Ok, not real insomnia, but just the inability to sleep in AT ALL when I have things to do. I got up, had breakfast, adjusted the valves on the Insight, cleaned up the Grosh a bit, made french toast for the kids, washed all the dishes, and I'm just waiting for Mrs. Deuce to wake up so I can retrieve my pants and take the insight for a test drive.
If you adjusted the valves without pants I'll bet the test drive would go fine without them. 
Insomnia is a form of torture. When the rest of the world is asleep, your brain races with a million thoughts all at once. And when it finally stops, the silence is deafening. Because you realize how alone you really are.
*insert joke about MrsDuece making the money and wearing the pants in the house.
In reply to Appleseed:
Eerily accurate.
I feel like you can either drive around without your license (which is in my pants upstairs) or while wearing tie die cat PJ pants, but not both.
But yes, I do have trouble sleeping with the racing thoughts but not to the point where it horribly affects my life. I can mostly get to sleep, but once my brain is awake the night is over.
It's much better now but during the divorce I suffered from some pretty brutal insomnia (my counselor called it "monkey brain" where your mind swings from one unhelpful thought to another). Some dark times around 3 am when you haven't gotten a decent nights sleep in a month.
I find journalling helps my brain think I've "dealt with it," and stops revisiting the same ideas over and over and over again. Often I send a heated email to a junk email account just to get it out of my system.
Last night I had less than 2 hours of sleep. Could have been working in the shop, but part of me thinks "what if I could just fall asleep now? I should stay here...". Never works though.
Yes, insomnia can be troubling, but try not to lose any sleep over it.
Mrs 84FSP suffers from insomnia occasionally. I am blessed to sleep like a rock within 30seconds of hitting the pillow. No clue what to suggest other than avoiding lit electronics for 1-2hrs prior to bedtime. Ironically this is my typical web time which would be as torturous as not sleeping.
Find a hobby that doesn't require pants?
I can and can't relate. When I can't sleep it is generally due to an absolutely brutal sinus headache and I don't want to see, hear, or otherwise interact with anything other than a dark and silent hole. My mind is only repeating "berkeley, berkeley, berkeley, please stop..." it isn't full of ideas that I can't shut off.
I can usually fall asleep ok but am a very light sleeper, so light that my unconscious thoughts usually turn into conscious ones and I wake up thinking about the race car, or work, or some other project I have going on and I can't get back to sleep. I'm not stressed at all, I'm just thinking about the best way to do this or that or what I need to do. If I can watch something on TV that is just interesting enough to take my mind off my thoughts, I can get back to sleep. NASCAR is surprisingly good at putting me to sleep (not a joke, just the truth). I have tried melatonin, avoiding blue light like TV and computers before going to bed, variety of sleeping pills, aromatherapy, not eating after 9:00, not having any caffeine after 5:00, stretching before bed, yoga before bed-nothing has been effective. The only thing that has made any difference is cold room temperature (64-66 degrees), heavy blankets and some white noise from a fan. The last time I slept well was 12 years ago when I was a long haul truck driver, for some reason having a 600 hp idling in front of me while I slept in the sleeper cab helped me sleep like a baby. The only saving grace is that I operate pretty well on very little sleep and am not grumpy, even after only 4 or 5 hours of sleep.
I have two suggestions:
In reply to Woody: I see what you did there!
I've had varying levels of insomnia over the years. I currently have it conquered by sleeping way too little. 
When I was building challenge cars my brain would spin on build problems, preventing me from sleeping. The thing that worked then was limiting myself to one solvable problem and solving it over and over in my head. Ex-Mentally go through all the steps to put on that timing cover. Don't let your brain go elsewhere or think of other problems. Repeat until you sleep. Good luck!
MrJoshua wrote: When I was building challenge cars my brain would spin on build problems, preventing me from sleeping.
This, so much, but it's more than just challenge cars. It's the other cars, customers houses, my house, everything. I lay there and just hope i can keep my brain at bay until I fall asleep, but I usually just lay there building cars in my head. Now that i have some new parts here, it's going to keep me awake until i get things assembled
Whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not watch crash and road rage footage on the YouTubes right before you plop into bed. Your brain will fight invisible demons and when you finally do fall asleep, marvel at the totally berkeleyed dreams it produces.
You should probably chew some valerian root and get more exercise before weird things start happening.
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