"There is no footprint too small to leave an imprint on this world."

Here's the thing about writing: it's exactly like falling in love. And I don't mean the Hollywood version of love with its perfect kisses and swelling orchestral scores. I mean the messy, complicated, sometimes-you-want-to-scream-into-your-pillow kind of love that actual humans experience.

Some days you're floating three feet above the ground, drunk on words and metaphors, and other days you're staring at a blank document wondering if you've ever actually known how to string a sentence together. The infinite maybe of it all is what kills you.

That's why I connected so deeply with Kristi Eisenberg's "Learning to Write" and Arnel Arevalo's "There are no Secrets." Their stories felt like looking into a mirror, if mirrors could reflect your soul instead of just your face.

Let me tell you something about writing: it demands everything. It wants your passion, your late-night thoughts, the weird dreams you have about talking penguins, and every single life experience you've ever had. And sometimes, even when you give it all that, it still leaves you sitting alone at 3 AM, wondering why you can't write a single worthwhile sentence.

When Eisenberg wrote "I have loved to write and hated to write, mostly the latter," I felt that in my bones. Because writing isn't just putting words on paper – it's more like building a ladder to the moon using nothing but toothpicks and hope.

Here's my origin story: I was a business major who dreamed of being a writer. Plot twist, right? I got rejected from my high school newspaper, which felt like the end of the world at the time. But here's the thing about endings: sometimes they're actually beginnings in disguise. I kept writing, kept reading, kept trying, until suddenly I wasn't just on the college paper – I was the news editor. Later, I became Editor-in-Chief, which sounds impressive until you realize it mostly means being the person who stays latest in the office, surviving on vending machine coffee and determination.

I discovered blogging the way some people discover religion: through a desperate need to make sense of the world. I read other people's blogs like they were sacred texts, finding pieces of myself in their stories. Eventually, I started writing my own, sending my thoughts into the vast digital void like tiny paper boats on an infinite ocean.

The truth is, writing saved me. It saves me still. Every time I write something, I leave a little piece of myself in the universe, a small proof that I existed, that I thought things and felt things and tried to make sense of this bizarre experience we call being alive.

So yeah, writing is hard. It's probably always going to be hard. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the struggle is what makes it real, like how you know stars are real not because you can touch them, but because their light had to travel so far to reach you.

And isn't that kind of beautiful? In a weird, painful, totally worth it sort of way?

(Submitted to an online Literary Criticism workshop, where presumably other people are also trying to make sense of why we do this thing called writing.)

My friend has this way of asking about my emotional state that makes me feel simultaneously seen and exposed. "So J, how have you been feeling the past few days?"

Here's the thing about progress after heartbreak: it's less like a straight line and more like a scribble made by a toddler with a crayon. "I've gone from distraught to struggling," I told him, which prompted his confused look.

I tried explaining how there's this vast universe of difference between being emotionally paralyzed and actually wrestling with your demons. It's like the difference between drowning and learning to swim - you're still in deep water, but at least you're moving.

The conversation inevitably turned to Her - because conversations like these always do - and I found myself admitting that yes, I still read books to escape, carefully avoiding Neruda's love poems like they're landmines in my literary landscape.

Then came The Question. The one about dating again, about redistributing all this excess love I apparently had stockpiled. And maybe that's the thing about heartbreak - it doesn't just break your heart, it breaks your whole system of believing in love.

I heard myself saying words like "discriminating" and "cautious," which made my friend laugh because apparently, at 24, I was speaking like someone who had lived through several wars instead of one failed relationship.

"You're too young to be this careful," he said, as if youth was some kind of free pass for reckless heart decisions. But here's what I know: Some people collect hearts like trading cards, and others - well, others believe in waiting for the right story to begin.

We ended up talking about Winnie the Pooh's questionable fashion choices, because sometimes the weight of discussing love and fate becomes too heavy, and you need to wonder about cartoon bears and their aversion to pants.

My friend has now appointed himself as fate's personal assistant in my love life, which would be annoying if it wasn't so endearing. Because maybe that's what friendship is - believing in someone else's happiness even when they're too busy guarding their heart to look for it themselves.