There’s emotional and creative burn-out to blogging. After a while, it’s just hard work, but you’re in the zone, and you keep doing it. Add being in a war zone onto that, and you never get to complain about updating MyBlueHamster at blogspot again.
Dr. Carlos Brown, now a surgeon at Austin’s Brackenridge Hospital, choked up guiding SXSW attendees through Trapperlos M.D., his blog of his time as a U.S. Navy trauma surgeon in Ramadi in Iraq. There’s something slightly surreal about the way he put music to images of life in the operating room: but it was the little things that made life bearable for his family, like letting his daughter know that he had a birthday cake; or when he and his family, separated as they were, could all wear Star Wars costumes at Halloween; and the less grisly memories (like drinking one of the two beers he was allowed during his tour.)
Brown (who has since resigned his commission) calls the blogging experience an essential part of his time there. But he did note that the military has now started cutting back on access to YouTube and MySpace. “People who came after me had a much harder time running a blog, and I guess I got lucky.”
This article appears in March 7 • 2008.
