After starting as editor here a year and a half ago, I got a lot of advice on how to be true to the community and fair in my reporting. While I remember the general themes of those conversations, and the ones from the other papers that I worked at as an editor, I couldn’t tell you exactly what was said in most of them.

No one offered me any sort of magic potion for perfection; most said it was never simple, but what it came down to was intending to do my best for the readers.

That, I remember. If I ever let that slip, someone is right there to point it out to me, too, which I may not appreciate at the time, but I always end up being grateful for it.

The one piece of advice I can recall with full, awful clarity, came from two different friends who’d been there, done that. It was this: Get used to making your own stories the lowest priority.

“What?!” was my reaction. “How? Impossible! But it is starting again already…”

They were both, of course, annoyingly accurate.

That really struck home for me these last few weeks. We started a new volume — number 103 for 103 years — in June and I’ve been looking back at the past year’s issues as I archive them. I was surprised to find how much the nature of the stories I wrote has changed. A couple of years ago, my favorite stories almost always were features about people (and animals) doing something exceptional. This past year, my favorites have been, for the most part, issues stories.

Strange as it may sound, I actually enjoyed covering the many candidate forums last fall, although I wasn’t crazy about all the meetings and the time commitment. I liked hearing from people who were unscripted, about what was really on their minds.

Stranger still, I also liked doing county stories — on the Tall Chief Golf Course sale, the Snoqualmie Valley Trail repairs, the recent septic system controversy — and figuring out when, where and why all the moving pieces of the various county departments connected.

It’s simplifying the complex, or at least trying to, that I enjoy, it turns out. Well, simplifying things, and the simple pleasure of covering a local festival like Fall City Day, the Carnation Fourth of July, and the North Bend Block Party, this weekend.