”What I chiefly portray is my cogitations, a shapeless subject that does not lend itself to expression in actions. It is all I can do to couch my thoughts in this airy medium of words.” The things that we cannot capture in actions we must convert into expressions. This might bend towards vanity and self satisfaction, leading to the demand that this exercise go ever deeper, into every raving lunacy the mind can find.
Every important field of knowledge requires hands on practice to grasp. You cannot learn to play piano theoretically, the muscle memory is built one wrong note struck and corrected at a time. Writing requires error, and so too does self examination. If we care about learning and improving, we are fated to get an increasing number of instances wrong.
We fail in practice so we can succeed under pressure.