Kirk’s Blog

• SSS: 5

I’m waiting for midnight so that I can take my middle nap.  There is still some adjustment to be made since that horrific oversleep, and I didn’t get to sleep for the dog nap or the first nap today.  I’m finally tired, so I’m just waiting now.  All I have to do is not oversleep, and I’m well on my way to a sustainable polyphasic schedule.  I’ve also ordered some power nap music (3 different CDs) to help me fall asleep so that I can tackle this from both ends and stop the vicious cycle that’s preventing me from finally adjusting.

• SSS: 2

That nap worked out really well.  Since it appears that I won’t be able to sleep in the couch rooms during business hours, I found a walk-in coat closet that no one uses, and it worked perfectly!  I was wearing ear plugs, so I didn’t hear the alarms, but my coworker woke me up at just the perfect moment, and I feel refreshed!  I think I’m off to a good second start on phase 2 of this adjustment.  I also found this interest article on nautical time that works well for labeling naps.  The new naming scheme will be:

12:00 AM - middle nap
4:00 AM - morning nap
8:00 AM - forenoon nap
12:00 PM - afternoon nap
4:00 PM - dog nap
8:00 PM - first nap

• SSS: 4

Yesterday I had the usual afternoon oversleep of about an hour and a half (when a coworker woke me up), which by itself wasn’t too bad, but what followed was much more severe. This may be partly due to the fact that I skipped both naps surrounding the afternoon oversleep, but when I settled down for the midnight nap at 11:30 PM or so, I didn’t wake up until about 4:30 AM. To make matters worse, I didn’t get up immediately and drifted back to sleep until 6:30 AM or so.

If the other major oversleep is any indication, the next 2 days of getting back on track are going to be particularly difficult. I’ve decided unambiguously to re-adopt a rigid napping schedule of 12:00, 4:00, and 8:00, whether I can fall asleep at those times or not. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do to prevent oversleeps at this point. A coworker has agreed to wake me up in case of oversleeps, but I’ll have to figure something else out when he’s not around. There’s nowhere to hook a hose up here in New York. I would re-adopt a militant attitude if I weren’t so out of it right now, but I guess I can be at least half-way militant about it.

I hope that this oversleep has not set me back more than I think it has. I certainly don’t want to revert to my pre-dream state (that is up to nap 50). In my mind, nap 51 was a significant milestone, and I separate the experience before that as a “phase 1″ of the transition period, and I think it would be extremely difficult and would probably require many days of severe oversleeps to sink back into that phase. So, hopefully, it won’t be a huge ordeal to get back on schedule (I should probably just say “to get on schedule” since I haven’t really had a schedule at all since the beginning of phase 2, which may be a major part of the problem).

Part of the problem has been finding a place to nap here at work. It seems that at least one person has a problem with me napping in the most comfortable rooms (i.e. - the one I fell asleep in last night in a mound of pillows), so I finally slept on the floor in an empty meeting room.

I have already started the schedule with my nap at 8:00 AM this morning. It was not too hard to fall asleep, but all in all not a very restful nap since I woke up half-way through a half-sleep and couldn’t get back to even half-sleep. Hopefully that will improve soon.

I just had a nap, and I can better describe the nap confusion. It’s like I don’t know if I’m awake or sleeping. I am aware that I’m lying down yet at the same time I’m dreaming. Strange! That’s why I never knew if I slept or not.

Update (15 minutes later):  I was rather groggy and disoriented when I first woke up, but now I’m full of energy and bouncing around.

• SSS: 3

I’m loosing track of the nap count, and I’m feeling sort of out of it, so I’m going to switch to just days now.  It wouldn’t be very easy to count the naps now anyway because it’s getting harder to separate them.  Sometimes I’ll wake up and not be sure if I was even asleep or if I slept long enough and reset the alarm so that I can go back to bed.  A couple times I got up, walked around, decided I didn’t feel refreshed enough and went back to nap.  None of this is helping me become fully adjusted any quicker.  One of the tell-tail signs of being adjusted is that the naps seem like a couple hours when in fact one was only asleep for 20 minutes.  I have not experienced this yet.  Whereas for the past few days I’ve found it easier to nap at night than during the day, I’m now finding it increasingly more difficult to fall asleep at any nap.  This is likely also due to the re-napping and also to the oversleeps.  The oversleep from yesterday occured at about the same time of day that I overslept on the airplane.  It’s like my body is developing core sleep in the middle of the day.  If that’s the case, it’s going to take extra effort to correct that.

Despite the difficulties, I’ve come a long way since the first week of the adjustment.  At least now, I can be functional for most of the time, and the danger of oversleeping has been vastly diminished.  Over the entire adjustment period so far, I’ve averaged about 4.5 hours of sleep a day, which is actually Stampi’s suggested minimum.  Until I get the book though I won’t know the specifics about how to execute that.  Until then, I’ll strive to emulate the strict uberman pattern, which results in about 2-3 hours a day of sleep.

I have a class after work today, so we’ll see how I can fit that into the schedule.  The thing that concerns me is not that I won’t have a place and time to nap but that I won’t be able to fall asleep.  Especially since I’ll be pressured to fall asleep and take the nap, I might worry myself awake the entire time. :-/ Actually, I have been able to calm down for recent naps.  Let’s hope I can harness that ability.

• SSS: 1.5

I crawled down off of my loft bed to turn the alarm off after my nap, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary until a few minutes later when I realized it was nearly 2 hours after the start of the nap. Wow, that was quite an oversleep. It didn’t feel any different from the short naps. However, my throat pain is completely gone! Considering the restfulness of my short naps, I don’t think this oversleep is too serious. Perhaps my body just had to fix the sore throat and that’s it. I don’t think it warrants any further analysis at this point. If it happens again or becomes a pattern, then I will take a closer look. In the meantime, I feel pretty refreshed.

Serendipitously someone posted something about sleeping a double 10-15 minute nap back to back like I did earlier today. He said that you’d probably wake up in a different stage of sleep and feel completely useless for hours. Well that explains my SSS reading of 4 and feelings of uselessness!

• SSS: 4

I was able to get to sleep on time for both of these daytime naps today. However, I can’t seem to sleep for very long. For the last nap, I decided to do that pre-nap thing to help me fall asleep, so I lay down 10-15 minutes before I wanted the nap to start. I ended up falling asleep during the pre-nap, and I woke up 10 minutes later, just as the nap should have been officially starting. I thought damn, well I’ll just go back to sleep. So I did that and woke up 10-15 minutes later. Both times I can remember that I was dreaming, just not what the dreams were. I’m not sure why I can’t sleep any longer during the day. At night, it’s much closer to the full length of the time allocated for the naps. Perhaps they are supposed to be that long.

One thing I notice happening when trying to fall asleep but can’t is a feeling of heaviness descending upon me rapidly. It feels like my body is going to fall into a deep sleep very quickly, but as I feel myself “falling” I catch myself and become hyper-aware that I was about to descend into unconsciousness. Then it’s very difficult to get to sleep. I think I might just forget about setting the alarms during the day. I always wake up before it goes off anyway. This way the process won’t be so formalized, and maybe I can relax a bit more when going to sleep.

At the risk of sounding inappropriate, I’m going to insert some personal information here that I think is relevant to this whole experience. I’ve been waking up with “morning wood” after naps. That means that the nap is akin to a night’s sleep. Just some extra validation that I’m going into deep sleep in as little as 5 minutes worth of rest.

Also, on second thought, I’m pretty sure that the throat irritation is caused by allergies from the crap (i.e. - mold) in the air in New Orleans, especially after Katrina. I had the same exact feeling in my throat the last time I visited New Orleans.

Oh, and I’ve decided on new nap times that work better with my schedule here. They are 12:00, 4:00, and 8:00.

• SSS: 2

So much has happened in a single day that I can hardly believe only a day has gone by. Just two days ago, I was utterly confused at what had (not) been achieved during the nearly complete 10 days in New Orleans that I allocated to the polyphasic adjustment. I was beginning to accept the fate that I had not acheived transition before my stay ended, and that stimulated a renewed determination to see the process through to completion in the midst of school, work, and whatever else life throws at me. Just at that moment, the clouds parted, and a divine light showered down upon me. I had my first dream. I knew that my body had finally begun to utilize the the little cat naps for its primary sleep needs.

Then I had an entire day of transportation in cars, trains, planes, and busses, which I knew would impact my young, fragile sleeping schedule, not to mention the simultaneous switch in time zone and the change to Daylight Saving Time. I ended up not being able to sleep for my planned 11:00 AM nap, then I slept for most of the 3 hour plane ride and woke up probably a dozen times or so. I had set the loud alarm to wake me up from a nap, but I didn’t hear it because I was wearing ear plugs. So a woman nudged me, and I opened my eyes to see everyone with their heads turned around staring back at me. I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. I don’t think I was thinking very clearly at the moment because I think I thought my nap was not over yet. Not surprisingly, when I arrived home in New York, I could not fall asleep for the planned 7:00 PM nap. When I took my next nap at 11:30 PM, I lay there for 15 minutes after awaking from the alarm and then reset the alarm for another 30 minute nap. I did manage to have the next nap at 4:15 AM, relatively on time, so now I will work on regularizing the naps at 4 hour intervals.

I am still not completely decided as to how strict I want to adhere to the schedule. If I can’t fall asleep during a planned nap, then it would be better to deviate slightly so that I start the nap at a time when it’s easier for me to fall asleep. Restless naps would just need to be compensated for later on anyway. I think that having maintained a strict schedule in the very beginning of the transition was necessary and beneficial, but flexibility (within limits) may be more valuable at this stage. I’ll just have to see how it works out. Afterall, I am now on largely uncharted territory.

There are still areas where the transition has not completed. For one, I’m still finding it much more difficult to fall asleep during the daytime than it is to fall asleep at night. I have a sustainable level of energy during both time periods, and the hours that seem to be the best are very early in the morning just before and after sunrise. Part of the reason may be because the more successful naps generally occur throughout the night rather than the day. Although yesterday was characterized by grogginess, I attribute that to my schedule getting messed up. Also, the social activities of the day seem to get me excited so that it’s hard to fall asleep. I wonder if the circadian rhythms will still apply to me once I’m more fully adjusted. Currently, it’s almost reversed since my nighttime hours seem to be more reliably infused with energy and vitality. Sometimes, I even try to psyche myself into feeling sleepy so that I can fall asleep more easily during the daytime naps.

Another thing that seems to interfere with my ability to fall asleep is the anticipation of falling asleep. Every time I lie down and think that I have to fall asleep, I almost always have difficulty doing it. On the other hand, when I don’t plan on falling asleep or try so hard to fall asleep, it happens more easily (falling asleep during my “pre-naps” instead of the actual nap itself is a case in point). Hopefully, as I get used to napping with such frequency, it will become easier and more automatic to fall asleep without having to think about it so much.

One other thing is that my throat is still bothering me.  Steve Pavlina also reported having cold-like symptoms during the initial adjustment but he later reported that they had gone away.  I’m taking some Airborne just in case.