I find that most of the time, unless my body is completely physically or mentally exhausted, then I cannot fall asleep. At all.

The only time in my life when I could sleep "normally" was when my body relapsed after an unsuccessful polyphasic sleep experiment and I spent the next nine and a half months in a constantly lethargic mood.

And it's not the type of insomnia where I "can't stop thinking". With me, the case is that I don't want to stop thinking. I want to keep going and going and going until my body shuts down on its own from total exhaustion. And even when that happens I still want to keep going, but I can't since my body is already unconscious.

And now that I'm engulfed in some exciting research, I keep thinking about it all the time. In the 30 minutes I spent trying to fall asleep tonight I left my bed about 3 or 4 times to write down some ideas that spontaneously came to my mind.
I finally gave up on getting any sleep when I caught myself sitting on the floor in pitch darkness jotting down notes in my clipboard.

At a time like this I can understand how Tesla felt when he didn't sleep for days, powered by his drive for scientific discovery. I get the idea that if my heart was stronger than it is now then I'd probably do same

Anyway, that's what it's like to be me. It's a little past over midnight right now and I don't think I'll be getting sleep any time soon...

many people would like to have what you have. Personally, I have never experienced insomnia so it's difficult to relate. However, I can easily relate to being engrossed in some exciting ideas for many hours or days at a time and completely forgetting about having a body and everything else except what you're thinking about. Definitely one of the joys of the intellect.

I am intrigued: What did you write one that clipboard?