Think, Believe Negative News Sells Media Publications?

Seeing The Good, Understanding That The Wrong Approach, Balance In News Reporting Is Destructive.

Reporting the Maine news, the stories that make the front page.

The ones that could have, should have been parked a few pages inside. Online or print, take your pick. The degree of negative, crime reported news when you live in the 4th lowest state for wrong doings can be shocking. And a brand new reader that picks up some newsprint can conclude that Maine is like most other places. It is not.

Maybe the front loading of sad face news happens because it is a big deal for something bad to happen. Not common place. Possible it is watching too many cop shows, poor reality television fare. Or if there was an uphappy editor who liked causing depression, lack of hope was in charge of the latest edition print run.

Fueling the fire of negativity. Pouring on the AV gas.

We’re not talking happy news should always be front and center to just make you and me feel warm and fuzzy all over. Not wearing permanently a-fixed rosy colored glasses round the clock. No one’s head buried in the sand. It’s the tone of the reporting, sometimes the agenda behind it that needs adjustment. It’s the degree of pile on the worst you can find on the front page that is disturbing.

There is plenty of good news unfolding, being done no matter where you live on the planet. But the steady diet of gloom and doom can cause despair. Tend to make one cynical, to begin to look for the worse, not the best. Or to shut down the fire in your belly for where you live now in Maine. To wet blanket the blaze of passion that drives, motivates. Makes life worthwhile and for all of us to do our part for the greater good. When our feet hit the floor each morning. Reach for a fresh coffee. The local Maine news.

True Mainers are resilient, resolute, determined to survive and rise above economic, weather, life situations that swirl and whirl around all of us.

It makes us dig in, causes an attitude to make what we are lucky to have be more than enough to do the job. To rise to the occasion and be grateful, feel truly blessed. And challenges all of us to be highly creative, resourceful. Not to wallow, whine, moan and groan. Roll over and play dead.

Ever picked up and scanned a printed Maine media publication. After after the front page up and down, side to side, to peek at what follows it? To feel a wonderment of why did they take that position? Why the placement, front loading of every bad thing the editor could find on top? And how come so many areas that could contributed to the collection of column inches did not make it in black, white, color? To stay dark, mum’s the word.

I worked as a broadcast journalist many moons ago at a Bangor outlet and thought of the diet I was creating for the other end of the media stream signal.

To try to give them a balanced array of Maine news with easy on the opinion, forget the fiction or the need to entertain. No candy coating it. But no spoon feeding or shock and awe terrify for a default mode reached for either.

Just try to make the national news happenings apply to the local Maine market. Or point out how different rural Maine is to the urban areas where eight out of ten people have to live. Like it or not. With additional information gathered and reported on with a home grown approach to “that’s the way it is” each Maine broadcast day. But underneath it all a sense of pride shines through. For being lucky to live in Maine, to make sure to remind all of us why we live here and how vastly different it is in Vacationland. To root for the home team and know the differences of being here, compared with the urban landscape of moving and shaking.

It is a time of unrest, unhappiness and pressure building in the country like a pressure cooker.

Lots of folks living outside are not happy and want to get to Maine, the way life should be. Hear it daily in my Maine real estate job. With the gauge pinning, bending in two in the frustrating critical red zone. In the time of increasing pressure from outside news sources to assume the crime of the city exists to the same degree in rural Maine, everywhere.

It is short sighted, limited to report only what squawks on the police scanner channel in our few Maine cities. Amplifying it to add color, and the sharp edged approach in Law and Order reruns. (Jimmy, cue the “Dum Dum” signature sound from the show) Or piling on so much negative news that it makes one wonder is there anything positive happening in the Pine Tree State? Yes, yes there is. Rise up Maine post bloggers. Maybe it is another reason newspapers are getting thinner and thinner. Supporting crippling, nasty editorial sections with hard earned Maine advertising dollars part of the problem.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

July 5, 2013
The Phone Call And Let’s Do A Quick Survey, Can You Answer A Few Questions?

Telemarketers, Survey Taking Calls, How Do You Stay Awake, Handle Them?

When the US Census was in full swing for the last ten year installment, I was somehow picked to be the weekly call back for more questions.

To compare this week on a slew of subjects, topics with last week. The one before that. Many questions that perplexed the lady opinion, fact taker who would stop in on Sunday while I was out mowing the lawn. Many questions posed that did not seem to apply, be worthwhile to tabulate. But others that you could see what the interviewer was fishing for from the prearranged list of queries. Telemarketers, survey takers that just have a few questions that they are sure you will not mind, help them with, right now. Drop everything, hold the phone. Need an opinion stat.

As the census questions unfold it is easy to think whoever created the list is probably around the beltway of Washington DC.

Or living in the suburbs of Maryland, Virginia. You also think of the valuable tool the census record keeping is for trends, habits, all kinds of information from across the land called America. Under the red, white and blue.

But those pesky interviews, the US Census ones you have to respond to. The Arbitrons and Nielsen ratings you agree to and I don’t mind the programming ones after having an early life in broadcasting. Always rooting for channel two and five in Bangor Maine where I worked many moons ago.

But it seems the only calls I get on the home phone these days are telemarketers, survey takers.

The kids hit me up on the cell phone and others too because just not home a whole bunch since empty nest happened. But when home, you still have to answer anyway because you never know. Someone is hurt that you love or has died, is in a bad way and this could be the call. But it never is thanks to online and cell phones making on the go wireless signals the reach out and touch someone these fast paced days.

Sometimes horns can sprout when the caller at home or at the office is a telemarketer selling, peddling something. You want them to stop calling but are too lazy to add another name to the do not call list. Or to stick around for the recording to end to hit a number. Punch, poke or tap tap a sequence of symbols to be removed from a list that you never asked to ride, be put on in the first place.

So when a live person calls, you could announce “he’s dead”.

“He’s in prison for life”. “It was the strangest thing, the guy you are hunting for, needing to talk with was sucked up in a pool of very harsh, intense, blinding blue light in the back yard last night and has not return to the planet yet.” And then asking what is your home phone so I can have him when and if he does return to the solar system give you a jingle. Ring you up on a Sunday like you just did. And when it is after nine pm at night or other times you know is not cricket, kosher, better business bureau approved.

Why do they call, and like a fly airport, how do you change the location of all these pesky incoming buzzing calls, surveys? That the other end is pretty arm twisting pushy, blunt to obtain the answers or opinions for here and now. To give you the impression it will only take twenty minutes. And launching right into the call without any input choices on whether you are up for it or not.

They are just doing their job. I am in sales too so should be an easier mark.

Take me off your telemarketer,survey list please should be enough. But after you try that, a renewed, challenge is sent up around the boiler room where the cellar call generated from earlier. Your bounty, reward on your end increases. You start to get more frequent calls from the same folks that you recently, politely said “I don’t want to dance, thank you very much”. More taps on the shoulder to do just the opposite. And the old expression of what part of “no” don’t we understand comes to mind?

I am sure you don’t get any of those calls though right? (smiling). Just hanging up seems too curt, rude. And we all have a willingness to help, to serve. Think of others, their feelings. So here are six options to handle telemarketers. To add to the list you already carry, utilize. hope this blog post on telemarketers, survey takers, how to team, tame them helps.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

June 26, 2013