Blogging has my changed life dramatically over the last year. What started out as a creative outlet has morphed into a daily need to write something. An entry can point to a silly link or serve some cathartic purpose. Or it could be as simple as noting the things that went on in my day. When I look back at my past entries from a year ago, its neat to see where I was at that place in time back then.

Maybe some of the stuff you write is some good shit. Your readership increases and everyone raves about it. Take the case of MY WAR - Fear And Loathing In Iraq, a great milblog who even had people from the Pentagon saying he was writing great stuff. Kind of like turningtables, imo.

This guy, who is in the zone, physically, mentally and emotionally, so to speak, is pushed past the limits of stress and writes to document his experiences in the heat of battle. Probably a cathartic exercise for him. The thing is though, this guy is bounded by the rules of not disclosing key information about his unit, whereabouts, which is understandable. But suddenly the head guys over him know about his blog, have printed the entire thing out on paper. Now it is suggested that he run his entries past the guy above him before he post. Then he gets emails about...why don't you watch your language in your entries...how about this and that...

It seems like so far he doesn't care about the liberal sprinkling of cuss words in his entries, because that's how he writes. This is the point that struck me. At what point should your curtail/ignore the impulses of what to write about because you are afraid that it might come back to bite you in the ass? Obviously, for a deployed soldier there are some boundaries you shoudn't cross. But for me...sometimes pushing the boundaries is what gets you to the next level, pushing into new territories of creativity that you never thought you would cross into. By shedding blood, sweat and tears...and ignoring the critics around you...listening to the creative impulses that fueled you in the first place...if you keep at something then you never know what you'll attain creatively. It could be something that turns out wonderfully in the end.