edge of the continent

…is that I am way too old to be pulling all-nighters like this. 

I woke up yesterday with a vague plan to visit the farmer’s market in Hillcrest. Since I prefer to get to the market early and I’d slept in, I drove instead in the general direction of where I thought the Mission San Diego de Alcala is located without first consulting the handy mapbook I keep in my car; it felt like a winging-it sort of morning. After discovering that by winging it I was off-track by some 10-15 miles, however, I consoled myself with a short detour to the bookstore.

It was there while breaking my book-buying rule for the second time in a month to pick up a copy of Afoot and Afield in San Diego County: A comprehensive hiking guide that I was asked by a stranger if I’d like to grab a quick bite to eat at the restaurant next door. To my surprise, I said “why not?” and found myself having a really nice conversation with her over tortilla soup and a diet Coke. Randomness.

People approach me every so often — for help, for directions, for safety — although I must say that being invited to lunch was a new one for me. Reaction from people I’ve mentioned this to has been mixed: friends have either stated that it was a cool little happening, or that she was just trying to pick me up, or that I was crazy because she could have been crazy. But here’s how I see it: There are some six billion people on the planet. We’re mostly closed-off little units keeping our heads down and trying not to bump into one another or make ourselves look even a little bit foolish. But something gets lost — a bit of our humanity, perhaps — when we don’t attempt a connection with those who cross our paths: a smile, a kind word, commiserating over a hot day or a long line. A quick lunch. Besides, everyone’s got a tale to tell and how will we ever hear it if we don’t stop to listen?

I later drove to Presidio Park on a whim, but there are no coincidences: I learned that Presidio Hill was the original site of Mission San Diego de Alcala when it was founded in 1769 and that the settlement didn’t move to its current location until some five years later. So while I didn’t make it to the mission, I did manage to visit its former home.

The Serra Museum:

Hazy sunlight through the park’s trees:

I went into this year’s NaNoWriMo for a few reasons, the biggest of them being that I thought it would be a good way to challenge myself to write already, sans editing myself into oblivion as I often do when faced with a blank page. And it was great when I hit day four and found a bit of a groove to work in after struggling at each writing session to just get through every sentence.

Despite finding inspiration in the past few days for making this collection of words a bit more novel-like, I haven’t added anything to it since last weekend. I don’t like admitting this, but I habitually scrap my work to begin again when it doesn’t start out and remain “perfect”: in this case, that I didn’t have a solid idea going into the project, that I didn’t hit my daily writing targets to help keep the project “sane” so that I could avoid a mad rush to finish at the end of the month, and that I haven’t written in a week. My thinking gets a little too black-or-white, all-or-nothing, leaving my projects in a continual state of being chucked and re-started with little resolution, or abandoned for good and left for the dustbin.

This “be perfect” expectation is unrealistic and leaves little room for real life, so my goal this month it to set that aside, write my ass off, and just see how it goes. I know I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and that I may not meet the word count target by November 30, but I’m not throwing in the towel on this one.