Hyperblogia

Anyone familiar with blogs has probably witnessed the condition known as blogorrhea, the tendency of some (and, at times, possibly most) bloggers to go on and on and on and on about a subject. I've done it. Half the bloggers I link to have done it. The good ones only do it some of the time; for some bloggers, almost every entry is a marathon of words nearly devoid of content.

Surprisingly, the word blogorrhea is not derived from the word diarrhea, but is in fact a variation of the mental condition known as logorrhea. The application of the term to blogging is usually not a suggestion that an actual underlying mental illness exists but is more often a stylistic criticism equivalent to "Dude, if you don't have anything to say then shut up already!"

There is another condition known as hypergraphia, a compulsion to write excessively. It is possible that some of the better and more respected authors throughout history have had this, but the writing generated in a state of hypergraphia is not necessarily good or even coherent. Hypergraphia can also alternate with periods of severe writer's block, and may be a sort of bipolar disorder, similar the more familiar "manic-depression".

I am wondering if maybe there's a blogger's version of this, hyperblogia. (I just discovered I'm not the first to suggest this - but maybe I'm the second!) For a while I've been keeping up a two-posts-a-day schedule...not because (or, not just because) I'm a stats whore who wants to see my "visits" and "page views" stats go higher each month than the previous month, but also because (I think) I had something to say, or pictures to share.

But now I feel like I've sailed off a cliff. I don't feel a pressing need to post, and I don't have many pictures that I'm inspired to post. Is this just the "depressive" side of a hypergraphia cycle?

I'm wondering if it's something else entirely. Something has changed in this room, at this computer. Something in the air - literally. I think that some component of my computer has begun to churn out quantities of ozone. I can smell something that I don't think was here before. After sitting here for a while, I begin to feel headachey and dizzy, with a ringing in my ears, a metallic taste in my mouth, and sometimes even an increased heart rate. I have a window open with a fan pumping in fresh air, but that doesn't do enough to keep the headaches away. (I bought a Carbon Monoxide monitor just in case, but that's reading a steady zero ppm CO level.)

As I mentioned yesterday, this whole computer setup is more than five years old. Maybe my 19" CRT monitor is beginning to give up the ghost. Maybe something else is starting to overheat. I'm keeping everything powered off and unplugged while it's not in use. Maybe that will help.