Kirk’s Blog

They’re coming to take me away.  Ho Ho Hee Hee Ha Ha, to the spacey farm where eyes are red all the time, and I’ll be happy to see those nice, little vials with a blue tear drop on the labels.  They’re coming to water my eyes, ha haaa!

Yeah so my eyes have been drying out from staring at the computer screen for too long.  I downloaded this freeware program to remind you to take a break every 15 minutes (user settable) and look away from the screen for 90 seconds and blink your eyes in quick succession to stimulate those tear ducts.  And then it tells me something like, “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and take a look around every once in a while, you might miss it.”  And that’s why we have polyphasic sleep.

I woke up from my evening nap feeling like a space cadet.  I wasn’t sleepy, alert, or groggy - the only combinations I had experienced so far - just spacey (although delirious kind of crosses boundaries here).  I haven’t quite reached the level of zombie yet either - perhaps midway on the space-o-meter.  I wonder if it was from my unexpected chair nap, the Warcraft binge that preceeded my former nap, or if it was just spacey time.  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll accelerate to the zombie phase.

After analyzing the first two days of napping, I’ve notice an interestingly consistent pattern to when I feel alert and when I feel tired.

It seems that my best naps occur at the 11:30 - 12:00 slot (I still allocate 30 minutes even though I sleep less), both AM and PM. For these naps, I’m able to fall asleep easily, and so far I’ve popped awake without grogginess for all of them. For the period that follows, I have the best energy and concentration of the entire day.

The other group is the 3:30 - 4:00 slot, both AM and PM. For these naps, I generally wake up feeling groggy and/or tired, and the rest of the period that follows the nap is marked by similar feelings, notably more difficult in the AM slot. The AM slot is the hardest time of day for me to stay awake, and it’s not easy to focus on anything. The PM slot is also a sleepy time but not nearly as much as the AM slot, and the focus is more on disorientation/distraction rather than the overwhelming sleepiness of the AM period.

The last group is mixed, and it’s the 7:30 - 8:00 slot. In the AM hours, I am most willing/eager to go to sleep for the nap than at any other time of the day, and in the PM hours, I have the least desire to take a nap than at any other time of the day. The condition of my wake-up is also opposite in that I feel groggy in the AM hours, and I pop awake feeling relatively fresh in the PM hours.

It was so strange how for two days I had such perfect naps and high levels of energy with no oversleeps or mistakes of any kind.  Well I did just fall asleep in the chair for I’m not sure how long.  All I remember is that I woke up from my 4:00 AM nap without grogginess and feeling overall not too bad.  I had so much energy and focus from the last period that I tried to continue doing my school work.  I was trying to ponder a philosophical question and my mind was going off into really weird delirious directions.  Then the alarm that used to wake me up at 5:40 AM went off, it startled me awake, and I was still up in my chair.  I did have a dream, so I must have been passed out for a bit.  It was something about me in the office doing tech support emails.  In any case, it was just a little slip.  Aside from that, it has felt like I already transitioned because of how smooth the naps have been going and how much energy I actually have.

Sometimes I think this whole thing is just one big excuse to play Warcraft. Ha! It would seem that way with the frequency that I’m playing now. I play even when I don’t necessarily need it to stay awake. Errr. There are plenty of constructive things I could be doing. I still have the ability to concentrate for pretty much all of the time except for that 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM segment when I have to try extra hard to stay awake. But for some reason, I keep choosing to do things that don’t require concentration. I’m not at my optimal mental capacity; that’s for sure. I can still do mental labor. I just have to force myself to do it since I’m moderately delirious.

So far everything has been perfect. All naps have been restful. I haven’t overslept at all. I’ve in fact been bouncing up from at least half of my naps. And I have much more ability to operate in the world than I thought I would. I suppose I’ll just have to see how the next few days go. Things are going really smoothly, so I don’t want to jinx it by thinking about what’s going to happen too much.

It’s 2:30 am on the second day of my second polyphasic transition (days starting at midnight), and I feel wide awake and able to concentrate. I started using Placebo’s Polynap MP3 Soundtrack, and as I expected, it is quite helpful and effective at both getting me to sleep and waking me up. All of my naps have been restful, and I woke up with ease each time. Often when the white noise of the soundtrack finishes, I wake up on my own. If not the roosters will often wake me up. I also have another backup alarm (a loud one), which woke me up twice so far (out of 6 naps).

All of that is very important and helpful, but what really convinces me of the future success of my naps is something else… my secret weapon. In a word - water. Muhahahaha! If I don’t wake up from the lack of white noise, and if the roosters and the pigs fail to wake me up, and if I even manage to sleep past the loud alarm, a waterfall will come pouring down upon my face. I discovered the incredible waking power of water during my last attempt at polyphasic sleep, but I was unsure how to accomplish the same task in urban areas since there is no accessible place to attach a hose in my apartment complex. Then my coworker presented me with the brilliant idea. A water filter for a fish tank. It works perfectly.

I went to Petco and bought a Whisper In-tank Filter 10i for around $15, and then I bought a digital appliance timer at Target, and boom! No more oversleeping. The filter is inside a large pot full of water positioned at the edge of a table just over my sleeping head. After five minutes of the loud alarm, if I’m still not awake, then down she pours. The foam mat that I sleep on is covered with a layer of garbage bags and a towel, just in case it actually happens. But I haven’t been very tired much less close to oversleeping at all so far. I didn’t even set it up until right before my last nap, but now that it’s in place, I will make sure it’s set for every nap. My goal: not a single oversleep!

If I start to feel sleepy, I play a bit of Warcraft, and I’m awake again. So far so good…