insomnia.

Whenever I've taken classes previously, my favorite phrase has always been, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Now that I'm no longer in school, I regret ever saying that.

However, since I suffer from incessant insomnia, I thought I'd share a passage from one of my favorite book, "Anyone for Insomnia?" by Richard Armour. (Book titles: quotes or underlined? Who decides the MLA standards anyway?)

I digress.

"But insomnia can't be all bad. At least the insomniac is in distinguished company. In The Book of Lists, compiled by the Wallace family, there is a list of twenty famous insomniacs. As I read the list and the comments about them, I felt better. Either in spite of insomnia or perhaps because of insomnia, many have achieved greatness. Let me mention a few of the renowned insomniacs.

There was Napoleon Bonaparte, who learned to get along on three or four hours of sleep each night. How he learned this, we are not told. Did he have a tutor? Did he go to a school for insomniacs? Did he have a driving urge that shot him out of his bed after those few hours? And did he sleep better when he went from bus busy life of conquest to his quiet life on Elba?

Most people sleep more poorly during their tensed-up drive for success than after retirement. But maybe Napoleon slept less than ever during his second and final exile on the island of St. Helena. He may have been kept awake by remembering how he left Elba and was defeated by Wellington at Waterloo. 'Able was I ere I saw Elba,' he kept saying over and over, or forward and backward, especially when he noticed it was a palindrome and was exactly the same either way."

Love it.

So... I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead.