A little breather

I am currently much better than I was before when I wrote the previous post. This is something I would like to point out, that post was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do for this blog…I spent 15 minutes just trying to rabble the things down…then as I was trying to read the stuff I had “written”, I realised that most of it came out as jibberish. At this point the brainfog was so thick that I couldn’t keep reading more than one sentence per minute….I’ve never had such an experience, and I must say that I am quite impressed by the brains ability to fight back, mostly because this is  something we often aren’t aware of the brain being capable of. I used to think that we have control over these things, I managed not falling asleep though, but it has made me think about how we as a consciousness coexist with the brain and the rest of the human body.

If one makes a little sketch of this relationship we are obviously the servant…the consciousness is the thing that must be active and working in order for the brain to give orders concerning its and the body’s needs. In return we are allowed to hang out and grow within a consciousness-society which treats the human body as a machine.

Not that this has been a post that has contributed on any level with any kind of new idea or anything like that. But if it at least was a bit amusing I think I’ve achieved something.

I am having a wonderful experience adapting to the Uberman schedule. I really must say that every new challenge that comes up always ends up having a slightly surprising result where I feel like a little kid again, exciting and at the same time self-confronting in ways where one has to be honest with oneself…sounds weird, but it has been one of the motivations for going through with it.

I am planning to take the Uberman schedule as far as I can and hopefully make it part of my life, atleast throughout this semester.

Day 4 and I think I’m sleep deprived..

It was this that I was expecting on day three….I am feeling like I’m fighting myself at every point in whatever I am doing, as soon as I stop to think to find something to say or if there’s a conclusion I should draw on my own in any way, my brain breaks in and tells me that this won’t be tolerated…”if you don’t get yourself in here right now I will drop you to your knees.”

Finally the physical pain has started as well; nausea, headache, feeling your eyes being forced down against your will….It is actually fascinating seeing how the brain goes frantic and starts throwing everything it’s got at you. If this lasts many days I’m going to be in a very foul mood come monday/tuesday. I’m hoping that it will ease down a little during the day…hopefully I’ll be realativly done with the BS I’m fighting today.

So in short: dry eyes, narcolepsia, moodswing and other things imagenable…just throw it in aswell…

Taking the sleepmonster by the horns

As the title says, I am ready to wrestle the shadow fiend that wants to bring me into its own personal lala-land. I am mentally prepared for a long night of keeping my head in the game. Since this morning I’ve had some trouble falling asleep during my naps…I’ve zoned out and been woken up by the alarm…but I doubt there has been much of any REM activity.I am currently on the third day, the one that is said to be the first of the days when sleep deprivation really kicks in.

I’ve been feeling a lot more tired today compared to how I was feeling yesterday. I haven’t been able to hit REM on more than 2/4 of the total number of naps. I often wake up thinking I am having trouble going to sleep…that after just having slept 20 minutes…but then again there are times when it feels like I’ve been sleeping for way longer…at least for a couple of hours…only to find that I’ve slept 20 minutes. It’s far from stable, but that is what I’m guessing will come in the next few days…

How am I doing sleep deprivation vise? Well, I am experiencing moments of fatigue, but nothing too serious yet. I have tried to do stretching and bending exercises at least two times a day…and whenever I do this I feel way better afterwards…I think it helps the circulation which again helps keep a constant temperature. I have suddenly become very sensitive to temperature change, especially the cold tile floor in our shower. There’s nothing like a piping hot shower at the start of the second cycle though…

There are other things I’ll be wanting to write about as well, but I’ll do that in another post since a severe case of brainfog just crept over me.

It turns out to be true..

…that my brain is trying to outsmart me. Just to confirm the fact that it did actually get harder after last night….two cycles ago I had to go out for a walk…I just didn’t trust my brain around chairs, tables or the bed. I tried many different things to hold me back from failure, but I think what got me through to my nap was willpower. I’ve been having difficulties remembering my dreams, but this time I had a long and clear one that took place at the uni…people didn’t understand english, they kept saying “In Norwegian, please” It was weird. Even weirder was that I woke up after 14 minutes….looking back I should probably have gotten up right about then…but nooo, I decided to sleep the 6 minutes i had left…and now I am feeling drowsy and all that…meaning I passed on into deep sleep…..not a part of the plan, but considering that it all was within 20 minutes…not too shabby!!

Aaaah yes, the big question, or problem if you will, is that every “hobby” or activity I have written down on my list is way to relaxing….not to mention that most of them have to take place in a chair…..so now I’m going to go get some breakfast, and then I’m going for a wee shopping trip…I’m going to embrace the artist within…by drawing with crayons and such…

The end of day 2…..D&D International Politics!!

This day has been slightly more challenging than the first one. Still I am only on the second day, but I have started having peculiar things happen during my naps. Today I have had two incidents where it’ hard to tell if I actually fell asleep or if I was awake the whole time. What’s interesting is that this happens when I am feeling tired before I have my nap, that’s the only times I can’t seem to sleep, but considering that they’ve felt so short I am suspecting that I’ve blacked out somewhere in the middle, coming back to myself before the alarm goes off and being under the impression that I haven’t been sleeping.

What was a pleasant surprise was my first 9.15 nap….this oddity of a nap time is as I explained caused by inconsiderately set up timetable of my uni-courses. It gave me my first encounter with the vivid dreams often experienced by phasers. The dream was about me and hundreds of other students playing a game similar to some kind of D&D board game, but instead of anything remotely fantasy related we are all representing countries in a international political assembly. It was really freaky how easily everyone understood the rules and remembered insane facts about each-others country. Often using their knowledge to come to an joint agreement considering trading or other shared interests.

Anywhen! This has turned out to be a good day. I’ve had some signs of sleep deprivation up until now, but I am fairly certain that I haven’t felt anything yet compared to what’s coming in the challenge that lies ahead of me, getting through the first week….I’m running a non-tolerance policy against oversleeping and I will not let myself be conned by my brain into thinking I am going to have to sleep “mono” again at some point,” so you might just as well do it right NOW!!!” That stuff won’t work with me, I tell you. Did I mention that I am talking to myself all the time? …makes it seem less weird…

I have decided to follow Puredoxyk’s advice; I have written a list or two with stuff to keep me busy through the night. I have triple guarded myself with alarms and I have lots of fresh fruit and veg at my disposal. I will check back in after or before my 9.15 nap in tomorrow. I have a funny feeling that it’ll be an interesting night.

Some tinkering…

I’ve had a look at my timetable for the next semester, and if I am going to continue being a polyphaser I am going to have to do a slight change in my sleep pattern….I was originally going for: 2-6-10-14-18-22, but since I have a lecture at 10 on Mondays and Tuesdays I will have to do a wee change…I’m making the change starting from right now….and I’ll change it into: 2-6-9.15-14-18-22

Hopefully this won’t be too big of a gap between naps, I won’t know until I’ve actually tried it…and the only reason that I am actually doing the change is because there is no other option…Since it is during the bright and early part of the day I think it will help in making the extra time between naps bearable. I know this might upset my rhythm and make adaption harder, but as long as I am getting the right amount of sleep within the same time period I don’t think the longer cycle will do that much damage. Since all my other naps will be in the “right” time.

To make things clear, I will be adopting this early nap into my schedule to make it part of the routine…maybe then I won’t experience it as a “missed” or missplaced nap…

Still sitting in the saddle! Not even back in the saddle again, cuz I never left….

I’m into my second day and 7 cycles have passed since I started. I have been having trouble falling asleep for the last 3-4 naps…I’m guessing it is because I’m not used to taking naps, but atleast this means that I clearly haven’t become tired enough to “pass out” as fast as I lay down.

I have been getting some energy out of these non-sleep naps though, the one I had at 2 left me feeling refreshed and with enough energy to tidy up my room and rearrange the shelves. During this time I didn’t encounter any feelings of depletion or tiredness in any way.

I think most of this energy comes from the meals I have in the start of some of the cycles. After getting up from my 2 am nap had a cup of tea and a pear and an apple. Eating fruit in the start of the cycle seems to help keep my mood and motivation up.Iæm guessing it’s because they have a great deal of glucose, meaning I’ve been riding on sugarhighs….that’s never good. But it has been effective at keeping me alert and awake for the last 50 hours…

Earlier on I made a list of things I should try to get done before next week, without much difficulty I have just about finished the list, now I am yet again in the predicament of not really having anything in particular to do. I will have to try mastering some kind of newly aquired skill through getting a new hobby of some sort…having a hard time figuring out what this would be ….

I just had my 6 am nap and I must say that it was fantastic, I actually fell asleep within the first minutes of laying down…then before I knew it the alarms were going off. Now that I am going into the second day I am feeling way more tired then I was at any point yesterday, and I’m not expecting to feel any better before I reach the end of my first week…it’s going to be a rough couple of days before I’m even close to any sort of “clearing” where I can stop and catch my breath….

Best,

Ola

It’s only the first one, man!

Yeah, I’m well on my way into the first day of the experiment. I have had three successful naps, falling asleep in a matter of minutes, and strangely waking just in time to get up as the alarm goes off 20 minutes later. It is still too early to notice any real sleep deprivation or any signs of a near impending breakdown. That’s not going to happen!….I hope.

Anyway, this first day has been mostly ok…but I am all ready starting to feel a certain brain-fog interfering with my ability to come up with words and putting them into sentences which actually have a meaning. If I have understood the others who’ve tried going polyphasic, then it’s only going to get a lot worse before it gets any better…

I am hoping to see improvements in week 2, but this first week I am all but trying to figure out how to keep busy with all the time I’ve got on my hands. I might pick up a Spanish-course, try to learn a new language…but knowing that this isn’t the best kind of activity to be doing when you’re sleep deprived, I will have to try to find some kind of practical/physical hobby or project. I’m just having a hellishly hard time coming up with anything. I guess I haven’t prepared as much as I should have for this part of the project.

I have considered taking up some of my writing, having done a bit of songwriting and poems since I was 16….haven’t really had time to put any initiative or effort into it the last year.

As I am writing this I know this wasn’t a very well written post, but until I am free of this mental fog this is the way my posts are going to be. As I continue with the experiment I will try to give some kind of description of some of the stuff I’ll have gone through.

Best of wishes goes out to all of you!

The Return of the Jeedaay

Harhar! I have returned!! I know that I’ve been gone for way too long. I haven’t posted a single post in over a month I think. But now that I am finished with my exams I will be getting back to make some more regular updates. Now then, as things are getting back to normal, I am going to make an effort to mess things up…after seeing that my lecture/tutorial schedule works poorly with a Ubermann sleeping pattern I am going to go ahead and try anyway =D I’ll have to take my Monday and Tuesday morning naps a wee fraction of an hour earlier…I hope this won’t turn out to be too much of a problem.

For those reading that are unaware of what I am talking about, it’s basicly the idea that you change the way your brain handles sleeping and energy preservation by doing a sort of “reboot”. There are different kinds of polyphasic sleep schedules, the most popular ones are Uberman and Everyman. Now first off, polyphasic sleep is just a different way of saying that you sleep several times a day. The traditional type being monophasic which most of us know as ” a good nights sleep”. The one I’m going for is Ubermann, having 6×20 minute naps. Effectivly giving yourself 22 hours of awake time each day.

Anyways, since this is the first time I’m attempting something like this…I’m going to be realistic, chances are slim that I’m even going to last as much as two weeks. I am taking this first time as a sort of test drive, get a feel for how my body and brain will suffer and try to adapt. I’ve heard that it’s never quite the same no matter how many times you try to adapt, but as I am going into it I am trying to set myself some goals.

- If my adaption goes by without oversleeping or any disturbing psychological/physical effects, and I actually pull off juggling this scheme with my studies, I will continue as long as I can

I am going to have my first “waypoint” at one week, then one at two weeks, one at the 1 month mark….and from there I’ll just have to see….

My main concerns for what may go wrong will absolutely be oversleeping and running out of things to do. I am not yet into the second semester, so I’ll have about 2 weeks without any proper coursework…I will therefore try to find some temporary projects to “work” on.

I have been trying to prepare for this for the last couple of months, some things were not done in this intention, but it seems that it might help to make it easier in the transition period. The things I am referring to are projects such as the Early Riser one and the vegetarian project. I have also stopped drinking caffeine and I’ve tried to improve my dreaming. Actually the dreaming is a part of this project that I am looking forward to, strong lucid dreams and time dilation is fascinating and something I’d like to do some more research on…

Anyhow, my nap times will be at 2, 6 and 10. I am starting my naps at 25 minutes, and I’ll just have to see where I go from there. I’ll probably end up doing tons of updates around here, having nothing better to do.