Writing as a Way of Thinking

Mystical still-life with celestial elements by Astrrid and AI

(15th May 2026

For most of my life, writing has not simply been a method of communication. It has been a method of clarification. 

Many people seem able to think in a relatively linear way — holding a concept steadily in mind, developing it sequentially, and arriving at a conclusion through a fairly stable chain of thought. My own mind has never operated particularly like that. 

Ideas tend to arrive quickly and simultaneously. One concept branches into another, which then connects to something symbolic, psychological, strategic, or observational. New questions emerge before previous ones are fully resolved. Insights appear in fragments. Threads overlap. Associations multiply. Sometimes the process is productive. Sometimes it is mentally exhausting. 

Writing slows all of that down. 

It allows me to stabilise thought long enough to examine it properly. If something remains only inside my head, it often continues expanding, mutating, or becoming displaced by newer ideas before it has fully formed. But once written, a thought becomes more coherent. It develops structure. Connections become visible. Contradictions reveal themselves. Vague intuitions can finally be translated into language. 

In many ways, I often discover what I truly think only after writing it down.

The Difference Between Speaking and Writing

One of the stranger things I have noticed over the years is that I often write far more eloquently than I speak. 

In conversation, my thoughts can arrive faster than I can comfortably organise them. I may jump between ideas, over-explain certain concepts whilst under-explaining others, or move toward entirely new tangents before fully completing the original point. Internally, the connections make sense. Externally, they do not always arrive in the clearest sequence. 

Writing creates a different environment. 

It allows me to refine, restructure, remove excess, and shape thought into something more coherent and readable. I can pause long enough to ask, “What am I actually trying to say here?”. That process matters to me because I care deeply about precision. I dislike writing that sounds superficially impressive whilst saying very little underneath. I also dislike the increasingly common pressure to produce endless quantities of fast, disposable content. It’s just not me. 

Unfortunately, this creates another problem.

I rewrite constantly. A single paragraph may be adjusted ten times. Sentences are reordered repeatedly. Entire sections disappear after hours of work because they no longer feel structurally correct. Ideas continue evolving whilst I am still attempting to capture them. Or things just remain unfinished. 

As a result, writing has often taken me an extremely long time.

Writing for Depth Rather Than Reach

Another important distinction is that I have spent much of my professional life writing in very different ways from this. 

Over the years, I have written marketing materials, strategic communications, organisational documents, presentation content, and audience-focused messaging designed around clarity, persuasion, positioning, and engagement. I understand how writing can be shaped toward particular audiences, attention spans, and objectives. 

That style of writing has its place. But this is different. 

These articles are not primarily designed to maximise clicks, retention metrics, or algorithmic reach. They are not written to capture the widest possible audience, nor are they attempting to simplify every idea into highly compressed social-media-friendly fragments. 

In many ways, I am writing these pieces as much for myself as for anyone else.

They are an extension of reflection, synthesis, exploration, and intellectual curiosity. Some subjects will resonate with certain readers and not with others. Some articles may feel highly practical. Others may feel more philosophical, symbolic, or exploratory. Or my articles may just be too long..!  

I am comfortable with that. 

Not all writing needs to be optimised for universal appeal. 

I also have no particular desire to force content constantly into other people’s attention. Modern online culture often creates the impression that visibility must always be maximised — more output, more engagement, more reaction, more audience capture. But I have increasingly found myself drawn toward quieter forms of communication. 

Long-form writing naturally selects for a different type of reader. Usually, it attracts people who enjoy reflection, nuance, complexity, curiosity, and depth — people willing to sit with an idea for longer than a few seconds before demanding immediate certainty or conclusion. 

Those are generally the kinds of conversations I find most meaningful anyway.

Astrology, Cognition, and Mental Structure

As someone who works with astrology and symbolic systems, I have naturally reflected on how this relates to my own chart. 

Mercury – my chart ruler - the planet associated with communication, cognition, interpretation, language, and mental processing — plays a significant wider role within my chart structure. But perhaps more importantly, Mercury is placed in Pisces in my natal chart. 

I have found that Mercury in Pisces is often poorly described in simplistic astrology interpretations. It is sometimes reduced to vague stereotypes around confusion, dreaminess, or emotional thinking. In reality, I have found it can produce a highly associative and symbolic style of cognition. Thought does not always move in a straight line. It moves through pattern, metaphor, intuition, image, emotional resonance, and synthesis. Boundaries between disciplines often feel more permeable. Psychology connects to symbolism. Systems theory connects to identity. Strategy connects to cycles and timing. Apparently unrelated subjects begin revealing structural similarities underneath. 

At the same time, my Gemini Moon appears to contribute to constant mental movement and curiosity. In fact I get great nourishment from this. There is usually more than one active area of interest operating simultaneously. New ideas arrive quickly. New questions emerge constantly. Attention shifts easily toward fresh areas of exploration. Yet my Virgo Ascendant adds another layer entirely — a strong impulse toward refinement, analysis, improvement, and structural coherence. Ideas are rarely left untouched. They are examined, reorganised, edited, and reworked repeatedly in an attempt to make them clearer, more precise, and more useful. 

Meanwhile, the solar Aries part of my nature is excellent at initiation. Beginning things has never been the problem.

Finishing them consistently has often been much harder. 

This is obviously quite a simplistic approach to my own natal chart in highlighting these, but looking back across the years, I can see countless partially developed frameworks, unfinished essays, abandoned notebooks, half-complete projects, and ideas that were never fully stabilised into completed form. Not because they lacked meaning, but because new directions continually emerged before older ones had fully consolidated. I was either too slow, or simply lost interest.

Writing publicly is therefore becoming, in part, an exercise in completion. Not perfection… Completion.

Why I Use AI to Support My Writing

As I have started publishing more openly, I have also decided to be transparent about something else:

I use AI to support aspects of my writing process. 

I say this openly because I suspect many people already do — whilst pretending otherwise. 

In my case, AI is not replacing thought. If anything, it helps me organise and refine thoughts that already exist but would otherwise remain trapped within unfinished documents, fragmented notes, or endless internal revision cycles.

I am already a strong writer. The issue has never been ability. The issue has been speed, energy, perfectionism, and cognitive overload. 

AI helps reduce friction and allows me to: 

• structure ideas more efficiently

• test phrasing variations

• accelerate drafting

• explore connections

• move concepts from mind into form more quickly

In many ways, it functions less as a replacement writer and more as an editorial and structural assistant.

This matters because energy is finite. Like many people, I am balancing intellectual work, personal development, health, daily responsibilities, relationships, ongoing study, and the practical realities of modern life. Without tools that reduce friction, many ideas would simply remain unwritten.

I also find the current cultural conversation around AI somewhat simplistic. There is a major difference between using AI to generate shallow content at scale (i.e. “slop”), and using it thoughtfully to support deeper intellectual or creative work. The tool itself is not the point - rather it is how it is used which is the point.

At the same time, I do share many of the wider concerns surrounding AI and where it may ultimately be heading. Like most powerful technologies, its impact is unlikely to be entirely positive or entirely negative. There are obvious questions emerging around creativity, labour, human attention, dependency, misinformation, intellectual ownership, and the broader psychological effects of increasingly machine-mediated environments. I think (and worry) about this a lot. Society is not being sufficiently prepared for the potential changes ahead. There are also very real environmental concerns linked to the enormous computational infrastructure now being built to support these systems — particularly the rapid expansion of large-scale data centres and their current energy and cooling demands.

Hopefully AI itself will help with solutions to some of these matters as I suspect society is only at the beginning of understanding the long-term implications properly.

Despite my aspirations to avoid contributing to these problems, and although I place great effort in seeking a more natural and sustainable way of life, I find it difficult to avoid making use of the full range of tools available to support my outputs. So I try to approach AI in that way – as a tool I use consciously, selectively, and with awareness of both its usefulness and its limitations.

These words are in no way apologetic - I am who I am, and I do what I choose - though perhaps more of a way to justify AI use to myself. But I certainly don’t want it to be a ‘dirty secret’.

Why My Writing Covers So Many Different Subjects

Some people may eventually notice that my articles move across a wide range of themes:

astrology, numerology, identity, emotional patterns, systems thinking, consciousness, adaptation, symbolism, manifestation, occultism, personal transformation, mysticism, and broader reflections on modern life.

To me, these subjects do not feel separate. They are all different ways of examining the same underlying questions:

How do human beings create meaning?
How do we navigate change?
How do patterns shape identity?
What influences development?
How do people adapt psychologically, emotionally, symbolically, and strategically across different phases of life?

Those questions have followed me for a very long time.

Writing simply gives them somewhere to go.

And perhaps more importantly:

it gives me a way to finally finish some of the thoughts that have existed in fragments for years.

And what could feel better than that…

~ Astrrid