December is my last month as Editor-in-Chief of JOSA A, having reached the limit of six years in the post. I find myself with nothing but gratitude to express. First, I’d like to thank my successor, Olga Korotkova, who makes handing off this wonderful job considerably easier knowing it will be in good hands, nay, better hands.

In 2016 I catalogued the biographies of all of the topical editors whom I inherited from my predecessor, the amazing Franco Gori [1]. Today, because of the six-year term limit on editorial appointments, the volunteer team are all people who answered when I called. I couldn’t have asked for more. They do very hard work, maintaining the standards of the Journal and making decisions on work submitted by colleagues worldwide. Few of us authors find rejection to be anything other than injustice, and fewer still think to thank a helpful editor after publication, though I would like to encourage it! It might be said then that the job of topical editor is thankless, but that wouldn’t be true, because here you go: Thanks to all the editors past and present who have made the Journal what it is and continue to cajole reviewers, weigh difficult decisions, and render acceptances with joy and rejections with collegial empathy. You can find the biographies of those who’ve joined since 2016 in editorials beginning with one published in April 2016 and running through the most recent addition in November 2021 [2–10].

I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to work with outstanding people like topical editor Irina Larina from the Baylor College of Medicine, USA. Irina was just elected Optica Fellow, “for the development of novel imaging instruments for biomedical applications across multiple scales, and for service to the community.” Congratulations to Irina and other members of the Fellows class of 2022 [11].

The Board of Editors consists of the Editors-in-Chief of the Optica Publishing Group Journals and a chair who is typically a past editor. That chair was filled by Martijn de Sterke when I joined and is currently ably filled by Joe Mait. The twice-annual BoE meetings have been a privilege of the job I find hard to describe. Lively discussions filled every one and stretched the limits of our schedules. Before the pandemic, participants flew in from around the world, and since 2020 have attended Zoom meetings, for many, at odd hours. The rewards of attendance were great. I learned something valuable from my colleagues at each, often coopting good ideas, and all while basking in the company of the modern giants in the field. I’ll miss those meetings and I thank all of the editors who made them so edifying.

Our authors, of course, are the waters on which our little ship sails. I was always happy to see a beautiful paper come in and fly through review and quickly go on to bring glory to the researchers. But I was happier still to see a paper that couldn’t get through review, that needed work on the writing or a little extension of the results to be publishable, that later came back to us improved, polished, and ready to be a JOSA A paper. I rooted for the underdogs, always, and I hope JOSA A has been part of the growth of many researchers and groups. I am grateful for the easy ones and the hard ones, and the ones in the middle. I’m grateful for the papers we published and the ones we rejected and every author who worked for months or years on a paper and then said, “Let’s submit it to JOSA A.” Thank you all.

And finally, the Journal is supported by an incredible professional staff in a system I described in my second year [12]. Some new faces have joined and some have departed, but the process and much of the team remain the same coming to the end of 2021. They continue to make Optica the leading forum for light science and technology. They continue to make the work of the editors and authors rewarding and engaging. They are each superbly talented and patient and I will always be grateful to have been an editor in this era.