Welcome to the club! Congratulations, you have reached a state of mind that not many reach. What you are experiencing is FLOW. Your mind is in a state of complete dedication where it is "working" round the clock to solve your problems. Most of the problem solving, mental optimization and finding solutions to achieve your goals happen during the sleep. If you also experience dreams about what you are interested in (IM) it is a sign you are completely dedicated to this and into it. This is a good thing.
Over a year ago I started contemplating on producing a content generator. The idea/project was what seemed at the time an impossible task. I have spent several months just thinking about it almost 16h/day and doing small tests to get me closer to a solution. Eventually I started working on it. In principle I was combining logic rules implemented in a programming language with lots of spintax wrote in a specific way. In Natural Language Processing/Generation this is called "discourse planning". I would experience dreams involving code mingled with spintax. Initially I thought it was a bad thing as it was intense and "thinking" about that even in my sleep seemed like I had no break from it. It was just my brain rearranging new information and working on solutions. I would wake up, have a smoke and coffee and start working. I would work 16-18h/day on this, then I would go and dream it during my sleep. It felt like my mind will burst out of my head. I could literally feel myself thinking. It felt like a "noise" at a frequency close to alpha waves (5 Hz) - wum wum wum wum wum. I could literally hear that inside my head and I can hear it everytime I think intensely. I only realized it was a ~5 Hz alpha state a few days ago when by "coincidence" (I do nto believe in coincidences) I stumbled into a 15 to 5 Hz bin-aural sound from a CD from the Silva method. Sounded just like the noise in my head.
You may think what you experience is an obsession (it is in a way) and it is bad. It is not! Good and bad are states 100% subjective and related to your perception. If you think something is good or bad, you are right and it will become like that. So choose to think it is good so you don't overwhelm your mind with the question "is this good/sane?". While you are in this state you get work done at an impressive rate. At least that is true in my case. After this period I was telling you about I experienced a massive depression and decrease in mood and general state of mind. I can tell you without a doubt that in my previous "flow" state I could get done in a day stuff that now takes weeks or months. Everything just clicked, made sense, I could spot patterns, I could combine information and extract information, etc. That is FLOW. Stay in the FLOW!
I am sure you also experience what I call a disconnect from social life. In other words you are probably less attracted to going out, going to the beach, "having fun". Probably if you'd go at the beach you'd sit there not looking for asses in bikini and topless girls but wom-wom-wom-ing in the alpha state, continuing to rearange information so you reach solutions for the stuff you are really interested in.
Just to be completely honest here, though it doesn't necessarily mean it will happen to you as it happened to me, you will reach a point of complete meltdown. Some call it "burn-out". Whatever you call it, it is the opposite of the FLOW and though I would not be able to accurately pinpoint the reason why it happens I would guestimate it has to do with a "complete system crash", a short-circuit, an overload or something along those lines. In other words, if the information you currently posses is insufficient for producing a solution, your mind will eventually crash. In my case at least, this was amplified by the fact I didn't had just 1 problem running in my head but tens of problems, each of them of massive complexity. When I was in the flow I was focused on just one of the problem, hence 100% of my mind was working on just this single problem. Then I started to "build" another problem, and another, and another (some technical, some personal, some sentimental, etc) and the brain had to multi-task on all. While I could not say for sure, I assume this is the reason why my mind reached the meltdown point.
You will feel the meltdown point setting in - inefficient flow state, lack of motivation, no mood for anything, messy thoughts (tens of unrelated thoughts running through your head and you can't settle for just one), a feeling of uselessness, etc. The only thing I can recommend you if/when this happens is to stop completely and do a complete disconnect. In other words, if you used to work at your computer all day long, do not even start your computer for a week. Just take a vacation and go walk in the park, sunbath, whatever. I didn't do this. I thought I am strong enough to resist the meltdown and go over it. I was not strong enough. Nobody is. Why? Because it is not your mind fighting a problem to find a solution for it, it is your mind fighting against itself. No way to win. You will also need to "run away" from people in your life that require your energy or put you in a bad mental state. For me this was impossible because of various reasons and this prolonged the shitty state I got in. While now you have massive amounts of mental energy and can cope with anything, when you will drop to about 2% of where you are now (that was the case for me) you will find it extremely difficult and painful to even have an argument with your brother about who goes to buy groceries. If somebody will ask something from you that will make you feel even worse. Everything will make you feel tired. You need to rest. From everything and anything. I hope you won't reach this point though.
While I am not completely over this shitty state I do believe it is just something I got in and have to go through to become better. You know the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"? This won't kill you (though at times you feel you're slowly dying) so I am expecting when you get over it fully that you will have an A-HA! moment. An enlightenment. A moment where your mind finally found the perfect configuration and the solution to the puzzle that produced the meltdown in the first place. From then on, I believe, you will never experience a meltdown from similar reasons because now your mind already configured itself in a new, superior way and can handle anything of that nature with absolute perfection. What before would have been a humongous problem with no solution, it is now as simple as snapping your fingers.
Good luck and always remember how awesome you are!
