When I bring up sleep problems, people's assumption tend to jump straight to stress as the cause.

I've always been dismissive about stress as the factor. I think many people have much more stressful lives than mine and sleep just fine.

But after the past week, I have to reconsider this factor.

For the whole of last week I've been having consistent headache that rendered me non-functional. I thought I caught a virus of some kind but there's no fever to be had. Eventually I had to see the doctor, and he attributed it to bad sleep. Bad enough that headache and running nose refuse to go away.

If I have lawsuit I could point to that keeps me up at night, I would gladly pin this on that. But there's nothing close to it.

Whatever stress I'm taking on, work or play, it's completely voluntary. And I had taken on far worse in the past. If these could give me insomnia, then it means I've developed a ridiculously low tolerance for stress. I'd hate for that to be true.

Another thing I'd hate to be true is for this to be a subliminal issue buried at the back of my head not wanting to let go. If this is it, where do I even begin to look?

The worse part about debugging this kind of problem is how irreproducible it is. Even if I managed to develop a theory and a solution, eventually insomnia comes back and takes a different form. If I take an over-zealous approach and try every solution, I end up developing paranoia so intense I'd end up like Howard Hughes.

I have a sense I've been asking the wrong questions. How to fall asleep is not it; babies can do that. The approach ought to be subtractive, so the right question would sound like what's keeping me up and take care of that.