For the past hour, I have been switching between staring at a blank word document and googling “things to write about” hoping that something would spark some sort of inspiration for an article that would be semi decent. Even after scanning countless articles and asking several people for inspiration (which wasn’t helpful at all), all I am left with is a random assortment of thoughts and a different sitting position (or in my case, laying down). With this in mind, I am able to present this train wreck of an article that is all about the thoughts I had while trying to write that didn’t inspire an article.
One of the first things I thought about while trying to write was ice cream. Or more broadly, warmer weather. This vein of thought was inspired by the butter pecan ice cream from Valpo Velvet that was sitting in my freezer after a long winter without it. My college, Valparaiso University, usually stocked an assortment of the local ice cream shop’s delicious ice cream. Since Valpo Velvet is closed during the winter, however, that meant that the stock soon ran out of butter pecan ice cream. Thus, I was not able to get this delicious treat until a few days ago when I walked past the freezer and happened to glance in and see it proudly sitting above some average vanilla ice cream. I bought it and within the past 24 hours, the ice cream has been eaten and the carton thrown away.
After thinking about this, I figured it would be good to write an article about, but quickly realized that there were several problems with this idea:
1. It wasn’t long enough
2. It is not relevant to anyone except myself
3. There is not point to it
And
4. NO ONE CARES (even I had to admit that I quickly became uninterested)
So then, I tried to think about what else I could write about and thought about writing about school. I quickly dismissed that idea for several reasons, some including that it is cliché to write about, I don’t want to think about school more than I should, and it’s boring to read. So then, I thought about writing an article about myself, but also rejected that idea because, again, it’s not interesting.
My next train of thought moved on to seeing what other people were writing about, so I decided to check out some other articles from Odyssey writers both at my school and at others. After about 10 minutes or so of moving from article to article and still finding nothing to inspire an article of my own, I decided to check social media. This was both unhelpful and left me thinking about different places, people, and events I was not really interested in besides in the 2 seconds of thought I allotted them from a snapshot I saw into their life.
After pulling out of this contemplation of irrelevance, I came to realize that I still did not have an article. So I just decided that if I didn’t have an idea for an article, I would write about not having an idea for an article. After getting to the end of this article, I have several things to note:
1. The article is just as uninteresting as the ice cream thought was
2. The article didn’t even go the way I intended it to
3. I have an idea for another article
4. Sometimes, writing just doesn’t happen the way you think it will
With that said, this concludes this week’s article. I’m Jessica Clanton, have a good night.
