sometimes i give thought to starting to journal because i can think of a lot of ways it could be helpful, some of which touches on the things you listed in your post. and then i start to think about what i would write and i become overwhelmed facing the tangle of contradictory and emotional and intangible threads going through my head and trying to pin down where i would even begin. i'm not even sure how i think. some visuals, some words, some memory, some imagination, some vague conceptual mush.

what you said about language being just symbols made a lot of sense to me and makes me think its probably not so typical to think primarily in words. like, people so often say, "i don't know how to put this into words." maybe thoughts that are formed out in words are just more obviously "thoughts," they're more likely to be perceived that way, whereas other thoughts are more likely to be seen as sort of a blank backdrop. because people are almost always thinking and it seems kind of crazy to have a voice jabbering away 24/7.