The best thing to do in situations like this is to keep yourself busy. Hang out with friends, have your projects, spend some money, exercise more, clean the house, wash your truck, watch those movies you’ve been meaning to… and never let yourself be alone in the silence.
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This is easier if you are linear thinker, able to focus yourself entirely on the task or event in front of you.

I am not a linear thinker.

I am, unfortunately (in this case), a massively parallel thinker… capable, for better or for worse, of thinking about a lot of different things at the same time. For instance, while writing this post, I am also thinking about: the specific cut plans for the dresser I am designing to build, the TV I need to order, the plot of the TV show I can hear in the background, the person for whom I am writing this post, and how to fix the bathroom door so it doesn’t stick anymore. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that I think any faster or better than a linear person, it means that I lay all of this stuff on itself and flip back and forth between it so quickly, that I can’t sense the pauses.

In other words, I can’t keep myself busy enough to escape.

Last night, after hanging out with friends, I was up until 3:30 in the morning, flitting around the apartment, taking care of this or that, watching TV shows I’d already seen, and basically trying to drive myself to the exhaustion it takes to send me to sleep in less than 5 minutes (as opposed to the usual 20-30).

It worked, but I was up and out of bed at 8:30 with nothing but things it hurt to think about flooding back in. I’m expecting the same tonight. This is where it’s inconveniet to be an insomniac.

As Solomon learned, this too shall pass… but I have a feeling not quickly.