An old birthday card of mine stuck to our fridge reads "great things never come from comfort zones".
I'm an angsty soul who lurks within an ABC camera operator, so I need the reminder most days.
I certainly did before embarking on a five-day journey from Sydney to the heart of conflict-ravaged eastern Ukraine, alongside Foreign Correspondent producer Matt Davis.
One small gulp before I leave home. And not the milk.
Matt and I joined our reporter, ABC London bureau chief Steve Cannane and security advisor, Mike Holdsworth, in Krakow, Poland, before driving across the border into Ukraine.
There, we met our fixer, Tatiana, who fled her home in Crimea after it was invaded by Russia in 2014.
We also met Eugene, our 100-kilogram, cigarette-loving, cherry vodka-loving, people-loving driver.
Having previously covered Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Steve had a great rapport with these resilient Ukranians.
They punctuated our long drives with jokes and laughter while their country was being ravaged by Russian tanks and missiles.
We're just visitors: strapped in for a short ride. What need did I have to be worried?
Having worked in some high-risk environments, particularly in the Middle East, I was familiar with our on-road logistics.
Each of us carried a heavy, metal-filled Kevlar jacket and a helmet to protect from bullets and shrapnel.
Our security advisor Mike would continually assess where was safe to film, based on his military knowledge and local intel.
We'd regularly check in with Foreign Correspondent in Sydney, or the ABC's London bureau, via calling or online messaging.
Mobile networks are often one of the first things to break down during conflicts, so when cell coverage disappeared we'd rely on a satellite phone for communication.
By the way, don't go thinking Australia's too civilised: parts of war-torn Ukraine still had faster mobile coverage than downtown Sydney or Melbourne.
Arriving at our eventual base, the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, we checked into our guesthouse.
It wasn't situated downtown but atop a hill overlooking the city. For good reason.
Some nights, distant flashes of yellow light would appear, followed seconds later by loud bangs.
Each night the city's sirens would sound, signalling for people to return home.
It was a stark reminder of why we were here: to cover the invasion by Russia, which sat just 40 kilometres from where we slept. Well, mostly slept.
Kharkiv is beautiful: a classical, European downtown flanked by suburbs of large, Soviet-style apartment complexes.
We'd barely begun our first day filming a story for Foreign Correspondent before finding an apartment block that had been shelled the previous night.
Police tape surrounded the building.
An elderly lady peered out from her apartment, metres above a smouldering black hole.
Residents swept rubble into neat little piles, quietly, orderly.
A nearby neighbourhood, Saltivka, was virtually a ghost town.
Most buildings were scarred by large, black craters, rubble spewing out onto the common areas below.
Up-ended toys lay among the possessions, a sight hard to digest as a new father.
While filming darkened corridors and stairwells inside, we found a handful of residents who chose to stay behind.
One man was boarding up his window frames, given winter was approaching.
Each day, we journeyed beyond Kharkiv to newly liberated towns and cities.
These environments were dangerous, given that Russian soldiers occupied them just days before.
Landmines were a risk, so filming on hard surfaces like roads and concrete paths was crucial.
We were essentially "guests" of the Ukranian military — therefore under their rules — so often we'd have just minutes to gather footage of one community.
After months of brutal occupation, remaining residents shared harrowing stories: an elderly woman spoke of Russian soldiers silencing all the dogs in her village by shooting them.
A teenage girl hid in her basement for months, surviving on jars of preserved summer fruits from her family farm.
Anatolii, in his 70s, hid in a wood shed, before being captured then tortured by Russian soldiers for months.
He wept as he told Steve that the hope of reuniting with his wife kept him alive.
Reunited they were, so we filmed the beautiful, bright-eyed couple — Anatolii and Natasha — sharing fresh watermelon from their garden.
Literally shell-shocked, each resident had stories that could fill a book.
Little did we know, a worse horror story lurked nearby, at the newly liberated city of Izyum.
There, the bodies of hundreds of Ukranians killed in the Russian conflict were being exhumed right before our eyes at the local cemetery.
Anxious family members stood by a makeshift police tent as scores of mask-wearing men shovelled away, lifting bodies out, photographing, documenting and bagging them, before piling them into trucks for forensic investigation.
The stench was unbearable, not to mention the constant sight of corpses: matted hair and faces of people still recognisable.
As a camera operator, you can be strangely removed in such a moment, because you're focusing (literally) on the next shot, whereas a reporter has nothing between them and the horror unfolding before their eyes.
How do you reconcile this as you sit down to your evening meal?
Surely, the answer is deeply personal for each of us.
But among our supportive and good-humoured team, a good meal, some beers and the odd bottle of Georgian red wine certainly held some answers.
In my limited experience, I know that a complementary team can soothe the cruellest of sights, like the bodies in that forest.
Among our team, a decades-experienced author, television and radio correspondent in Steve; a creative and experienced documentary maker in Matt; a veteran security advisor (come full-time comedian) in Mike; a doggedly determined fixer in Tatiana; and — not least of all — a loveable, knowledgeable driver in Eugene.
Team aside, there was good reason to be positive: the Ukrainian counter-offensive, captured by Foreign Correspondent, has been successful in regaining land taken by a superpower claiming to have the second-largest army in the world: a true David and Goliath battle for the ages.
Russian soldiers fled so fast that in their trenches, deserted just days earlier, we found plates of edible tomatoes and cucumbers.
Strewn alongside them were soldiers' possessions: packets of cigarettes, Russian paperback novels, pots and pans, even jackets left on coat-hangers.
Humorous stories about Russian soldiers swimming in their underwear back across the Oskil river filled our vehicle again with laughter: some light relief amid the horror.
On the streets of Kharkiv, there was a feeling of national pride.
"Slava Ukraini" which translates to "glory to Ukraine" was shouted across restaurants and bars over pints of Ukrainian beer and meat-filled dumplings.
The city even held its annual literary festival, in a bunker complex.
Soldiers fresh from the battlefield were among the crowd to catch discussion panels, local music acts and theatre performances.
In the face of threat, this culture-filled city could still express itself freely.
Five days and three long-haul flights later, I'm home.
The adrenaline of this trip gives way to the joy of reconnecting with my wife and 10-month-old baby boy.
The contrast of both worlds couldn't be greater.
There's a great privilege in witnessing Ukraine's incredible counter-offensive, then bringing stories home to our Australian audience.
The horrors. The triumphs. It's not always comfortable viewing.
As I prepare a bottle of my son's milk from the fridge, I stare back at the birthday card that forever taunts me: "great things never come from comfort zones".
Watch 'Fighting Back' on Foreign Correspondent on ABC iview.
