What have I learned?

As many of you read in last week's edition, I am leaving The People-Sentinel. It was a decision shaped by many factors.

However, none of these factors were because of the community at large.

I came to Barnwell County in 2005. For nearly 40 years, I had never lived outside my home county of York in South Carolina, even when I attended college.

I had never been in Barnwell County until my first job interview with newspaper.

In short, I had never been outside my comfort zone.

I think we all have to take self-imposed challenges every now and then. To other people, they might not seem challenging, but to those challenged, it's climbing their own personal Mt. Everest.

I was at a stage in my life that if I didn't take the challenge of moving to an unknown place and see if I could establish myself, then I never would try it.

I knew people who have lived their whole lives in one town -- and there are people like that in Barnwell County. Maybe their personal challenges lie along other paths.

I'm still climbing and learning along the way.

What have I learned?

A community isn't just a location on the map, nor is a town a pattern of streets.

Barnwell County is blessed with many good communities. Each, in their own way, has ingredients of art, literature, God, charity and caring.

But the biggest ingredient and most important one is the people that can make or break the recipe and dish.

Maybe like Sleytown or Dunbarton, a community is not so much geographic longitude or latitude but what we know and what we remember and what we do for one another.

Maybe I had to walk out of one familiar forest and into a different one to realize the woods are comprised of trees.
What have I learned?

That a community is a place people call home. And home in its best sense is where we give and receive love.

Now a new challenge awaits me working for Denmark Technical College -- one that requires me to depart the newspaper.

But at least I won't be leaving home.