Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?

My reporting in Africa wouldn't be political per se, but it's certainly the point of my reporting - and of a lot of other reporters I know: Human suffering is bad, and if reporting stories about it brings it to light and someone does something, that's part of the point of journalism. And it's a thin line between that and activism, and you have to be careful about that.

I hope I get married one day.

During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died.

Often people who live through the trauma are nostalgic when it's over. When I went back to Bosnia 20 years after the brutal civil war, even people who had been badly wounded told me they missed those times. They were missing their more courageous selves.

When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before.

I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most of the casualties. And they're the most underserved and under-resourced of everyone in the entire news business.