SO ready for this year to be history.

We need a new year. Every Jan. 1 hope springs eternal. Maybe this will be the year, we think, that we finally get that job/partner/home/fill in the blank that we have been hoping for for so long. Maybe this will be the year the war in Iraq is finally resolved and we can stop reading body counts and heart-rending stories of yet another soldier who won’t be home for Christmas. Maybe this will be the year homelessness in America is eradicated and scientists find a cure for AIDS/cancer/Alzheimer’s. Maybe this will be the year the government pledges to spend more on health care and less on weapons.

But, as the year wears on hopes are dashed and discarded one by one like empty beer cans along life’s highway.

As I write this it’s the week before Christmas, and spirits seem particularly low. Kitsap County and the Northwest are still trying to recover from the horrific storm that slammed us just 10 days before Christmas. Some people are still without power, wondering if their Christmas will be “merry and bright” or dark and dreary. Every day brings new stories of people killed by running generators in their homes, or of families burned out of their homes when candles or other implements of light and warmth turned deadly. One family near Seattle lost their home when the power went back on and a stove burner, which was inadvertently left on, ignited flammable materials.

The war in Iraq drags on, the homeless are still with us, huddling in doorways now to escape the cold. Loved ones still fall to incurable diseases.

In this newspaper office, the flu and fierce colds are laying waste to workers who are supposed to be writing stories or assembling copy in advance of the early holiday deadlines. Nerves are frazzled, fuses are short, and there’s still Christmas shopping to do. Weather permitting.

This year is definitely ready for the trash heap. I for one, can’t wait to turn the calendar page and head into the new year.

In spite of my natural tendency toward pessimism there’s also a glimmer of optimism lurking under the bah humbug surface. I know that in January it will still be dark when I leave the house and dark when I get home, but the days will be getting slightly longer and snowdrops will be pushing through the sodden ground.

With the holidays over life will get back to “normal,” whatever that is. Instead of resolutions for the new year, I’m going to concentrate on a few hopes.

I hope that people will learn to spell my name correctly. It’s at the top of every story I write as well as featured prominently in this column, yet I constantly get e-mail addressed to “Marcy,” “Marci,” or “Marcia.” This is particularly vexing when the sender is requesting that I list their event in What’s Up. I’m sorry my parents spelled it “the hard way,” but it’s not that unusual.

I hope that people who send press releases will finally learn the What’s Up deadlines. Again, they are listed in every issue, across the top of the Goings On calendar. I hope they also learn that a deadline means what it implies: make it or it’s dead. The day after is not “close enough.”

I also hope that What’s Up will become the fabled constant 20 page section, which has been promised by management for more than two years. I would even settle for a steady 16 pages.

I hope that people will realize that it’s OK to go to events on Bainbridge Island if you don’t live there — they don’t really have an armed border patrol at the south end of the Agate Pass bridge. Conversely, it’s not impossible to travel north across the bridge from Bainbridge to the — gasp — rest of the county.

I hope the 18- to 45-year-old demographic will start reading What’s Up — apparently their numbers were lacking in a recent survey.

I hope that Kitsap County residents of all ages will consider What’s Up to be the “go to” source for information on events around the county. The sun doesn’t shine on any other Arts and Entertainment publication in Kitsap County that is solely dedicated to the county.

Finally, I hope that Johnny Depp decides to do some off-off-off-off Broadway theater in Kitsap County, say at Changing Scene, so I could interview him. Hey, you never know — it’s a new year!

Address What’s Up comments, concerns or kudos to Marcie Miller, mmiller@northkitsapherald.com or (360) 779-4464.