In my third, and I hope final article on insomnia, we will discuss the dreaded 3 a.m. wakeup.

If you’re like me, your first act upon awakening at this time is to:

• Stage a reenactment of all the uninformed and/or insensitive things you said that week. Now imagine exactly how the people you said them to are planning to destroy your life.

• Work yourself into a panic over whether that fishy-looking website button you probably shouldn’t have clicked right before bed means you have gifted your identity to an international crime syndicate who have already wiped out your life savings.

• Become convinced that an odd noise means something strange in your neighborhood — though calling Ghostbusters hasn’t been a legitimate option since Rick Moranis left the franchise in 1989.

With numbers two and three, a few minutes of belly breathing might expel most of the adrenaline and cortisol from your system. Number one, however, is a tougher nut. Because every cringeworthy memory can spawn five more, I call this activity “Trolling for Trouble.” Trying to belly-breathe that away nets me nothing but hyperventilation.

At the onset of the Second Renaissance (the period between PCs and smartphones), a librarian told me that Solitaire was the number one reason seniors asked her for computer help.

“Uh-oh,” I thought. At age 54, I believed that my first official day as a Golden Ager was at least 40 years off. But I had been using Solitaire as a sleep aid for decades! When I turned 30, had I accidentally stepped into a wormhole?

In my pre-golden days, I would haul out of bed and shuffle actual cards at the kitchen table. Now, you may have noticed that in western Washington, 378 nights per year are what you might call “chilly,” and after an hour I would realize that my feet no longer believed in global warming. The invention of handheld electronic devices meant I could play while staying cozy under the blankets. This allowed my brain to push aside the self-recriminations and become more philosophical. And so I give you:

Why solitaire is like life

You make the best of the cards you’re dealt and hope for luck with the cards you can’t see.

You begin with chaos (the shuffled deck), then attempt to create order via the construction of social hierarchies. The emergence of leadership can either facilitate or block action.

Core elements (aces) outrank all hierarchies. These elements are love (hearts), wealth (diamonds), conflict (clubs), and death (spades).

Crucial information will be hidden from you until the very end.

Some games are short, some are long. Random chance decides whether or not you will make it to the end, so all that matters is enjoying the play.

The rarity of winning is what keeps you interested in the game.

Most outcomes are determined as soon as the cards are on the table. The only choice we truly have is whether or not to play.

Final note: Do not play match-three games to wind down. I can mainline Candy Crush for two hours straight, which is a full hour and forty minutes longer than I can consume real candy. That level of stimulation is counterproductive if you’re to have an icicle’s chance in hell of getting back to sleep.

And yes, that is also a metaphor for both my feet and global warming.

As of this writing, Cindy Hoyt is a comedy writer and official two-time book author. Google “Cindy Hoyt Lucid” and see for yourself.