Seek the "Good Enough"

After working many, many long hours--sometimes six days a week for five months my husband finally got to take a week off. We spent it at our little camping spot in the North Cascades. This shot sums it up...a hot cup of coffee, soaking up the sunshine and resting the eyes on the mountains, forest, sky, and water. It was a time of rest, relaxation, fun, and accomplishment for us and our few days there seemed like forever.

I read somthing this past week that struck a chord in me. In paraphrasing the author was talking about what we needed to be happy. One of the things they spoke about was "Seek the Good Enough--Not The Perfect". As a struggling perfectionist, this is something I've tried to do for a number of years now, but I had never seen it outlined so clearly. The author said many people spend precious time and energy trying to find the "perfect thing" (whatever it might be they are looking for...appliance, house, car, job). Their example was searching for a new dishwasher. You can spend hours and hours doing research, going from store to store trying to find the best machine for the best price and end up with an expensive dishwasher that still won't change the way you do the dishes much. Life's too short and too precious. Don't waste it doing research on dishwashers. Instead, find the dishwasher that meets your needs for a reasonable price and buy it!

This ties into our vacation property. We had a list of requirements. It had to be within two hours drive of our home. It had to have electricity, water, and a bathroom. Ideally, it would have a view of the water. If you live in Washington state, you know that the real estate is crazy expensive. We could have spent literally years looking for a place that met our needs and spent a lot of money to achieve our goal. However, we are frugal folk and don't like to spend too much of our money, so when we found this place which met ALL of our criteria for the price of a car we went for it...immediately. We've never looked back. Sure, we could have saved for years to afford a fancy cabin on a lake--they are selling for $500,000 right now, who knows what they'd go for by the time we saved our pennies. Instead we are enjoying ourselves here and now without worrying about whether we're going to be priced out in the future.

Our place may not be perfect, but it's as close as you're going to get.