As I've mentioned from time to time on these pages, I am prone to insomnia. This has been true for me since high school, when I was more tightly wound than that character "Cameron" from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I'm not the perfectionist that I used to be (man, life is so much easier when you lower your standards), but I still have plenty racing around in the ol' noggin to sometimes thwart my efforts at sleep. Constant interruptions from the kids (two out of three children in this household currently like to break up the monotony of cutting zzzs during the late night/early morning hours) fuel my body's occasional aversion to surrendering to sleep.

I found an interesting approach to insomnia in a book called And Never Stop Dancing by Dr. Gordon Livingston (I presume). No, despite the title, this isn't some New Agey feel-good picker-upper. It's a collection of observations by a psychiatrist who also happens to be an eloquent story teller.

In a chapter entitled "No one ever died of insomnia," Dr. Livingston (notice that there *is* a period after the Dr. in this case, as opposed to the missing period from a case of Dr Pepper) gives a neat formula for handling sleeplessness. If, after a half hour of trying, you still can't fall asleep, get up and do something for at least forty-five minutes before trying to sleep again. Repeat as necessary.

This isn't a cure by any stretch, but it's a fantastic way of *dealing with it*.

Oddly enough, I've been intuitively pursuing this kind of approach for a while now (as noted in this entry from last year), but I like the idea of having a formula to use as a guideline, rather than resorting to temporarily-giving-up-on-sleep out of exasperation.

You may wonder why it occurs to me to mention this little formula to you on this particular occasion. Then again, you may have already seen the time stamp on this entry.