Friends Old, New, and Soon to Be,
I don’t put a lot of stock in the New Year as a reliable point of overhaul. I tend to believe the habits we display over time are predictors of our future performance, and neither declaring “New Year, New Me” nor the dropping of a ball in Times Square has much impact on the reality of that. Looking back at 2024 and the plans I had for it supports the truth of my assertion. I still need to lose fifteen pounds. I still choose steak over kale (truthfully, I choose most anything over kale). I still need to clean out the garage. And my office. And the rented storage shed that holds…well, I’m not entirely sure.
Frankly, I see New Year’s resolutions as an attempt to create certainty in a world in which uncertainty is the only thing of which I am certain, and if I do have a resolution for 2025, it’s to embrace that.
When I started writing to you in 2021, after decades of checks appearing on the first and fifteenth of each month, it was the only regular employment I had. I felt a freedom I’d not experienced in years. But the truth will out, and the truth is I am conditioned to seek certainty. As my Uncle Jim taught me, money is just a tool, but it is one that makes life easier. So, jobs accumulated. More than I wanted to be honest. But as of January 1, 2025, I am back to the start of all this, just you and me and Tom Beckbe. I am starting to feel free again, a feeling with a value I’ve never found in a paycheck.
If embracing uncertainty means watching the bank balance more closely, it also means a clear horizon and the freedom to do anything to which I feel called, so long as I maintain domestic bliss. I expect I’ve got stories to tell and friends to make in 2025. In celebration of regaining that freedom, and with the blessing of my wife and daughter, I am headed “out east” to Hyde County, NC, to see about some end-of-year ducks with my friend Bill Mattes and my Labrador Jed. I’ll spend January thinking about quail and maybe seeing some too. In February, I am headed south to hunt ducks in Georgetown, SC, with a group of fellow military veterans courtesy of the Andy Quattlebaum and Blackwell Family Foundation. Many of my fellows will be hunting for the first time. A week later, I will be at the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition along with friends like the Tom Beckbe crew and Grayson Guyer. I hope to meet you if you’re there.
Beyond February, the year remains uncertain, and I’m not trying to overcome it with resolutions only loosely tethered to my reality. Some of y’all have invited me to join you in experiencing the things that matter to you, invitations I’ve not had the freedom to accept. I hope to remedy that, though I’m not making a resolution about it. But there is one certainty to which you may cling in an uncertain world. The Tom Beckbe Field Journal will only become even more of a place where talented writers come to write about the things that move them. I look forward to sharing the things we care about with you.
Yours,
Russell Worth Parker
Editor-in-Chief, Tom Beckbe Field Journal
