What happened to 2008?
While it might have been possible to recover my posts from the failed TypePad experiment, I sure couldn’t do it. Also, given a choice between keeping this year’s posts and the posts from the previous two years, I decided to go with them.
I have to admit that for a weak moment or two, I thought about dropping the whole blog thing all together. But two things made me decide to stick with it. First, Eat4Today has made a huge difference in my ability to monitor and maintain my weight (and health in general.) Second, my secret love, Lambert, says that blogging is good for you:
Blogging—It’s Good for You
Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off.Oh yeah. Self-medication.
[B]esides serving as a stress-coping mechanism*, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.
(snip)
Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” Flaherty explains. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively [moi?],” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.
Read more about it at Scientific American. I’m high on words, I guess. And I might as well start using them for good.
2 Comments
Wow! Fascinating–but not so surprising. I believe that as social beings, we are all compelled to communicate and when we don’t, it’s unhealthy. I had an uncle who was a writer and then became a recluse when a book didn’t sell. Unhealthy!
Conda!! You’re my first official visitor in the new house!
I’m glad to see you. I’m not the reclusive type so blogging suits my temperament pretty well (a lazy talker) Could your reclusive uncle been looking for an excuse to be alone? Or is reclusiveness a common reaction to a book not selling?