Majoring in Minors

There was a saying I encountered around the time I was in college or perhaps in my first office job afterward: majoring in minors and minoring in majors. One can call up a lot of forest-for-the-trees sorts of analogies to this phrase, but the point is a warning of getting lost in the trivial at the expense of what's important.

I thought about this as I looked at the bells and whistles bloggers use to decorate their sites. From You-Tube-ish video clips to elaborate webpage templates, there's probably an embarrassingly large amount of what's possible on a blog layout that I don't know about. I notice, however, that when I read other people's blogs I gravitate toward those which have compelling content, however it is displayed, as opposed to those emphasizing an entertaining visual effect.

Obviously, "majoring in minors" can refer to wide swaths of human endeavor, be it personal, social, business, or political. And this is not to mention mixing those areas -- for example, how much focus on self-interest would be "majoring in minors" when compared to the good of society, or how much emphasis on governmental and/or political power would so qualify relative to the rights of the individual.

The realities of our household lifestyle, particularly its limitations, tend to focus attention away from typical middle-class social norms of entertainment. We don't entertain, nor do we socialize away from our jobs or our individual entrepreneurial activities (music for me, handcrafting for my wife). Also, we choose to find ways to utilize resources in a more frugal manner and practice as much self-sufficiency as we can develop. Suffice it to say that the latest exploits of the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team are not as central to my life as they once were.

So it is that my humble blog here is relatively basic in layout. If I could not express an idea worthy of interest to the reader, I would shut the blog down before I'd cover things up with eye candy. This is a vehicle for my expression, not a competition with the elite of the blogosphere, and what I say is more important than how pretty it could look.