In my last post I talked about why I wanted to write.  Today I would like to provide you with a little more context.  Please allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Matthew Craig Cooley, freshly 30, and living in a box on the outskirts of Baghdad.  I’m an American contractor here maintaining Iraq’s Abrams tanks after my seven-year stint with the U.S. Army.  I’m a former upholsterer, tanker, and public affairs specialist.  I’ve been married for nine years to the sweetest little woman anyone could ever hope to meet.  I’m from Indiana but I’ve called Texas home for many years now.  I spent three years stationed in Korea and have had numerous forays in half a dozen other countries.  I am the much-older brother of three young men just starting to make their own ways.  I have a history of dabbling in the martial arts, singing poorly in foreign languages, partying, forgetting, writing with words and light, scribbling away madness into notebooks, and actively trying to understand, experience, and know as much as possible before the big sleep. I am fascinated by the world.  I adore science, especially descriptions of things that are bizarre, go really fast, are really far away, are ridiculously massive or immensely powerful (like my pen’s abilities and subtle jokes).  I have wandering eyes and feet.  I have a wondering mind.  It is my fervent wish to explore the world in its entirety.  I feel a tug every time I catch a glimpse of the horizon.  I always want to know what’s behind that wall, that book’s cover, or a person’s eyes.  I have never seen a path cleared for telephone polls, train tracks, tanks or goats without wanting to follow it. I’m prone to extremes but believe that life is best when it’s well balanced.  I try to see things from all sides.  I’m a hedonist and an atheist.  I’m whatever you believe me to be.

I am and have never been a true leader, a real mechanic, a good writer, a professional photographer, an expert, a gifted fighter, a Soldier. I’m just a grown boy who won’t stop and can’t quit. I’m a bumbler and fumbler –a clumsy scatterbrained monkey with a propensity to fall forward and not enough sense to stay down. I will succeed –and have succeeded– in life not because of some intrinsic greatness, but because of statistical probability. I house a full compliment of psychos, clowns, dirtbags, grease stains, and freaks between these protruding ears and though I may not not always have the right tool for the job, I always have a tool for the job.

-From my Facebook last October