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When I renewed my driver's license last year, I checked the box on the form that indicated I'd like to be an organ donor.
The guy behind the counter said, “Why don't you fill out the donor form so you'll get an official donor card.” So I did.
I received the card a couple of weeks later. I think all the card does is allow my organs to be donated without spousal/familial approval. Even with the card, my guess is that they would ask for permission first anyway.
Like emmaree, I've never been a smoker, and my last alcohol consumption was on the first Monday of November, 1986. So I guess my organs are in tip-top shape, albeit more than half a century old.
I don't care what organs are harvested. I guess the more the merrier. If I can help someone else extend their life, then why not do it?
What if the people who get my parts and have never had trouble sleeping develop insomnia? You think that's possible? Just kidding.
Hi, siohio,
Welcome.
I've had it for 30+ years, so I know how it is.
Believe it or not, in my 30 years with insomnia this is the first group of people I've been around who knows what I've been through.
It's nice to be around your own kind.
Thanks, Martin. It's always a good feeling to learn something new concerning the Internet. I'm so far behind the Internet learning curve that I'll never catch up at my age.
Every time I learn something new, ten other new things pop up on the blogging scene. If I learn even one of those ten new things, I feel as though I've successfully climbed Mt. Everest.
I guess that's what happens when you're a follower and not a leader in a given niche. I hate to continuously blame my age and generation, but those born after the advent of the personal computer have now grown into adulthood with the computer as second nature. I'm amazed at what the younger generation has done in the short period since the advent of the World Wide Web.
It seems much easier for them to grasp all of the things that today's computers can do, and they seem to have a much better chance of making a living online than we older folks do.
I saw on the news this past week about the young man (I don't remember his name) who created Facebook: he's supposedly a 26-year-old Billionaire. That's beyond my comprehension. In 1981, when I was 26, I worked as a mechanic at an independent auto repair shop making 5 bucks an hour.
I'm not looking for sympathy. My point is that computers have come so far in such a short time, and they're offering a much younger age group nearly endless opportunities for making millions of dollars at unheard-of young ages. I wish them all the best, and my hope is that many more will have the opportunity to create wealth beyond human comprehension.
I salute those youngsters who have the knowledge to implement a plan of action to make a lot of money. I'm hoping that I'll have an opportunity to quit my job and make my living off of the Internet sometime before my retirement.
It's now 1:20 a.m. Sunday morning. My insomnia is rearing it's ugly head again tonight. I think it's better to do something positive when insomnia strikes than lying in bed wide awake and looking at the clock every ten minutes.
Later, Mike
1. My iMac (Once you've had iMac, you'll never go back…to a PC)
2. My books (mostly books about the art and craft of writing, in general, and writing personal essays in particular)
3. My writer magazines…and my muscle car magazines
I live a boring life by most standards.
Hi,
So I'm no longer the new kid on the block. I knew it had to end sometime.
Welcome.
Nobody has ever called me an insomniac. Wouldn't bother me if they did. There's nothing morally or socially wrong with it; there's nothing derogatory about it.
A couple of weeks ago, a young lady at work asked me, “Mike, are you still writing?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What are you writing about now”? she asked.
“Right now, I'm writing a blog about insomnia,” I said, “Have you ever had insomnia?”
“Is that when you can't sleep”?
“Yes, I guess you've never had it.”
“No.”
This is as close to verbatim as I can make it. My point with this anecdote is that many people don't even know what it is.
And for those who do but have never been under its strangling grip don't care.
Believe me; I've been called a lot worse names than insomniac in my life. Most likely, I'll be called a lot more bad names before it's all over.
So, insomniac as a name or label is no big deal.
I now have my video back on YouTube.
Turns out all I had to do was modify it in some way to make it a video different from the original.
It's not there. I messed up. I uploaded the same video twice. I deleted the one I didn't want, which was the first one I uploaded.
Youtube doesn't allow duplicates. I also deleted the duplicate and will make a new video.
This my first experience with making videos. Like anything other endeavor, making videos has a learning curve.
Kik and Hedwig,
I know about depression. I can't say specifically when mine began, but I believe it was about four to five months before my insomnia started in 1979.
A blog post I wrote, “When My Insomnia Started,” shines a little more light on my depression, though I didn't word it as such in the post. You'll see that one day in April of '79, while working at a Chevy dealership, the strangest thought, or maybe it was more of a feeling, gripped and stunned me. At that moment I realized I'd made one of the biggest mistakes of my life, one with which I would live for the duration of my life: leaving the security of the Air Force for a civilian career in the automotive teaching/repairing/hotrodding industries.
Sixteen years would pass, however, before a doctor would diagnose me with clinical depression.
For one academic year as a seminary student, I worked as a staff writer/reporter for the school's public relations office. It was a part-time job but a busy one that required daily writing assignments, interviews, and event coverage. At the same time, I was doing an internship at our church and trying to maintain a semblance of family life.
During the spring '95 semester, my professors required no tests, but I wrote twenty-one academic papers for them in addition to my work as a staff writer. I guess my mind was just overloaded, and I suffered a mental collapse. A collapse that had been building and churning and steaming and spewing for sixteen years and finally erupted like a volcano.
My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist, and I've been under her care ever since. I take anti-depressant medication every morning. I didn't spend any time in a hospital because of it, but I did start the medication immediately.
That semester of severe mental stress was the tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell would call it, of my life with insomnia. I'd finally found a doctor who could provide the correct medication and dosage to start the leveling process. Now I'm fifteen years into the leveling process, and I've slept better for the past couple of months than at any time since September, 1979. I continue to have my share of bad nights, though, which is why I still consider myself a chronic insomniac.
Based on my own experience, I'd say that insomnia and depression go hand in hand–it doesn't matter which one occurs first. One feeds off of the other in a never-ending downward spiral that takes at least an intervention of some sort, and maybe even a miracle to stop it.
If I can continue to sleep as I have for the past couple of months, then I think I have a decent future. But, who knows?
