 All right, I'm recording you. Yes great So What is this all about? Well, I'm getting back to my memoir. I have a memoir about my last tour to Afghanistan halfway written. I Was in the army for for six years. It's hard to believe looking back It was includes a one tour to Iraq to to Afghanistan and I need to write this book. It's time to organize my life so that I can do it This actually has really good background like it looks nice great, so I was in the army During the army in 2000 Right after I finished a computer science degree from Stanford My classmates were getting hired for six figure starting salaries, but I was so burnt out on computers That I went in search of adventure and I found it and that's how You ended up in the army Yeah, I didn't go straight to university after high school I got first I got a couple of part-time jobs and I went to night school And then one of those part-time jobs turned into a programming gig so at 19 I was earning like real money as a programmer. I was earning as much as my either my parents ever made so Yeah, so I worked really hard as a program up until I got the degree, but I burnt myself out and You know, I think I didn't have a good like Mental guide in life. I just wanted adventure And it's not like it was entirely bad experience the military, but I do think I wasted a little bit of potential that I You know, if I could go back in time I'd advise myself against it Although a lot of it was fun and exciting and I did learn a lot It's interesting that you say it was fun It's the first time Yeah, well, I feel like Yeah, I've written a I've written about this in those New York Times essays And New York Times had a blog of a home fires blog and they invited veterans to contribute their stories So I wrote a little bit about this how like the soldier The two narratives that are most palpable about soldiers are either like the hero narrative or the victim narrative Where the soldiers kind of heroically struggle against, you know moral ambiguity Or else the soldiers are just, you know, innocent kids who are duped by propaganda into this war and see all these bad things and I'm not saying those aren't true. Like that's definitely describes a lot of people's experiences, but But a lot of people also have a lot of fun A lot of people go back for more Towards the end of a deployment soldiers who haven't seen enough fighting start volunteering for dangerous Missions because they want to shoot guns. They want to tell all their friends and family They want to achieve that status by saying yes, I've been in contact, you know with the enemy That's a big part of the story too and that's a part that that is a little bit unpalpable Like that doesn't make it into the movies. It rarely makes into the movies. Just how How bloodthirsty people are so I was in the army four and a half years I joined in 2000 became a paratrooper an infantry officer and finished Ranger school went to the 82nd Airborne Division The 9-11 happened. I went to Afghanistan in 2002 as an infantry platoon leader Went to Iraq in 2003 2004 as a company XO And in August of 2004 I got out I was after four and a half years They asked me to stay an extra half year and I did I Got out I kind of became really skeptical first about foreign policy and about government in general and right as my Skepticism was in full bloom a giant hand came out of the sky Grab me by the scruff of my neck and tossed me back to my old home for Bragg, North Carolina Where I was retrained in civil affairs and made one more deployment to Afghanistan Six years later. I returned to Afghanistan this time as a civil affairs officer And my eyes were wide open by that time politically philosophically Awesome, so is it gonna be like kind of maybe What is it called like style or wise or what like is it gonna be Maybe have like any Humor in it or if it's gonna be really straightforward or what's like the mood I guess Or you don't know yet Well, it's it's like halfway written and I got I got hundreds of pages of journals So so I feel like I'm more sculpting this than writing it from scratch. I'm sculpting it from what I already have The mood I don't know I Guess I'd refer people to it to what I've already written in the New York Times home fires blog or elsewhere Or in fire and forget it's an apology of military fiction that came out I've got a story in there came out this last February People see see my style We're talking about your own art or your own your own craft you probably understand that I think you kind of have Well, you're trained to do it, right? Style I don't know. I think I try to be real honest and candid More than anything else About how I felt I Also think a lot and I've read a lot of books about politics and economics So I'm bringing pretty big ideas to bear on these experiences So they're gonna be it may be some reasons to Why things are the way they are why they happen the way they happen based on some yeah, you know That might be a good description Of this project. I'm just trying to understand the military and trying to understand our modern wars And I think I've come to understand them pretty well and I want to share that understanding That might be a good description