It’s Wednesday, the dust has settled and the South Whidbey Record has successfully moved — again.

To anyone counting, this was our third relocation in nearly as many years. No, we’re not playing musical chairs for fun, and yes, we are planning to set down permanent roots in our new Freeland home.

To shed some light on our light feet, the past few years have been something of an experiment in viable newspaper economics. In 2010, our industry was seeing financial upheaval once unimaginable. Longtime daily publications, massive organizations once considered unsinkable, were turning belly up left and right.

Small community newspapers have better weathered the revenue storms ravaging our daily counterparts, for a variety of reasons that I won’t bore you with here, but we were not immune and Sound Publishing made the tough call to leave South Whidbey and set up shop on Central Whidbey.

The idea was simple: shack up with our sister paper, the Whidbey News-Times, split the bills and produce newspapers that were more financially stable.

Well, in The Record’s case, the financial savings simply didn’t add up. The price of being separated from our community was just too high.

So we packed up our computers and hightailed it back to where it all began, Langley, the beautiful and charming Village by the Sea. We spent a lovely year in a space tucked into the back of Langley Village, thanks largely to the generosity of city business leader Janet Ploof.

Knowing we had just pennies to come home, she put us up for a pittance in the hopes that we could stay — if only it had been in the stars.

Thank you, Janet, The Record owes you much.

But again, financial matters dictated a change and now we’re in Freeland and we have no complaints. Moving again so quickly wasn’t what we’d planned but the office, located in suite 204 above the Freeland Chamber of Commerce at 5575 Harbor Ave., is awesome and will suit our needs perfectly.

It’s been nice too that Freeland, an ever-growing and busy community, has welcomed us with open arms. Recording its history in greater detail will be our honor. That said, coverage of Langley and Clinton won’t change. Langley remains South Whidbey’s only incorporated city and Clinton, well Clinton is trying hard and we’ll be there to tell the story, whatever it is.

Thank you South Whidbey for your patience and please stop by for a visit at our new digs. As always, our door, wherever it happens to be that year, is open.