Day 7

One Week! (Am I on the wrong day?... maybe...) Nope! after checking it out, I realize that I am in fact on the correct day. It has been one long week of failing miserably with the Everyman sleep schedule.

This week I'll try to do better. By the end of week 2 I plan to have a set of factors for success boiled down. Drinking massive amounts of water will be near the top of that list.

Today I woke up at 11am, 3 hours after my 8am target time. I think that napping during the day makes me awake enough that a core sleep time will be attainable. If I'm too tired going into it, there's no will power to pull me out of bed. Got to work on this.

I'm going to lay down for a nap right now (17:15) in hopes of waking up and getting back on a good schedule. I'll probably take another nap around 22:00 and then shoot for a 2 or 3am core sleep time.

Since I've obviously slept through alarms on the futon, there's no reason to persist in staying on it and not using my nice queen-sized loft. So I think I will go ahead and make my bed (it's had no sheets on it since fall break, whoops!) and start sleeping in it again.

Shit now it's 5:20 and I haven't started my nap yet. It's time.l

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.

Reboot

I've run into one of the biggest potential threats to this project's success: Laziness.

PureDoxyK warns about it in her post on reasons why NOT to be a polyphaser. Whoops. Looks like I'll have my work cut out for me.

Last night I turned off at 2:00 with the intention of waking up at 5:00. I've been a swimmer for the past 12 years or so, and for the past 8 at least did mornings at ~5-6 every weekday. So this isn't too big a problem. But I like sleep a lot. I've learned over the past two years that having a roommate awake and working when I need to get up for practice (6:00) means that at least one light will be on, and that REALLY helps with getting my lazy ass out of bed.

So my light was on when I went to sleep. Since it's fall break I was at home and mom thought that the light under the door meant I was still awake. She came on in to talk to me, and seeing me passed out decided it'd be the sweet thing to do to turn the light off! I really can't fault her for it -- she loves me a lot!

But this did mean that at 5AM when I woke up and went to the bathroom (on schedule!) without turning my lights on, everything was dark when I walked back in and so I rationalized to myself that there would be nothing wrong with just laying back down for another 3-hour cycle.

DAMN! I slept til 10am, giving myself a fresh 8 hours of sleep. Maybe this was needed after careless sleep deprivation the past week or so. I ran across a blog last night that described sleeping through an alarm or checkpoint as "rebooting", similar to a computer wiping out it's RAM and restarting.

So I guess last night will count as a reboot. It sets me back a bit, but I don't know what from....

I'm still looking for a good way to publish a journal log separate from my ramblings! any thoughts?