I'm the same. But in reality none of it is tripe. It does, however, need sorting through, and the most powerful tool I've found for that by far is writing. Thats what lets me take the half-formed thoughts and develop them until they're worthwhile. Most of them can be. It's a thrilling process to watch an idea that is vague and pointless and kind of strange evolve over the course of three or four iterations into something that is crystal clear and applicable to others. I remember this happening in a dissertation proposal, starting with a general enthusiasm for the first cave art, found along the spanish coastline (I got the reference from G.K. Chesterton, who made a similar point, and I wanted very much to develop it), and turning it into a reflection on the idea that creative work is the signature of humans on the fossil record. You can see the draft here:
But importantly, that took six drafts, and was rejected from the piece of scholarly writing I wanted to put it into, and still has a few drafts to go before it finds a home here on Medium.
One thing you might consider - and I am not sure of this, because of course I do not know much about the way you think - is you might start with the assumption that a thought you consider "tripe" is actually just undeveloped. And start by believing that if you see something of interest in it, then there might be something worthwhile there to see, and your job as a writer is to take the strange and offbeat thought and, through a process of revisiting and rearticulating it, find those parts of it that are applicable and will have meaning for others.
I have some pieces like that in my backlog. For example, one that I wrote a long time ago on my fascination with Google Translate, or the curious experience of time folding in on itself like origami.
One way you could think of it, then, is that good writing (or at least one particular style of good writing) exists at the nexus of "curious" and "applicable to my life."
A lot of what you might initially consider tripe is stuff that falls into the category of "curious but not applicable in its present form."
One way to find meaning in it, then, is to sift through it and start questioning it to see how it can be applicable. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Malcolm Gladwell, but that's largely what he did. He wrote an entire essay, for example, on what human body language must look like through the eyes of a dog (the titular essay "What the Dog Saw" from his book of the same name). He started with a quirky question that most people would consider trivial and turned it into a long essay on human body language and what it is that conveys confidence, and mastery, etc...
Other writers have done the same. In fact most of the best essayists and columnists, starting with Michel de Montaigne (who invented the essay by ruminating on the minutiae of his own physical experience and quirky ideas) and moving forward in time through Chesterton, Twain, Vidalsky, Gladwell, and Sidaris, start with the strange and bring it into the light, so to speak, showing others how it is useful and immediate.
Anyhow all that is to say that you are a really good writer. Don't shy away from the strange stuff. Find the meaning in it, because you have the gift that would help you do so. And if it doesn't turn out the way you like after a draft or three, then it can go in the backfile until you're confident posting it.
And talk with your audience like this more. There's a community of us here who love this stuff. I make no secret about wanting to be a financially sucessful writer in the long term but my family has noted that my writing on Medium seems to serve the purpose, more, of helping me sort through the strange half-blobs of thought in the back of my head and form them into complete, fun, and useful thoughts. There are many of us like that here on Medium. Have fun. It's what this place is meant to be.
