Where Do Ideas Go Before They Are Ready?

Thinking Out Loud About AI: Part I

I have always understood things before I could explain them.

I feel them first. I sense patterns. I imagine outcomes. I get curious long before I can verbally articulate the ideas - and for most of my life, that has made me feel unprofessional, imposter-ish, or simply wrong. Wrong in a way that accumulates over time, convincing you that your way of thinking does not quite belong in the rooms you keep entering.

I learned early on that if you cannot articulate something clearly and confidently the moment it leaves your mouth, it is easy to be dismissed. I’ve historically been easily argued into a corner. A felt sense, however accurate, does not function as argument.

There was another lesson layered into this one.

When my ideas did land - when they were clear, compelling, and people liked them - it was often assumed that I would be the one to carry them out. Good ideas, I learned, come with an invisible contract: if you can imagine it, if you can articulate it, you are expected to do it.

My mom has said to me for years, “I don’t know how you do everything you sign yourself up to do.” She has always been right. I am busy - but not in the way people mean when they use busyness as an excuse. Busy in the sense of being creative and involved. In shows and gigs. On boards and committees. In community projects and performances. Busy inside a full life that includes running a music therapy practice with a team of seven MT-BC’s and contributing to multiple organizations. All while married and raising three children whose lives are filled with school, dance, band, lessons, therapy, rehearsals, and all the invisible logistics that come with caring for a family.

For a long time, I carried the weight of that expectation internally.

If I had the idea, I would hold it. If I could see the path forward, I would walk it - often without pausing to ask whether I was the right person to do so, or whether the idea itself simply needed a place to exist before becoming action. I’m very much a “ask forgiveness” person instead of a “ask permission” person…

Over time, that pattern began to show up not just in my schedule, but in my body.

By 2022, I felt stuck in a way that was difficult to name. I wasn’t burned out, exactly, but was stuck in an unhealthy nervous system loop. It was as though I were bracing against the sheer volume of unprocessed possibility and exhausted with trying to convince people around me of my internal narrative. At this time, I started to explore music therapy for myself (GIM) plus took a nine-month sound healing and personal exploration course with a local holistic vocal coach. I needed help getting my voice to feel “unstuck".”

What I eventually realized was that I lacked a container.

My husband would encourage me to brain dump, but it was overwhelming due to the sheer volume of things I had been keeping in by this point. I had spent years relying on myself - and, at times, on the people around me - to hold ideas that were still forming. What I needed instead was a private space where my thinking could move freely before anyone even know I was envisioning something new.

That is where AI entered my life. As a space to think out loud without consequence. A place for me to brain dump and pull back the layers of my own thinking.

ChatGPT as a place to sort, refine, discard, and reshape ideas before they ever reached another person. The effect was subtle at first, but profound. I could move through complex tasks quickly. I could translate vision into language with far less friction. I was freeing my attention for what actually mattered.

The result is that I am more present. More available (and articulate even) in conversations. I’m a better leader. I’m more attentive at home. When the hard thinking happens efficiently, it stoped spilling into every other corner of my life.

I no longer believe that feeling first is a weakness. Intuition is a precursor to intelligence.

Curiosity is the doorway to vision. Some insights arrive before they can defend themselves. They require care.

For me, AI has become the place where that care happens. A space where intuition can be translated without being rushed, where curiosity can stretch out before it is asked to justify itself. It does not replace discernment or responsibility; it gives my early knowing somewhere to settle before it is shaped into strategy, structure, or action.