How the Landscape Changes

This week-end, we have taken a brief break from our home repairs to focus on getting ready for classes that start on Monday.  My class took less time--I teach online, and much of the curriculum is imported into the course shell.  I have a lot of inputting of dates to do, but I don't have to create course items the way my spouse does.

I started preparing for materials for a specific course I would be teaching, the first college course, almost exactly 30 years ago today.  I had spent years thinking about how I would teach a college level English class, and now I would have the opportunity:  I was excited and thrilled and scared.

Now I am just as happy to be managing the curriculum as it is imported--how the landscape of my teaching life has changed.  First Teaching Year Kristin would have been frustrated.  Of course, it helps Thirty Years Later Kristin that the curriculum is of good quality.  Why invent my own when I have good materials right here and ready.

Our flooring crew will be gone for a few weeks which gives us time to get everything moved back to the half of the house that has new floors.  I hesitate, of course--those floors are so lovely, the walls freshly painted, the emptiness so alluring.

Some of the stuff that needs to be moved is big, like the fridge.  Will those big items go through a bedroom door?  I am so very tired of thinking about these things.

The South Florida world seems divided into distinct populations:  those of us who had no hurricane damage, those of us still working on hurricane recovery, and those who are done with hurricane recovery.  Parts of Broward county were untouched by Hurricane Irma.  My neighborhood, on the other hand, has an unusual number of houses for sale, and an unusual number of blue-tarped roofs, waiting for repair.

This morning, I am thinking of events outside of our control that change the landscape.  Last year was Hurricane Irma.  This summer, it might be the closing of the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale.  Always, there's a back drop of the developers scouting new sites.  Who will live in these new condo developments?  As we continue racing towards our warming future, I expect that sea level rise may come to shape our landscape in ways that we can't even anticipate yet, long before the final transformation that will involve a different coastline.

This morning, I'm thinking about all the coastlines of our lives that will change, that are changing.  Should we try to be more observant?  Should we try to shape the changes?  Or should we let them swirl around us and carry us on their way?