The importance of the inane

I usually keep things pretty light on here, but I'm about to get a little serious. Stick with me.

I love writing. Always have. This blog gives me a place to write about silly, stupid stuff. Stuff that I've been doing. Stuff that I've been thinking about. Stuff that has no real value in everyday life. Sometimes, I even view it as a kind of challenge. Can I make something stupid, silly and inane into something somewhat interesting or entertaining?

One time, in college, I was assigned to write a story for the Kansan (KU's student newspaper) about this scientist at KU who had published a paper linking modern-day birds to dinosaurs. (Yes, this is how long ago I was in college. This was considered a new discovery back then. Please stop staring at my gray hairs.) Anyway, I interviewed this scientist and proceeded to listen while he showed me drawers and drawers and drawers of dead birds in the top floor of the KU Natural History Museum. For like 2 hours. Two hours of staring at dead birds and examining their bones. Two hours. Two freaking hours, people!

I couldn't figure out a polite way to get out of that cramped attic/bird mausoleum. (Looking back, this is when I should've figured out I was never going to be the next Edna Payne. I am simply too concerned with being polite to make it as a reporter.) After all the hours of courteous "hmmm"s and "how interesting"s, it became my job to turn the interview and all other pertinent information into something a college student would read and perhaps find interesting. I don't know if I actually accomplished that, but it is still, to this day, one of the articles of which I'm most proud. Simply because of how hard I worked to turn it into something someone might want to read.

So, that's what I do a lot on here. I take something miniscule and see if I can make it into something entertaining. Hell, I once wrote an entire post about Little Debbie Snack Cakes. Yes, an entire blog post about the deliciousness of a child's processed dessert snack. I don't know that I always succeed in creating entertaining entries, but it's the effort and the work that I enjoy. It's using the part of my brain that I fear has gone dormant from years of child-rearing and non-use.