From My Desk: Jan. 21

1-21-26

By Lauren Royce, Editor

I would like to start this one off with praise: I love getting mail from readers. Real mail or email, I am thrilled to see something come in from any of you. Letters to the Editor are the lifeblood of a good op-ed section. I know there are more opinions waiting for someone to give them shape in written form, and I ask you all to send them to me. Yes, it can be about pretty much anything: kids today, why QR codes are or are not helpful, a new recipe that went over with mixed reviews at family dinner. Fork them over, people! Let me read whatever is going on in this sector of northeast Pennsylvania from the perspective of its people. It helps me find a pulse on what people are thinking about.
I also would like to say thank you to everyone who has expressed how happy they have been with the paper’s progress. It truly means a lot to me. I also like when people tell me what’s wrong, or what they noticed in my writing. Everyone is fully encouraged to engage with what they see in the paper. I’m here to listen.
I did always wonder how news people did their job, and now I know it involves a great deal of scouring. It in fact feels much like the online puzzle game Poptropica I used to play as a kid. I have so many items in my backpack, a means of travel, and a mission to complete. The items can be used when the timing is right and not when I think they ought to be. But it all follows a plot, and in real life I cannot Google a tutorial to figure things out. The game is now a husk of what it used to be, islands I vividly remember completing now gone or behind a paywall for membership.
At times, as some of you may have heard me say, this job also feels like an odd dream. Not a nightmare but a dream you have wherein you’re set in a memory, but it’s all happening very presently before you. There are people, faceless and familiar, rushing you to do something. It is critical in the odd dream you absorb everything that is being said. Events occur and tumble forth in the calendar like a bag of marbles spilling out. Quick, grab those marbles. Ah, there one goes out of reach. Besides the “odd” portion, I do experience the “dream:” when people are happy I’m there for their event, when people are gleeful that I will help them tell about a subject dear to them. I savor those times.
But there has to be a sprinkle of nightmare somewhere. I’ve had a small smattering of instances in my career thus far where I’ve ruffled some feathers and made some assistants melt with frustration, simply from doing my job. Telling the truth. I would and will do it again. If I don’t, I’m not living life and I’m not doing my job. And worse, I won’t have anything interesting to write about for the eventual book I plan to make detailing my lived experience. I close with a mantra that I’m practicing this week: Not everything can go right and that is fine, it is what it is.