One of the things I have realized about myself lately is that I have a powerful, powerful need to express myself.

And this informs the way I interact with the world on every level. In addition to trying to prove to the world how clever and brilliant I am and what a simply gorgeous mind I have, I also have an immense need to express what is inside of me.

Perhaps that is true of every creative type person. I don’t know. So far I have only had a chance to be me.

But I definitely have this need. It is what has fueled my lifelong pursuit of higher density in communication. There is so much inside of me that I wish to express that the usual modes of expression simply do not cut it. The workaday language of quotidian life is so very thin to someone like me that it’s like trying to play a symphony on a kazoo. My inner life is far too rich and dense for such an unimaginative instrument.

That is also the problem, though. This scintillating inner world full of magic and wonder (and demons and poisons and murder) can be so overwhelming that trying to express it seems hopeless. It can seem that no matter what I do, no matter what medium I employ and no matter how hard I try to get all my inner richness to go through the too-narrow gate of my expressive abilities in an orderly single-file fashion, it will always be like trying to empty Luke Huron with a teaspoon.

And this inner life is so much richer and deeper than everyday experience that it can be like a wall between me and others. It looks like I am right there with them, and I desperately want to be, but I am surrounded by my enormous retinue of ideas and observations and emotions and everything else that is waiting to be expressed.

Sometimes I feel like an overstuffed orphanage that can only just barely keep up with the children’s basic needs, and never actually takes the time to get the kids adopted out, but just keeps on taking in more kids anyway. I am overfull with all the children (and grandchildren, and so on) of my extraordinary mind, and frankly, that is what makes it so hard to cope.

There is this profound pressure inside of me that ebbs and flows and sometimes makes it very hard to think. The internal noise level alone, the racket caused by all those rowdy thoughts jostling about, can be deafening, especially when something has stimulated the throng and made them agitated.

If I could plant an existential microphone in my seat of consciousness and let everyone hear what it is like inside this skull of mine, people would be amazed that I ever get anything done.

But alas, that is not possible, and I find myself dealing with a problem that is nearly impossible to explain to anyone. How do you tell people that you can’t hear them over your own internal noise? How can you get across the idea that when your inner crowd gets riled up, the sheer pressure squeezes the intelligence out of you and so you are trying to cope with the reality outside your skull while the inner world is making it nearly impossible to think.

Looking back, a lot of the worst moments of my life involved this madding crowd of mine. It is no wonder that I developed the habit, early on, to react to stress by reducing stimulation levels. The wrong kind of stimulation sets my inner entourage humming like a hive full of angry bees, and drains away my ability to cope.

Hence, self-isolation. When I think back on times when it has been bad, I am amazed at all the stuff going on in my head during uncomfortable situations. And when you are dealing with all that shit flying around inside your head, it makes it very hard to deal with the outside world at the same time.

So I isolate myself, and spend my days keeping my mind occupied in safe, controllable, low-stimulation (compared to reality) ways, like reading and video games and messing around on Facebook.

Those, I can handle. Those I can control. Those provide the kind of mental stimulation I can handle, the kind that is highly intellectual and fairly passive, and that can take place mostly inside my head (from a subjective point of view) and thus remain within my comfort zone.

Doing those things does not agitate my inner crowd. In fact, it soothes it. By keeping my mind busy, some of that excess energy is drained away and I can cope with the world in my own minimal way.

But even better than video games and the Internet for those purposes is this very blog you are reading. Here, I can pour out some of the words that accumulate inside of me just from living and reduce that inner pressure to more livable levels.

Looked at that way, self-expression becomes less of a hobby or a talent and more of a dire psychological need. I have been pondering increasing my creative output since, um, January and this gives me an excellent reason to go for it.

I mean, I know damned well that I am a healthier and happier person when I have a high creative output. Presumably this is because the crowd inside is actually going somewhere instead of just milling around causing trouble.

I have been pondering doing one of my zany challenges in order to get things going, namely to commit myself publicly to doing a five minute audio podcast every day for sixty days, for a total of 300 minutes (ish) of content, or five hours.

Doing five minutes a day would be quite a challenge, especially because I am going to do my best to make it high-quality, high-density stuff and not just me talking about whatever is on my mind that day.

I will ponder this anon. It feels like the right time to get something like that going.

Who knows… maybe I could even clear the backlog and get to a point where all I had to deal with was whatever had accumulated in my mind in the previous 24 hours.

Dare to dream, folks. I will talk to you all again tomorrow.