Shannon Costello

I desire to write something that is profound but also a verbal work of art — in other words, something different from recent posts. I’m thinking I’ve gotten a little sloppy.

I like walking down a tree-lined, lamplit sidewalk at night. My shadow stretches out behind me, really long. Then, as I approach the next light it shrinks, doubles under me, and starts growing in front, longer and longer…

I don’t like sitting in a class during a break when a student is arguing with a professor over a grade. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s even worse when the student cries…

What if, ten years from now, I find that all I have accomplished is to teach another ten years, picking up a masters along the way? Oops. That’s the wrong way to ask that…the worrywart way. The better question is: How can I live my life so that I’m ok with myself at age forty? Forty! Imagine me at forty!

Normally I’m in a hurry to get home after class, because I haven’t seen CJ all day. But today he’s in Florida, and so there was no reason to come home. I would have gone shopping if it hadn’t been way too late. Life without people to love would be so empty.

And life without people at all would just be boring. People is why I like teaching, why it is entertaining. But not yet…definitely not yet. I need more time to lay in the grass and watch the birds and the garden before I’m ready for THAT again…