The electronic calendar that I’ve used to organize my schedule for the past two-and-a-half years is thick with short-hand notations like these: 6:30 p.m. South Loop School LSC; 6 p.m. Fannie May site meet; 7 p.m. Beat 1224 CAPS; 9 a.m. Zoning Board of Appeals; 10 a.m. Park ribbon cutting.

The calendar is dotted with reminders to squint through the agendas issued by public commissions (medical district, plan, landmarks, community development), by city council committees, the housing authority, the board of education and the park district.

The calendar includes when I was to show up in federal court, pull foreclosure cases at the Daley Center and development plans from the seventh floor of city hall. It is full of when and where I was to meet with sources to talk or the hour I was to call them up for an interview.

It’s a personal Rosetta stone of sorts, detailing the full-throttle flow of covering nitty-gritty neighborhood issues for two papers. I’m left with the impression in reviewing it that community journalism, as I’ve experienced it here, has allowed for no typical weeks. Which is why the job is both completely engrossing and a high-wire juggling act.

Alas, after Chicago Journal and Skyline are published next week, I’ll leave the papers to their next editor, Greg Skinner, who will soon start introducing himself. The August 12 Chicago Journal will be the 132nd I’ve edited since my first and it feels like the right time for a change. Later this month, I’ll take a reporting position with Progress Illinois, a progressive news and commentary Web site that focuses on city and state politics and policy.

In leaving Chicago Journal and Skyline, there are a few people to whom I owe thanks. Foremost is Dan Haley, the publisher of both papers, for hiring me in the first place. Colleagues like Bob Uphues and Mark Tatara, and especially Rebecca Lomax, got me through deadline each week. Freelance writers like Ian Fullerton, Melissa Albert and Phil Morehart offered consistently high-quality work. Many journalist friends were quick with ideas and advice, ready to talk shop.

A tip of the cap goes to residents and readers who live in the neighborhoods we cover. There are no papers without community engagement, and the people who live in our coverage areas are always ready to engage.

Since I started this job, hundreds of people, quite literally, have offered story tips, ideas and opinions — there were always many, many opinions — about local issues. Many took the time to sit for discussions with me that lasted for hours. Countless people were glad to do an interview on the street or after a meeting, to take my calls and invite me into their homes. Some would ring me at 8 a.m. on Saturdays to detail key turning points in their neighborhood’s history. A few didn’t shy away from pounding on the table that separated us as they leveled their criticisms. For all of it, I’m grateful.

The time I’ve spent editing the Journal and Skyline, as well as Chicago Journal’s old West Town paper, now unfortunately closed for well more than a year, were tumultuous ones. In its early years the Journal detailed the astonishing growth of the neighborhoods south and west of the Loop, but for most of my time here, I’ve covered the consequences of recession. The aftermath of the boom has been brutal — budgets are in the red, foreclosures have rippled through the neighborhoods and many plans for development, retail and entirely new communities are presently stalled out.

It was a challenge capturing those realities about multiple and distinct areas each week. The papers had their better and worse editions with me as their editor, and the misses and mistakes are mine, and mine alone. I kept at it in part because I do believe that the neighborhoods covered in Chicago Journal and Skyline are compelling ones, and that the papers’ place in them remains a vital one.

So long, CJ.