Sean Hanson is stationed in Baghdad, Iraq. He worked for The World for two summers, while attending Southwestern Oregon Community College and pursuing a degree in journalism. This is his first report in a series of columns he will be sending every two weeks from the front lines of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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Whenever I'm asked why I enlisted in the U.S. Army, I give my standard answer, an answer honed and crafted through many nights spent awake in thought here in Iraq, an answer that strikes the right notes of melancholy and confidence, finely tuned and candid.

I don't know.

I was born in 1983, a California baby with sun-bleached hair and a tan only two years from the womb. At the age of 8, young enough to not entirely remember my birth state but old enough to mythologize it, I became what Oregonians secretly despise: the Golden State transplant.

I was an underachiever at Bangor Elementary School, an underachiever at North Bend Junior High School and an underachiever at North Bend High School. I met journalism, my first love, at the tender age of 16 and pursued it through the following five years, first as co-editor of North Bend High School's The Barker, then as editor-in-chief of The Southwester at Southwestern Oregon Community College, and finally as design editor of the Oregon Daily Emerald, at the University of Oregon.

But as I was preparing to enter my final year at the UO, something changed. Stressed out from the long hours logged at the Daily Emerald, empty from the partying that began on “Thirsty” Thursday and lasted through the weekend, and bored by my carefree existence, I more or less joined the Army on a whim.

When I say “I don't know,” I really don't know.

One May Tuesday, I was probing the recruiter for information, and later that night, I was taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a test I'd half-heartedly completed in high school when it was a counselor's requirement but now needed desperately to pass. My score was high. I had my pick of any job in the U.S. Army. I went to the Portland Military Entrance Processing Station by Thursday, picked my occupation - based on what I'd now term “bad intel” - and possessed my first Army identification card by the end of the week.

My parents were leery but supportive of my decision, and my friends - largely of the free-spirited, anti-war school of thinking - adopted the same position, and so I proceeded to Fort Sill, Okla., uncertain of what was to come in my Army career.

I graduated basic training with little difficulty, worked through my so-called “Biloxi blues” at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the 18 months we spent preparing for our deployment; and was promoted to specialist only two months after our boots hit sand.

I thought my autobiography, even a brief sketch to introduce myself to readers, would occupy much more space, but I was wrong. Everything's concise when everything's temporary, and everything certainly has been temporary.

This deployment, as slowly as it's passed, longer still as we face extension, is temporary, too, and every time I remind myself of that, it's easy to stop honing an answer to the question so often asked, easier, still, to stop worrying about the future; and easiest to turn off the lights, roll on my side to face the wall and fall asleep on my lumpy mattress in my less-than-sturdy bed in my housing container so far away from Oregon, from California ... from everything I've ever known.

(U.S. Army Spc. Sean Hanson, a former North Bend resident, is stationed in Iraq.)