It was around the age of two, I believe, that this memory took place. Two-year-old Anna, waltzing around the house on stubby legs that had only just learned how to bear the weight of the rest of her, scribbling illiterately into a battered black composition book she would find years later on a shelf in her closet, every single page covered in wavy, meaningless lines.

Or rather, only seemingly meaningless, I suppose.

Although 19-year-old Anna cannot, for the life of me, decipher the intention behind those haphazard strokes of chipped graphite, I know there was and is a story attached to them, in them, that each one of them carried the princess further on in her quest towards adventure or brought the hero several steps closer to whatever dragon he was fixing to face. I know that no matter how old those pages grow or into whose hands they pass before they are inevitably thrown away and forgotten, they will not lose their story nor the meaning they held for me, how deeply I loved them and longed for the day when real words could take their place.

What is the difference for me now? I can type away, text appearing the instant my fingertips press lightly against the keyboard in front of me, but if I don’t write something about which I can say I really care, don’t those black computer strokes mean so much less than the scribbled lines of an old composition book, long since forgotten by others?

That is why I write. To chase the meaning that makes the difference.

I want to write for connection, to write to spark conversation, to write to share myself, as much in the way I write as in the content of it. I want to give something to others in what I write, extend the invitation to receive something back, whatever it may be. I want to write in service to others, sharing ideas and concepts and stories I’ve experienced, hoping that at some point, someone finds something they like and can take with them in what I have to say.

If I wrote for myself, I cannot see how my writing would be able to survive. Writing is just another voice to share with the world, another method of conversation that can be tangibly shaped however the writer desires and thrust into the world for scrutiny, for connection, for growth. I love writing because it provides me the opportunity to collect the mess of incoherent thoughts that rage around the inside of my head and pour them out onto page for others to see. It gives me the option to share my opinion and see who else might have it. It gives me the chance to share myself and see who looks into it. It helps me to build upon this skill that I love and build myself and my perspectives right along with it.

With each story, each poem, each essay, each article I create, I can better see through the eyes of the world how my writing fairs. I can scour the words I have chosen and find in them shards of meaning that someone or another latched onto, cared about, saw for what it was and felt something of the same in them. I can see which subjects matter, which don’t. I can connect my varying levels of excitement in writing to any shreds of excitement with which it is received. I love seeing what others have to say about my words, regardless of whether it is good or bad, because it means that my writing has not been ignored. And I cannot tell you how much I love to see that.

I want to care about what I write - not in quantity, in quality. I want to learn from the experience of writing one passage and apply it to the next, making each one better than the last. I want to read back over what I have written and see the meaning there, grinning up at me as my two-year-old self would have at the chance to show written works to my mom.

I will chase that meaning with every written word I can muster.