Days 9-14:The past week

So I completely fell off the face of the earth this past week. I'm almost 100% certain that I am a workaholic. Quick Recap:

Tues. : 4 hours of sleep. Good sleep schedule.
Wed. : 4.5 hours of sleep leading into wednesday. took some good naps.
Thurs: 4 hours of sleep followed by an interview at 8:30am Thursday. I'm at this point completely into a sleep schedule of 3am-~7am.
Thurs. night: hard crash. I've done so much work the past 2 weeks that I think I'm burning out really hard. Napped at 11:20, but my naps have become shortened, to the point where this one was only 10 minutes long. Not enough to recharge. But I just keep waking up early or being interrupted by a phone call or something. Had ONE beer because my stress level varied inversely to my sleep levels. Needed to calm down, and instead ended up mentally breaking down. Came back to my room at midnight and spent an hour mindlessly emptying out my email inbox (it's accumulated over the past week...) Crashed around 1am to sleep and get ready for another interview.
Friday: woke up after 6 hours of sleep. Friday I felt hazy like my burnout on Thursday was still causing some residual meh-ness. Got a lot of work done, went into the shoeboxed office and worked more. Don't remember how Friday night went... ??
Saturday: woke up early (7:30am) after about 6 hours of sleep again. Felt absolutely GREAT that I got to sleep that much. I've been a bit too stressed out lately. I'm coming to the realization that I need more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night. It's fine for a couple days (with strategic naps), but overall it has some bad effects. One guy in the office pointed out that neuron ion channels replenish themselves when we are asleep and there is LITTLE TO NO electrical activity going on - ie: non-REM sleep. So maybe these have been damaged and depleted lately, making me really screwed up.

Ok well, I'm going to keep blogging now after this falling off of the map. My sleep schedule is changing more toward something that resembles normalcy. Probably 6 hours at night augmented by 2-3 naps during the day. I don't need to be pushing the early morning and late night as much as I am right now -- I just need to make my daytime hours more effective I think.

Tomorrow morning: interview at 8:30am. So I'll plan on sleeping from about 1am until 7am. Nap 1 set for ~12pm, nap 2 at ~6pm, and nap 3 at 10 or 11pm. Or something like this. I might try to do more naps closer together, but for 10-15 minutes instead of 30 minutes.

Day 6

Last night was one of the MOST FUN TIMES of my life. Got to eat some Panang curry, which took me back to the summer trip in Thailand (we also had spicy coconut soup - amazing). Then went to the ZTA semiformal hosted at: Pizza Palace! I couldn't believe we chose that locale, but it ended up being a suprisingly fun and cost-effective location. Never would have guessed.

Alums are back in town since it's homecoming weekend. One of them began boxing with me and demanded to know why we never slept together last year... um, my "official" response was that I didn't want any STDs...

While last night was great, I also did not stay on sleep schedule. I was 100% accurate in predicting that my pitiful reboot Thursday night would segue into a weekend of old and bad sleeping habits. Last night I slept from about 2:00 to 8:00. 6 hours, and most pathetic is that I did a bad job of napping today. This was most likely due to the copious quantity of alcohol I consumed last night. Alcohol is better than cigarettes when trying to maintain a sleep schedule, but awful in bulk.

No nap from 10:00 (when I actually got to bed) until 16:40. Napped in my car in the parking lot of the mall from then until 17:00. BTW this afternoon the state fair was a lot of fun. crazy people, crazy carnival games that I did not play, and some fried milky way bars & frozen chocolate bananas on top of it all.

So now I am about 4 hours away from my last nap and debating whether to take a mini nap and try to get back on schedule or whether I should just screw it until tomorrow since I have more alumni friends in town that I kind of wanted to hang out with tonight. Tobacco, alcohol, food, and friends are the major factors involved with getting onto a good sleep schedule. None of them mix all that well with Everyman sleep. Boo hiss. I'll trim my lifestyle selectively.

Might nap, might not. I'll blog about the verdict when I wake up/go to sleep next.

Reboot 2

Bad, bad news. Last night I was planning on 2:30-7 core sleep. Upon waking up at 7, I promptly turned off both my alarms semi-subconsciously, then went back to sleep. Only by luck did I wake up at 10:00 just in time for my class. It may just be golf, but it's still a class.

I was hazy too. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. But then again I also realized that by going back to sleep, I'd make it worse. Stuck in this catch-22, I thought the best option was probably to just lay there for a while. But a sense of responsibility got the better of me and I jumped up, tossed on a hat (for the first time in months), and ran to my car for golf. I do NOT like not showering in the morning, mainly because my hair sticks out in all directions and is pretty long.

Dammit. It's as if I slept through my entire first waking cycle of the day. I was planning on a nap right before golf, yeah I know it's only a couple hours into the day, but that would set me through ~4pm when I would have time to take one again.

Effects of sleeping so long: Right now (2 hours later) I'm just starting to feel not groggy and hazy. This sucks because not only did I waste an extra 3 hours on sleeping, but I also have spent the past 2 hours not being able to think. PureDoxyK had it completely right about messing with core sleep leaving you feeling weird all day. It hasn't completely worn off, but I have no choice but to get shit done. If missing naps is supposed to be worse, I am terrified to the point of overnapping now.

Causes of sleeping so long
Last night was a Thursday night. For people who don't remember college, this is an AWESOME night to go out on, mainly because no one really cares about Friday classes/work and there are a lot of good specials, like Big Beers at Satisfaction for 4 bucks. Every Thursday without fail. Brilliant. For weird sleep schedules, social habits are bad -- such as drinking and smoking. I hate to admit it, but I've been an on-and-off nicotine subscriber for the past 2-3 years. Not in large doses, but enough to make me wish I had a cigarette from time to time. Last night was one of those times. Since I've been reading about how Everyman is more forgiving than straight polyphasic or uberman, I figured what the heck, with 2-3 hours before core sleep, why not have a drink or have a cigarette?

I passed on the drink because I was working and realized that a Big Beer at 00:00 would knock me out. But I did have half of a cigarette. I'm pretty sure that my body processing that crap along with maybe not having quite enough water is what made me feel awful upon waking up this morning. That led to a total reboot of 7.5 hours of sleep. This is almost really embarrassing, enough to make me want to skip all of today's naps. But that's NOT a good plan.

This episode may facilitate kicking the habit. That's really what this experiment is all about -- being able to learn my bodily functioning to the point that I can predict it, make clear decisions, and stay in charge of what goes on in my day-to-day life. Getting rid of tobacco is very necessary. Beer, not so much. But tobacco is no good and I know that.

Ok time to pick up the pieces. More to come soon.

Day 4

Agenda: Woke up (7am -- overslept again...), worked on editing paper. Submitted this morning, went to FIP conference intro. Did homework during. Was really tired through class (10:05-11:20). Crashed for a *sweet* nap at 11:30 on the Teer couches. Note to self: one of the resources that must be made available with a campus map is editable locations of good sleeping spots. Because Teer is a great one. I may start sleeping there exclusively. Lord knows I haven't made my bed yet since fall break because I've been living on my futon. Maybe once I get into a good schedule pattern I'll start using the bed again. But not now.

Did great all day, felt like I needed another nap around 16:00 pushed it to 17:00(30m). Went to the Shoequarters and passed out on our nice little sleep chair. It's glorious. Now I'm up and coding quite happily! I think I'll plan on another nap around 22:00. Ok busy with work, so I'll deal w/ that and not make a really long post right now. busy, busy, busy!

From PureDoxyK:
"Messing with the core-times is bad, in that it will make you feel generally unrested all day. But messing with a nap is a big no-no, because it makes you feel like somebody drove a bus into your frontal lobe, parked it there and had a clambake. *gag*"

Thanks Tomas for pointing that out. I would have to agree.

Justin seems to be doing well, so does Tomas.

Tomas: "they've been going pretty well. it sucks to miss a nap, because you don't feel tired then but then you crash. it messes you up for your core sleep because you're so tired even though you don't realize it."

Well put, agreed. I think I'll be at the shoe-office until about 2am tonight! maybe a break for dinner, but I should get some major work done after being in a time-warp the last couple days.

Night 3

I woke up feeling like I've been in a time warp. Nap from 23:20-00:00. It was much needed, although I think it was a bit long for a polyphasic nap. Once I got over about half an hour, my body was expecting at least a couple hours' hibernation. Core sleep comes at 2am tonight though, and I will be attempting to shake things up even more -- after announcing a plan to start at 5.5 hours per night and every couple days decrease that amount in half-hour increments, the uber-college schedule has forced me to modify. I'll attempt (rather desperately) to sleep 2-6 tonight with the intention of finishing edits on an article due friday before attending a conference starting at 8am. Talk about productivity. Or maybe just a bunch of talk about nothing...

I'm really trying to avoid looking like this guy in the future! But who knows, maybe one day when I'm 64 and no one still needs or feeds me, I'll doze off in a chair and someone will snap a picture like this one. I actually kinda dig the beard & eyebrow combo.

Back to work for a bit -- it seems like the couple of days right after fall break are non-stop work. Don't know why, but this design course has some ridiculous expectations and not much consistent organization. I bet we get to lab tomorrow (having prepared last-minute for our presentations) only to find no projector. Actually I now recall that we have a conference room reserved, but I don't understand how since the school has a Massive photonics conference starting up tomorrow. The guy who's famous for the cloaking device (Dave Smith) will be a celebrity at this thing, and rumour has it that Sir John Pendry will be here! Don't worry, if you don't get as excited as me, it's because you're normal. All this sleep deprivation is going to my head...

maybe I'll call it:
polysomosis - a condition resulting from abnormal sleep patterns. Most commonly characterized by red eyes, disheveled hair, and a general inability to make sense of the world.