Busytown

San Diego harbor is mesmerizing for all its activity. Boats! The trolley! A tugboat! Dole pineapple barge! Sailboats! Cruise liners! Commercial planes! Navy warships! Naval helicopters! The bridge! Jets! Bikers! Scuba divers! Waterfront restaurants! Boardwalks! Ferry landings! All the people! Doing all the things! It’s like those Richard Scary Busytown books that are interesting and almost claustrophobic with activity, but with gorgeous water and a general peaceful quiet. And I know it’s not technically an Island, but the sign says “Coronado Island” and people talk about living on Island Time, and everyone is so relaxed and happy (ESPECIALLY compared to Norfolk. There. I said it). I think the Island Time zone is the right time zone for me!

Chris and I took the kids in the ferry to downtown San Diego for Restaurant Week at the Fish Market.

Another day, kids and I went to the zoo and they were hot and whiny and grouchy. Then someone took the diaper and wipes that I used to reserve our lunch table. So maybe we’re not yet relaxed and happy all the time, but whatever.

One day I had some edits to do on an article that’s coming out next month. The kids were begging to watch cartoons and we had nothing else to do, so they were happy and I was happy and I got to work out on the balcony overlooking the Pacific. That’s when I had a flashback to when i was 19 and having my first parent-less adventure in Egypt. Walking along the Red Sea in Dahab, I realized that if I had a laptop and Internet access, I could potentially sit by the ocean and write for a magazine anywhere in the world. And maybe it’s 14 years later and just a freelance assignment, but I was actually doing it, without even manufacturing it.

Every move, there’s always an element of “where’s my place here? What the heck am I supposed to do here?” Several circumstances had exacerbated that feeling lately. So that realization was a nice reminder that, when I was second-guessing this whole year of transience, on some level it resonates with a long ago dream. Living the dream in Busytown, baby!