Hm, the night before yesterday I had a bout of total insomnia exactly two weeks after the last one. Two weeks ago I mentioned almost two weeks without reportable insomnia. Yesterday's also might be a one-off as last night I was able to get to sleep and nothing remarkable about the morning.

I think I want to be looking more closely at the fucked-upness that entails after even one night of total insomnia for a chronic insomniac. One night's loss of sleep for a non-insomniac might not mean much. You deal for a short bit and then you recover. For a chronic insomniac, the effects of even one night can last more than a week.

By "chronic insomnia", I mean insomnia that isn't attributable to psychological reasons, the worst of which has been most recently treated by psychiatrists with CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.

When I turned on the TV news today, there was a news scroll item at the bottom of the screen that I thought read "Robin Williams found..." before it scrolled to another item. Of course, the obvious word to fill in was "dead", and that idea was shocking.

So I waited for the scrolls to cycle around again, and indeed it was news of Robin Williams' death and indeed it was shocking. Mind you, "The Crazy Ones", Robin Williams' return to the small screen is currently airing in Taiwan. It makes his passing that much more unbelievable.

Then the rest of the scroll sank in, "Robin Williams found dead in apparent suicide". I'm not sure what to make of my reaction, which was, "well, of course". His battles with internal demons is well-known. It made sense and was even comforting that if he had to go, that he went true to himself.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sad. I've teared up. My thought was "this is the first day in a world without Robin Williams". That's how much of an impact on the world I felt he had. The world is a different place now. I felt it after 9/11, many people feel it after a loved one dies.

With Robin Williams, it was personal on a massive scale. Why? For me because he made me laugh. Every single time. Not only that gift he gave of making us laugh, but the kind of person he was. I wasn't like a die-hard fan that followed everything he did; a lot of things he did I ignored, a bunch of movies I didn't see. But whenever I paid attention, mostly not in acting roles but him as a person, there was never any indication that he wasn't genuine.

And because he was genuine and honest, we knew about his problems. He wasn't a celebrity train wreck that we can laugh at. He was really struggling with demons and he talked about them and he still made us laugh.

The shocking news that Robin Williams was found dead and the realization that even though he's a celebrity and has little to do with our daily lives, we as a culture for most part loved the man. He made us laugh from the gut. Laughter that was not only because of being clever, but primal laughter from not only from crazy talent but no doubt a reflection of his honesty to himself and his humanity.

An episode of "The Crazy Ones" aired soon after the news broke and I watched it. Robin Williams recently instagrammed a photo of him and his daughter when she was a child. I noticed that photo was on the set of "The Crazy Ones" in his office.