Day 7 - Bike Tires and Waffles

Yesterday was brutal.

I think I underestimated the effect of oversleeping a nap. Apparently it doesn't just set you back a bit, but pretty much back to square one. The poor part being that my square 1 came on the heels of a beautiful 8 hours of monophasic sleep. This time it came on the heels of 2 hours of sleep over a day.

So, perhaps needless to mention, I was really, reaaaally tired yesterday. My first class went fine, as I was TA'ing and thoroughly involved, but the second one nearly had me unconscious. I attempted to, in between these classes, take my nap outside at the suggestion of a friend. It felt awesome, I was in good company, and it should've been rejuvenating, but for some reason it just wasn't. I felt totally conscious during the entire sleep, despite the fact that I kept dreaming (hallucinating, maybe) that I was holding various objects in my hands and was twitching like I was chasing rabbits.



I had what I believe is referred to as a micro sleep in that second class. I was doing fine paying attention until 45 minutes in where the conversation lulled a bit. At that point I pretty much dropped off the planet. The effort I had to summon to hold my cursed eye lids open was comical. At about 5 minutes till, perhaps sensing the escape point, I pretty much shut off. In a brief 5ish second window I had a really strange sequence of imagery that could only be called the world's tiniest dream. Then I woke up to the professor looking at me not with a look of anger but of concern.

I got out of that class and walked as spasmodically as possible, trying to force energy both into my limbs and brain. I had a psych test next and didn't exactly want to be smudging my scantron by slamming my face into the desk because I had allowed gravity to take over.

Luckily, the studying I had done during that hyperproductive 2-10 spell the previous night had more than prepared me. I finished in roughly 15 minutes and fled to find nap sanctuary.

But I had a dinner date. So instead of napping (my scheduled nap wasn't for another 2 hours, mind you) I ate an enormous Jimmy John's sandwich and topped it off with some coldstone icecream. The food was good and the company excellent, plus I got a sweet tat of a unicorn on my arm, "FOR COURAGE!" in facing the terrors of the night ahead.

I got home at about 10 till 6 and started prepping for sleep. I knew that given the proportions of food I had eaten that an oversleep was likely, and that I was also likely not to go into REM. I set my alarms and hit the sack.

I don't think I've ever slept deeper. There was nothing restorative about the sleep. It just seemed that I had legitimately died for about 30 minutes.

The rest of the night carried on like this, with me developing more elaborate ways to trick myself into not zombie-ing around and turning off my alarms. I also began to have my first real doubts as to my ability to do this thing. Coming off of 2 hours of sleep and trying to switch has been much more painful than my switch directly out of monophasic.

Which brings me to my next point.

The reason I am doing this absurd thing is, I think, what has given me the ability to carry on through a week of sleep deprivation. It's something that is really difficult, so I want to test myself. However, it's also a way by which I can live by my current definition of a full life. I want to be able to draw, cook, paint, design, program, socialize, and exercise every single day. I see no reason to stunt the growth of my experiences and learning based on a tradition of monophasic sleeping. At least not without giving an alternative a shot first.

I don't think that trying to go polyphasic simply to "get more work done" or "be more productive" would end in success. More than a sleep schedule, this experiment is a lifestyle. I've been eating better, being healthier, and, when I have a good nap, being more energetic. But I've also had to crash in my friend's beds, disappear for 25 minutes during evening debauchery, and be generally considered a nut. Sleeping like this does not just change your sleeping. It changes the way you relate to time, sunlight, friends, work, leisure, and the world at large.

As I've mentioned in prior posts, I'm still mulling over all the implications that polyphasic sleeping has laid at my feet. I think it's helping me formulate both what I want my life to be and how I think a life ought to be lived, what makes it valuable. It has also transformed the way I think about time. But there will be more to come on that later.

This morning I went to the gym at 4:30am. When I got home I found that the tires on my bike had been stolen.

LIKE AN AMPUTATED HORSE

Little does the thief know that I have a lot of time on my hands and a vacuum that doubles as a bludgeon.