b) for your own sake, it's immensely clarifying to reify any "mass of observation" into explicit claims with explicit accounts of your evidence. I've found (b) immensely helpful before; it's helped my clear away cant that I didn't know I labored under

I agree. However, the problem is that for reasons you'll probably understand, I'm not sure if I want to write too much about my personal life in public comments on the internet. It's very hard to write about such things without letting into the public more information than is desirable or prudent.

Fortunately, I am not the only source on this topic. I recommend that you look at the comments left in this thread (and many other ones you'll easily find by googling) by the commenter HughRistik. He has much more expertise than me in this area and has written a great many lengthy comments about it, all very well written and argued.