How I Ended Up Here
People sometimes ask how I ended up in New England, and the honest answer is not very dramatic. I didn't grow up here. I didn't have family in the area. There was no job offer or relationship that pulled me in this direction. I visited once, liked it, and eventually moved. That's more or less the whole story, but I'll try to fill in some of the texture.
Before I came here I was living in a mid-sized city that I'd been in for several years. It was fine. I don't want to say anything negative about it because it wasn't a bad place to live — it just stopped feeling like the right place. The rent kept going up, the noise kept going up, and I found myself spending more and more of my free time indoors with the windows closed, which seemed like a sign that something wasn't working. I was doing freelance work at the time, mostly document processing and some web stuff, so I didn't have an office tying me to any particular location. That freedom was theoretical for a long time before I actually used it.
The visit happened almost by accident. Someone I knew from an online forum — we'd exchanged messages about file formats and archival standards for a couple of years, the kind of niche internet friendship that probably sounds strange to describe out loud — mentioned they lived in a small town in New England and that I should come see it sometime. One of those invitations that people extend without really expecting you to take them up on it. But I had a gap between projects and a cheap bus ticket was available, so I went.
I remember arriving in the early afternoon on a weekday. It was fall, which I'm sure helped, because fall in New England is hard to argue with. But it wasn't the foliage that got me, exactly. It was the quiet. Not silence — there were people around, cars, the ordinary sounds of a town going about its business — but a lower baseline of noise than I was used to. I could hear individual birds. I could hear the wind. At the risk of sounding sentimental, it felt like my ears relaxed for the first time in years.
My friend showed me around a bit. We walked through the center of town, got lunch at a diner that had clearly been there for decades, and spent some time at the local library. The library was small but well-maintained, with a surprisingly good collection and a community bulletin board that was actually being used — not just old flyers nobody had taken down, but current postings about book groups and town meetings and someone selling a lawnmower. It felt like a place where things happened at a human pace.
There was a used bookstore nearby that we stopped into as well. It was the kind of place where the owner knows the inventory by memory and will talk to you for twenty minutes about a book you picked up if you let them. I spent longer in there than I'd planned and left with a bag of paperbacks. I'd been buying books online exclusively for years because there was nowhere near my apartment that sold them in person. Having a physical bookstore within walking distance felt like a luxury I'd forgotten existed.
I went back to the city after that trip and kept thinking about it. Not obsessively, but in the background. I'd be sitting at my desk working on something and I'd think about how quiet that town was. I'd be trying to fall asleep with traffic noise coming through the walls and I'd think about the wind in the trees. It wasn't that I was unhappy — I'd been in roughly the same state of mild contentment for years. But the visit had shown me that a different kind of daily life was possible, and once you see that, it's hard to unsee.
A few months later I started looking into it more seriously. I found that rent in a lot of small New England towns was surprisingly affordable, at least compared to what I'd been paying. Not cheap in absolute terms, but manageable on freelance income if I was careful. I wasn't looking for anything large — a one-bedroom or even a studio would be fine. I don't need much space. Most of what I own is books and hard drives, and those stack efficiently.
The actual move was uneventful. I gave notice on my apartment, sold or donated the furniture I didn't want to transport, packed the rest into my car, and drove up. The first few weeks were the adjustment period you'd expect — figuring out where to buy groceries, getting used to a different rhythm, dealing with the minor logistical headaches that come with any move. But the adjustment was easier than I'd anticipated.
Part of what made it easier was the people. I'd been worried about moving to a small town as an outsider. Small communities can be insular, and I'm not the most outgoing person. But what I found was a kind of friendly reserve that suited me perfectly. People were welcoming without being pushy. Neighbors introduced themselves and then left me alone, which is exactly the right amount of social interaction for someone like me. At the library, the staff learned my name within a couple of visits but didn't pry into my business. At the hardware store, the guy behind the counter would chat if I wanted to chat and leave me be if I didn't.
I've been here for a while now and I don't regret the decision. The pace of life suits me. I do my work during the day, take walks in the evening, visit the library a couple of times a week, and generally exist at a lower level of stimulation than I did before. The winters are long, which I won't pretend is ideal. But I mind the cold less than I expected, and there's something about a quiet house on a dark January evening — a pot of tea, a book, the radiator ticking — that feels like exactly where I'm supposed to be.
I don't want to romanticize it too much. Living in a small town has its frustrations. The internet isn't always reliable. There are fewer options for everything — fewer restaurants, fewer stores, fewer services. And the lack of anonymity that comes with a small community, while mostly pleasant, can occasionally feel constraining.
But on balance, this is the most settled I've felt anywhere. I didn't have a plan when I moved here. I just visited a place, recognized something in it that I'd been missing, and followed that feeling. Sometimes the unplanned decisions are the ones that stick.
If you're thinking about making a similar kind of move — somewhere quieter, somewhere smaller — I'd say visit first and pay attention to how you feel, not just what you see. A town can look charming in photos and feel wrong in person, or look like nothing special and feel exactly right. Trust the feeling.
— K. Vadala