Wars, Blogs, Lives

Podcast of Blog Entry:

Twenty-five years ago, on January 16, 1991 (US time), Operation Desert Storm began, with coalition forces initiating military activities that would eventually lead to the expulsion of Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. By the end of February, it was “over.”

If only.

Today I want to introduce you to a blog I recently discovered, a blog of a combat vet who would dispute any claim that War is over when it’s “over,” yet one who also appears determined never to forget that he has what it takes. Welcome to the blog, Stuck in the Sand: PTSD and College.

Even though the blog’s author gives links that easily lead to your finding his name, he writes the blog without name. He’s a college student, finishing up at the University of Wisconsin, heading out to California to find fame and fortune in the tech industry. By UW standards, he’d be an “older” student, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He loves to code.

Who doesn’t, these days.

Don’t for a moment think, though, that he writes as if hiding in some wretched corner of Madison. Quite the contrary: he openly writes his confusions, his hopes, his losses, his gains, the more painful parts of his life story, the more joy-filled parts. He is no great fan of the US Veterans Administration, especially its medical facilities, but neither does he rant about the VA incessantly. He’s been homeless. He’s been divorced. He’s been down-and-out, up-and-in, resentful, grateful, you name it.

He is simply living, trying to make sense of a life that arose out of a desperate childhood, only to find itself in the middle of a War that was somehow being touted as a video game writ large. All twenty-five years ago, all today.

I find the blogs of many combat vets quite compelling. Often entries appear haphazardly, written in crisis perhaps, or perhaps in a moment of unforeseen, but well-savored joy. The authors frequently excuse themselves as not being adequately articulate, adequately accurate, even adequately reliable. Stuck in the Sand’s author often deprecates himself so, even as he speaks his truth with both a poetry and a coarseness that leaves a reader with scenes easily imagined, emotions easily felt.

Like most other vet bloggers, Stuck in the Sand’s author makes no claim to universality. He readily acknowledges that others have perhaps suffered just as much as he has, likely more. Yet by the very act of writing he also acknowledges that his own pain is not nothing, is not no-big-deal. It is the pain that draws him to a computer screen somehow, keystroke by keystroke, to find a way to alleviate that suffering momentarily, reshape it, re-envision it.

Whether with thesaurus words or with F-bombs strategically placed for proper effect. And affect.

As I find blogs, I’ll let you know. If one grabs you, stick with it for a while, notice the rhythms of a life that has known War and is trying now to know peace, listen for the “what it takes” in the phrasing, see it in the sentence structure, feel it as it blasts and as it whispers.

Twenty-five years is a long time, especially for a War that was supposed to be one step beyond a weekend, Xbox marathon, just aim and shoot. Stuck in the Sand is doing what he can not to remain stuck so. I look forward to reading more. I wish him the best.

Perhaps some of you will as well.

Until tomorrow, be well,

Doc