Which punctuations to use when bringing up questions in this way?

Question

In **formal** writing, is the following usage of punctuations acceptable? > I keep asking myself. Who am I? Where am I from? And where am I going? I'm not quite sure whether using a period after `I keep asking myself` is weird. To me, the natural choice would have been a colon, but this also would have made the first interrogative sentence have to start with a lower case `w` whereas subsequent ones, as they follow a question mark, must begin with a capitalised `W` , like `..asking myself: who am I? Where am I from...`, which doesn't make much sense to me either. Of course, alternatively, I can reorganise these interrogative sentences into clauses like > I keep asking myself: who I am, where I am from and where I am going. But this feels *much* less emotionally charged than the first one, which makes it not so desirable to me.

Answer 1

The questions are an internal dialogue, so you may punctuate like dialogue:

I keep asking myself, "Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?"

Alternatively, you can make the conscious choice to break the colon/capitalization rule:

I keep asking myself: Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?

Or, you can revise your first clause so that it can stand on its own:

Unanswered questions keep swimming through my mind. Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?