Insomnia

Kurt Cobain once said:

"I'm so tired I can't sleep."
(Sit and drink pennyroyal tea)
(I am anemic royalty...)

Insomnia- unfortunately a long-time companion. A quiet shadow that looms over you every day, draining your life-force, that silent assassin. So after many many years, I'll admit that today my insomnia is the best* (or worst depending on how you look at it) that its been in ages. I manage to fall asleep every night at a relatively reasonable time. Now the quality of that sleep remain dubious at best- I am, and remain, a terribly light sleeper. I don't always take advantage of that really good healing-type R.E.M. sleep. However here's what I've learned from my insomnia in general:

1. It's very difficult to 'turn-off' your mind, you need to actively think about not thinking
   
2. Counting sheep doesn't work- I just end up getting bored
3. Reading helps- sometimes- other times I just keep on reading for hours
4. Tipping point- at a certain point you're hardly cognizant but still awake
5. 5 hours isn't so bad- Margaret Thatcher ran a country on 5 hours a night
6. Paying off sleep debt- every couple of weeks I'll crash for 12-15 hours straight
7. Drinking warm milk doesn't help
8. Exercising doesn't help- on the contrary I have more energy
9. Watching TV doesn't help- mostly I'll watch tv on mute
10. I'm a very light sleeper- my ears wake up regularly before my eyes
    

So what have I done differently? Well for one I stopped stressing about my life and my future. That has been part of a bigger, more holistic change I've made which would probably take about 3 hours to detail the what, where, how, and why. I've also reconciled myself to the fact that I won't get great sleep, and now manage to get through my day without being a total zombie/idiot.
Finally I've realized the more you don't want to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it. It's very similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy explanation on flying (one of my favorite parts):

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prise your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

So key to falling asleep is to think about sleep without thinking about it. I think...anyways gnite mite and good luck!

* hard core insomniacs look like crackheads- I, hopefully at this point, don't look like I'm strung out on heroin