Guess who’s back, back again? That’s right, it’s me, your favorite left-handed, near-sighted newspaper editor. I’m pleased to report that I’ve safely returned to southeast Georgia from my holiday travels with a stomach filled with cheese and a mind filled with a newfound understanding of why babies cry on planes. Because honestly, if I were a baby, I’d cry on planes too: turbulence is no joke, especially when all you want to do is go to sleep after eating your airline-rationed Biscoff cookies. I bet the Labradoodle I saw boarding first-class with its sombrero-wearing owner ate way better than me.

Moving on to January. January is a special month because it is the month when so many of us attempt to ditch old habits and fulfill our New Years’ resolutions made under the influence of champagne and table grapes. (For the record, I have always eaten twelve green grapes on New Years’ Day at the stroke of midnight before Tiktok made it look cool. And I may or may not have done so this year while sitting under a table. Killing two birds with twelve grapes, as they say.).

One of my New Years’ resolutions is to read books, which is actually a harder goal than it sounds for someone like myself with such a fast-paced lifestyle at the Bryan County News. For 2025, I have set for myself a goal of 24 books, or two books per month. The great thing about this resolution is that through reading books, I can get material for this column by sharing my reflections on what I read. Reading books also has the added side effect of weaning me off Tiktok, an app which may or may not be banned by the powers-thatbe in this country. But if I have learned anything from the wonderful works of BCN contributor Tom Hand, it is that the Founding Fathers would not have stood for such blatant government overreach. On the contrary, I bet Alexander Hamilton would have been a great orator on Tiktok-he did so well on Broadway, after all.

Another resolution I have is to buy a new wall calendar. This is one of my easier resolutions to complete, sandwiched in between “travel to Japan” and “stop eating so much damn cheese”.

I’m planning on stopping by Barnes & Noble this weekend to find a cool 2025 calendar for my room, and maybe I’ll buy one for my dad as well. My dad was displeased with the one his workplace gave him, because it was actually a pocket calendar instead of a wall calendar. Which is a very dumb gift I must say, because who uses pocket calendars in the era of the smartphone? Those aberrations should stay in 2024, alongside Crumbl Cookies, trad wives, Joker 2, the “clean girl” aesthetic, and the song “APT” by Rosé and Bruno Mars.

And specific to Editor’s Corner, another one of my resolutions is to continue the poetry schtick I have going on here. My faithful readers--of which I can count them on two hands!--seem to really like the poems I feature here, and I haven’t heard any comments to the contrary.

I wish everyone the best of luck in 2025, and I hope everyone’s resolutions are still progressing smoothly, whether you ate twelve grapes at midnight or ran around your street corner with empty luggage or ate collard greens and black-eyed peas for dinner or simply fell asleep on your couch before the Times Square ball even dropped on prime-time television. Readers, if that last one was you, no need to worry: much like Cythnia Erivo’s performance in “Wicked”, I’ll be holding space for y’all.

Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News.