I hate endings. Any kind of ending is anxiety-inducing between having to rip yourself from your current path and forcing a goodbye. However, fictional endings are by far the absolute worst.
Every time a story comes to an end I’m filled with a longing for more. It’s one of the many reasons why I frequently pray J.K. Rowling will change her mind and gift us with another Harry Potter book or someone will randomly discover the manuscript of an unpublished novel by J.R.R. Tolkien hidden in their walls.
I know neither of these things are feasible, but how do I let go of characters I’ve followed for thousands of pages? I don’t care if nothing interesting is happening in their lives. Give me my favorite characters sitting around a fire, giggling for no reason. Give me the side character with no significance randomly deciding to go slay a dragon. Give me anything so that I don’t have to let go.
Luckily, in real life we never reach the point where our lives are completely stationary. But we do enter new eras. Perhaps one has even started for you this month with the marking of a new year.
In the cycle of magazine publishing it is impossible to let a new year pass without pondering over the content we have to look forward to, from this month’s Photo Contest to our Dining Awards. A range of articles are already set in stone featuring new road trips, faces of the falls, and tips for making the best of your time in Idaho Falls, all from your favorite locals, will keep all of us up-to-date on the many happenings in our area.
At IFM we are also anticipating our magazine’s redesign in 2021. This means we’ll be starting to make some small changes as we work toward a new look and more engaging content. This will be a new beginning on a much larger scale and we hope you’ll indulge us by sending all of your suggestions our way.
It’s hard to remain stubbornly against endings when there are so many good things ahead. So I have a proposal … what if instead of looking at endings as a goodbye we praise them as beginnings?