I found myself siting in the sand, my back against a Hesco bastion, writing on an old familiar note pad. I imagined myself at home, sitting against the old oak tree that grew in the back yard, grass tickling my bare feet in the humid summer breeze. The old cheap pencil I was using had bite marks on it and the eraser was long gone but it wrote just fine and made a scratching sound against the grain of the paper that I found soothing as I filled the page. It was my escape after all…writing. It took me away from the day to day stress of southern Afghanistan. I thought about that as I wrote…how people needed a way to escape. I’ll admit to thinking about all kinds of things, that’s just what writing does for me. It makes me think. It makes me want to tell stories of love, pain, sorrow and joy. It makes me want to abuse my notepad with doodles and tear stains long after I forgot what I was doing in the first place, which wasn’t the point anyway. It wasn’t important “what” I was writing. It was important “that” I was writing, because the joy is in the doing.
