Uberman Log, Day Nine

And by the way, I’m definitely not doing half-day posts. (For the record: Yesterday’s latter half was uneventful.) It’s nice for getting a post out at the end of the day – the same day that I post it on (the daylong buffer has always gotten to me) – but for some reason I don’t like doing the followup as much as I like doing the first part, and overall, I like doing them together much better.

As for logs for yesterday: You don’t need them. It went perfectly. I woke and slept just when I was supposed to. Overall rating of the day: 7/10. Tada!

This era had a lot of awesome music. Not to mention dance… That little thing at the beginning with the feet? Genius.

Uberman Log, Day Eight, Part One

This is a half-day log. I might start doing them regularly. Anyway, I feel like this morning was significant enough to warrant a post.

I woke up from my 04:30, but that’s about all that can be said for that. Knowing I needed to stay awake, I made it loopily into the shower and stayed for a half hour or so until my sister needed to get in. (Whod’ve thought? I expected I wouldn’t get in anybody’s way if I got in at five thirty, but I guess not.)

I got out of the shower barely not falling asleep. And when I say barely, I really mean barely- only just becoming conscious that I’ve been drying my arm for a few minutes now and jerking out of it to the next part of my body, having microsleeps every few second, not remembering getting to my room and sitting down… It was crazy. I’d like to say now that I’m proud to have made it though with only a few concessions- the way the entire morning was going, it looked like I’d be in bed and oversleeping in seconds at any given time.

I sat down at my computer and attempted to play a game, because I know that usually keeps my brain occupied, but I just wasn’t into it enough for the engaging part of the game to take any affect. I don’t remember doing it, but I must have shut it and the music off at some point.

This is where is gets hazy. See, I know I was awake, because several identifiable events happened in the time period that I can remember, if hazily. The idea of it, though, is that I was too tired to function. Luckily, I did function just enough to maintain the nap schedule. However, the times in between can hardly be called being awake- so I’m worried about how this will affect me.

I’m not really sure what happened from then on until 09:00, when my 08:30 nap finished up (see Notes). Then I became conscious, if not very. I started trying to get things done not for the sake of getting things done but just so I might stay awake.

It didn’t work very well, but I guess it did eventually work. It’s weird, though; there’s an entire section of my life that has just essentially disappeared due to sleep loss… I suppose that isn’t very different from the time monophasers lose sleeping, though. (… It’s still unsettling.) Fun fact: Did you know that every four days, I gain at least a full day on y’all? And this is with the generous estimate of three hours of sleep a day for me; I’m normally getting even less. Or should I say I’m getting more awake time?

Anyway, things proceeded normally. Normally referring to how this morning went; sleepily and barely remembering things. Luckily, it got better as time goes on, and I got more and more alert, not to mention cognisant.

My nap at noon was good; I awoke in time and managed it well, and when I did, I felt refreshed. Zoom out a bit to the big picture- from what little data I have right now, it appears that my day ends around four in the morning and starts between eight and twelve noon. I still have to work on that, but I think diligence is my only option.

Notes: The reason the times might seem messed up is that back when I thought it would help, I set my alarms at one, five, and nine – a full hour after I actually went to sleep. Luckily, I started going to bed late right around the time that I figured out that hourlong naps would not help me, only mess up my schedule- so now I have alarms set for slightly before twelve, four, and eight to tell me to go to sleep, and I make it into bed at roughly twelve thirty, four thirty, and eight thirty. I will have to change this if I intend to make the schedule work for school- but all I’ll have to do is move it back to what I intended, or possibly a few minutes earlier.

I guess that’s it for now. I just wanted to give you all a small update and see how that worked instead of the bigger ones.

Uberman Log, Day Seven

Right, well, I’m doing this at the very end of today, so who knows how my memory is going to be. I think I might do alright, though.

37. Nap one: 6/10. My plan worked perfectly. Of course, you probably don’t know about my plan. Let me take a minute to explain. Here, I’ll blockquote it to separate it from the rest of the stuff.

So, as you all very obviously know by now (or so say the thirty-five comments and one hundred eighty-eight views in a day), I was having quite a bit of trouble waking up from the first nap of the day at 04:00. (Quick review: I think this is because my schedule changed to be something closer to the Everyman.)

This problem has now been solved, proof pending (in approximately two hours at the writing of these words, 02:02 28/7/10). I used the Alarm Clock program I downloaded to set alarms at 05:00 – when I’m supposed to get up – 05:05, 05:10, 05:15, and so on, up to around 05:30. It might seem overkill, but I want to annoy the heck out of my subconscious. Also, preparing for the possibility that I might just yank the speaker cord, I turned the volume all the way up on my laptop before I plugged the speakers in (it retains two volumes, one being with the sound output jack used, the other without).

So far, this seems to have worked- I’ve been getting up successfully. Or is it just that I’ve gotten up successfully once? To be honest, I’m not really sure; but then again this entire process is all about problem-solving by trial and error. If I mess up again, I’ll deal with it and adjust the alarm so that whatever happened won’t happen again. (If I do say so myself, though, the system looks pretty foolproof so far. Famous last words, I know, but it does.)

Cycle one: 3/10. Mostly because of the fact that it was just spent catching up on communication and waiting for the next nap, which I thought would wake me up more. (I’m trying to keep these short. Like I said, you really don’t need to and likely don’t want to know the myriad details of my life.)

38. Nap two: 4/10. Okay in terms of both sleep and waking up, but it didn’t get me as alert as I’d counted on it doing in the last cycle. Disappointing.

Cycle two: 4/10. A little better than the last- like I said, slightly more alert, but not as alert as I’d thought I would be. The disappointment carried through and I spent much of this just waiting for the next nap, too. (Still keepin’ it short.)

39. Nap three: 7/10. Finally woke up like I wanted to. Energised and ready, hooray!

Cycle three: 6/10. I don’t remember that much of it, but it was enjoyable. Unexpectedly went into Juliet‘s radio station. That was fun, but made for the next number you’ll see. Other than forty. That’s not the right number. … I’ll just be quiet now. (Short.)

40. Nap four: 0 or 10/10, depending on how you view things. -frowns- Anyway, it didn’t exist. So nevermind.

Cycle four: 8/10. Slightly loopy from the sleep deprivation… It got progressively worse as time went on, but ‘worse’ just meant that near the end my eyes would start closing by themselves very gently. This is so high-rated because for one, I had an awesome conversation with Juliet in the car on the way home about relationships and crushes and people and psychology and such, and for two, I survived, and did it quite well, too, if I do say so myself. I’m going to go ahead and make this less short just so I can point out the fact that

Missing the nap wasn’t as horribly bad as other people have predicted it would be. I’ve heard horror story after horror story in my research about how you absolutely CANNOT skip naps, or – even more dire and with greater consequences – you can’t move them either, AHHH! But really, the only thing I felt as I headed further into skipping-land was a kind of gentle pressure, as if from my conscience.

‘Go take a nap now…’
‘No, I can’t…’
‘Well, you should…’
‘I know, I’m sorry; I chose social life over sleep…’
‘… Well, as long as you know you made the wrong decision…’

It was exceedingly gentle and actually very pleasant. I would do it again at some point, if it weren’t for the fact that I know skipping is bad, and I believe I’m suffering now for it. It’s a possibility for the reason, anyway.

41. Nap five: 7/10. I will admit- I may have started groaning in pleasure as I melted into my bed. I imagine that’s how my next nap (the first nap of tomorrow) is going to feel, too; I’m sort of physically tired as well as the normal weariness. Perhaps an effect of skipping the nap? Anyway, I slept like someone had given me a tranquiliser and got up like someone was frying bacon. A little eye-rubbing, but I felt fine and still do right now. Quality.

Cycle five: 5/10. When I woke up, I was pretty disoriented- I was waking up at the right time, but I’d been sleeping for about an hour, instead of my normal thirty minutes or less. The feeling I got here was also very gentle, but funny in a different way; almost scary, to tell the truth. Pushing in the back of my mind to get free was the suspicion that I had accidentally slept an entire twenty-four hours to get up at this time. The feeling that I had slept a monstrous amount of time always comes after these naps, but it seemed somewhere near exponentially proportionate with the time of my nap.

42. Nap six: 5/10. Went well, as naps go- I got sleep, I woke up. The cool thing was that I woke up trying to turn off my alarm. That is, I got down to my computer and likely would have dealt with things then ascended to my loft again, but the confusion of how to turn it off (and multiple alarms suddenly ringing as a backup; I’m glad I thought of that) woke me up enough to get me to stay.

Cycle six: 7/10. Again, really hungry about now… Early in the cycle, I had some chicken salad from Powers (owned and operated by my aunt, while Pangaea just across the street is by my uncle) and a few chips. Late in the cycle, I remembered just how much I’d missed Anna, who stayed up with me all the way to my 04:30 nap.

Notes: Someone put this exactly the way I’ve been thinking:

The fact that I will now have almost contiguous hours to fill is starting to form meaning in my head, and it’s daunting. It’s an entire change of my view of the world and time and schedules—for example, no longer will I shower when I awake; instead I will shower when I am dirty. No longer will I give up on a problem for the night, to return to it tomorrow; instead I will move on to a different problem and tackle the challenging one when a solution presents itself more clearly. No longer will I care about whether some event is “early in the morning”; instead I will care if that event interrupts my microsleep schedule.

He’s got a point, and a very good one at that. Another great quote:

Time is meaningless to me now. Imagine I were to tell you that the temperature is 226K. You might know that this is the temperature measured in kelvins, and given some time you will be able to work out how to convert it to a unit you understand, but as-is it’s meaningless to you (in general). That’s how I feel now when someone tells me that it’s noon on Thursday; I can count the phases and map my to-do list onto the world’s calendar and eventually come up with what it means for it to be noon on Thursday, but it has lost all intrinsic value.

Sorry this is late, y’all! For some reason I didn’t finish it last night like I said I would. Or rather, I all but finished it and forgot to post it – it was finished, it just would have taken a minute or two of fine-tuning to be ready to post, and I just didn’t do that. But nevermind that; it’s here now.

Uberman Update Three

So, uhh, you don’t get logs for today, because I didn’t do them. Not proper ones. I’ll tell you what happened, though.

My first nap didn’t go so well. I’m not sure what time I got up (though I am sure that it was well after five, when my alarm is set) because as soon as I was up I was down, in a sense. Down out of the loft, down sitting in my chair, and down mentally. Really down. It must have been somewhere around seven, though, because I went down for another nap fairly soon after.

A note on nap one- I think I have to sleep on the floor. So far, that’s the only way I’ve been able to get up… Right next to the speakers that sound the waking call. I’m working on finding a way of maybe getting a speaker in my loft that I can put there just temporarily… I can’t figure myself out, though; if it’s the proximity that wakes me up, shouldn’t I wake up when I go down the ladder and turn the alarm off while completely asleep? I’m just as close… No, even closer to the speakers when I’m down there.

Anyway.

I was a little more conscious after the 08:00 nap… Not fully awake, though. Since I’ve been messing with my system period, and since I think my body still thinks it’s sort of on the Everyman (what with the accidental addition of a ‘core nap’ around four for three out of four nights), my awareness has shifted. Normally I would be awake and alert during the day (and out at night, obviously). Perhaps overclocked a bit, given that I’ve taken to staying up to the first few wee hours and sleeping until ten or so, lately. However, with the Everyman deception, as I will creatively name it, I’ve started being fully awake all the way from between 08:00 and 10:00 up until at least 02:00, if not further. I generally start to conk out around 03:30, which is bad, considering I’m trying to stray away from the Everyman. Not that it’s necessarily bad per se, but it’s not what I’m aiming for.

Leaving that thought process, though… Overall, today was not a bad day. Even though I overslept again, for some reason I’m not really mad at myself. I have been making progress in other areas, which may be the reason. Like I said, I know I’ve been getting REM because of the dreams. I don’t know that I could say exactly what I’ve been dreaming – I very rarely can – but I know the dreams are happening, and that’s something, at least. Another sleep-related thing- there have been more time effects. When I go down for a nap, even though it’s been only a half hour or forty minutes since I last saw the world, it feels as if it’s been many, many hours. This could be because of the expectations my body has been trained to have about the length of a day and its composition – that is, if there is a period of time in which I sleep for a time and am awake for a time, that’s a day, and I expect to have slept for eight hours or so and to have been awake for sixteen. Perhaps the effect is because while I’m fully mentally active during the awake parts of these little four-hour cycles and can disregard my body’s preference for a double-digit-hour day, I’m not conscious during the sleeping parts, and as such my judgement is overridden by habit. Surprisingly, the shorter the time that I’ve slept, the longer it seems to have been… For example, when my naps get cut down to twenty-five minutes (for whatever reason), I feel as if I’ve been sleeping a lot longer than after a half-hour nap. This is true down to five minutes, even- if I fall partially asleep and then am awoken (luckily this isn’t happening anymore, but when I was taking hourlong naps and having trouble with it, it did) after about, say, ten minutes, it feels like a whole half day has passed. It’s rather disorienting to see sunshine when you don’t expect it…

So far, I haven’t seen much in the way of mental acuity being heightened or increases in energy. It’s more like I’ve heard Bucky Fuller says – I have two energy tanks, and I used to regularly deplete both, whereas now I just empty and refill the first. There’s not much in the way of science in that statement, but it seems to have been working just the way that it suggests it would, so I’m happy.

However. I did catch a whiff of what I’ve heard whisperings of- that heightened sense of time and space and self due to all the REM. People have talked about feeling the world ‘slow down’… And not only in a general way because of the number of hours in the day being augmented, but even down to specific situations like catching a ball. (Supposedly the ball would seem to slow in the air, allowing one to catch it more easily.) I know it seems hokey, but bear with me; walking out of Leddy tonight I felt for a great deal of the time it took to traverse the walkway that everything had been tweaked somehow. A jogger crossed my path, and it was like I could suddenly watch her and watch everything else simultaneously and do it well– I saw her muscles moving and arms pumping and chest heaving but I also checked for our license plate on all the cars that were likely to be my ride, and saw my mother waiting in the car after I identified the right one, and heard the wind rustling the leaves in all the trees around me, and let two bikers go by me with a polite ‘Excuse me,’ and saw somebody coming up the path behind me… All within a few seconds. I haven’t had the experience since. It’s a sort of clarity that came in sharp contrast with the fact that I dearly need new glasses; almost as if I had replaced them and could see 20-20 again.

Other than that, though, and various little quirks that I’ve been meaning to jot down (never got around to it, sadly), this Uberman think is actually becoming pretty normal.

Uberman Log, Day Four

19. Nap one: 5/10. Similar to the previous day’s 04:00 nap – it went pretty well, as sleep goes, but getting up I felt like someone had run me over.

Cycle one: 3/10. If I remember correctly, I also extended the last nap time a bit, which means this was shorter- though that was a gift, considering how I felt. I didn’t go for a run, and I didn’t shower, and I didn’t eat anything, even though after a skipped wee-hour meal (though I’ve had two meals today and not lost that feeling)I was ravenous… I just basically waited until eight when I could finally sleep again. It sure paid off, nap-wise.

20. Nap two: 6/10. I went back to sleep and went down like a rock. The only problem being getting up again.

Cycle two: 6/10. First thing I did was take a shower, where I promptly fell ‘asleep’ against the porcelain-like material. Which was planned; I knew I wouldn’t be able to properly sleep, and as such the shower would provide an acclimation period. When I finally got out (a half hour later; my showers that have seemed extraordinarily long of late have actually been around a half hour each time), my body was all confused- it wanted substantial food, yet I was awake at 09:00… I appeased the rumbling mass somewhere in the lower end of my torso by microwaving spaghetti and sauce and meatballs, damnit. It didn’t taste particularly good (even the meatballs, which was surprising), but it was filling and full of carbohydrates just as much as the faux-milkshake I made myself. (I’ve been doing a few low-key long-term experiments, and I’m almost certain that I run primarily on carbs… Carbohydrate loading for me is so not the same as it is for other people. Metabolism, I choose you!)

21. Nap three: 5/10. Both the shortest and the easiest to wake up from, which believe me are not as related as that fragment might lead you to believe. Important things to say, let’s see… Ooh. I forgot to say this, but during one of the two previous naps, at 04:00 or 08:00, I am absolutely sure I was in REM the entire time- because as soon as I fell asleep I was dreaming, and I was woken during the dream, or rather as it ended. This is very satisfying; it shows true, concrete progress.

Cycle three: 6/10. Felt much better and indeed did not fall asleep. I cleaned the shower because it was getting gunky (Aidan uses way too much conditioner). I think I might use it after the next cycle… Or maybe I’ll go for a run and then use it. Yeah. I like that idea. Anyway, I didn’t do much more.

22. Nap four: 5/10. Got to my nap late, due to an excess in gaming. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, and I’ve since started to follow that model. It gives me more time to wind down after my alarm goes off telling me to start calming down, and it also cuts down on my naps, which are currently set at an hour. I think that’s too much, given the amount of success I’ve been having lately. Anyway, my grandparents showed up right before, which delayed it even further. No worries, though; when I got up I was fairly chipper. I ate dinner. Leftover shish kebab material.

Cycle four: 6/10. I hesitate to give such a high rating… I did nothing, and it’s starting to really get on my nerves. See notes. Overall, though, I fought off SD (or rather, did not have to as much).

23. Nap five: 8/10. I ran a little experiment with a few different variables… Sort of just testing the waters. First, I purposefully waited to start my nap a full half hour, the entire time intending to stay awake and not calm down in preparation. Second, I did not set my alarm for some other time; it remained as was, which meant that I went to bed at 20:30 and woke up at 21:00. All told this was my best nap yet. I pushed myself and tried some new things and I succeeded at those new things. It was also closer to the twenty- to thirty-minute nap guideline of the Uberman.

Cycle five: 5/10. Wound myself down a bit and relaxed… Tonight was sort of a bad night socially; everyone was just feeling blue. Not to mention the fact that Aly really needs to get better, please… I wasn’t quite as bad as everyone else, so it really was a bit of a downer- especially when practically everyone promptly left. No matter, though. I ended up getting bored and watching the first twelve minutes of the fifth Harry Potter (for the second time). (Anna, Phia and you and I and Ross and Callan and Victoria and HPA people why didn’t I just say that in the first place should get together again.)

18. Nap six: 6/10. Waking up may have been tough, but, see, I can’t remember falling asleep. And that’s very good. It means I did it and did it properly.

Cycle six: 6/10. When I got down from the loft, my mind was not at all clear… No amount of head-shaking would put it right, so I jumped in the shower. I needed one anyway. Once I was out I warmed up a plate of some pesto pasta (that’s actually the exact same type of pasta I had, although the dish was different because there were no mushrooms or peas or anything, just the pasta and pesto themselves) and sat myself down to finish the movie (for the first time). It was pretty good, and I have to admit that they did a good job of making from what in my opinion was the most boring book a very likable movie. Harry and Cho are such awkward kissers, though. I do so very much enjoy Harry and Ginny as a couple, too; there’s just something fitting about it. Or multiple things.

Notes: So, I definitely need a project. (Later: or a group of small activities that are organised similarly to a project, but that’s a mouthful.) DEFINITELY. I’ve been wasting all my time doing absolutely nothing productive- on the monophasic schedule, I had all the time in the world (okay, about fifteen or sixteen hours or so) in a single block to plan what I’d like to do. On this schedule I have to re-plan every four hours… And I’m not good at that, apparently. The idea is really more to keep me from beating myself up over wasting time than to keep me awake. (I think I might actually try to go back and edit my NaNoWriMo novel.)

Starting from the next nap on, I will write some goals I want to accomplish on my white board as soon as I wake up. After I’ve metaphorically vomited my wishes all over the board, I will look at them and attempt to complete… A lot of them. I will also try to think of things more in terms of days instead of cycles. As hard as that will be and as ephemeral as it is to exist in four-hour segments, it’s sort of a necessary precaution so I’ll be more productive. I do still retain at least a little bit of the monophasic mindset, even if I’ve screwed the sleep patterns all to heck, in that when I wake up at four thirty, I feel like I’m just starting the day. (Which I am – nap one.) I’ll use the cycle immediately after (as much as possible) to run daily as often as I can, shower daily as often as I can, and plan daily no matter what.

Phew. Resolutions make me tired. Wink. Wink.

Uberman Log, Day Three

13. Nap one: 4/10. Went surprisingly well. If you’ve seen the last post, you know how it went- the only reason the rating is so low, really, is that I did feel really horrible waking up from it.

Cycle one: 5/10. This was cut short by the fact that I extended my nap, which I don’t feel guilty about having done; I needed the sleep and I needed more of it than I was likely to get within a half-hour period. All in all, this cycle wasn’t bad. Though I hadn’t had breakfast or any nourishment, I went out for a run in the last hour, which made me feel horrible and bottomless-pit-like. I’m sure when I go for breakfast- lunch- when I go for food, I’m going to really EAT. Anyway, when I got back, I did some yoga and let the dogs out and then made my way to bed just about right on time.

14. Nap two: 5/10. I really feel bad about rating a nap like that so low. I fell asleep really well, even with two fans running (one to cool down the room, and another I turned on eventually to more quickly cool down me). Waking up was tough, but luckily not for the reason I thought of just as I was drifting off (that the fans would block the noise)- it was just tough because it was waking up and my body didn’t like that.

Cycle two: 6/10. Except for when I was waking up. I’m sort of excited- if waking up is becoming the hardest part of all of this, I feel like I’m finally doing something right! Right? Sounds right to me, anyway…. Anyway. I had an egg salad sandwich and some spicy thai chips for lunch… Delicious. It burns my mouth. I don’t know if I’ve ever liked spicy food this much. Anyway, I barely got anything done. Cooled down my room a little more with the fan, but eventually turned it off. … You don’t really want to know the myriad details of my humdrum life, do you? Moving on. 😛

15. Nap three: 7/10. Midday and nap four have always been the worst times to sleep for me, but I’ll just leave it at this: I managed this one. I prepared and relaxed (and was still exhausted) and took my time and I slept. Satisfying.

Cycle three: 5/10. Oop ack. I feel guilty. I did nothing but talk to people, rewatch AVPS, eat lemon squares, and surf the web. Next cycle needs PRODUCTIVITY. … After a nap. … No, really. I’m going to go nap now and then be productive.

16. Nap four: 5/10. Receding into the depths of a ‘bad’ nap… Only because when I woke up and realised I had plenty of time left, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I dozed for a while, though, which is something I’ve been craving, so that’s good. I think it also might be positive that I woke up so… Solidly. We shall see.

Cycle four: 5/10. I broke the [admittedly very loose] rules and had a bratwurst… I think it was worth it, though; those things are delicious and I only just found that out. Plus also, it was covered with onions and peppers and I had a ton of sautéed zucchini on the side. Now I’m off to clean the bathroom, which is something productive. (See?)

17. Nap five: 6/10. It was okay in and of itself, but the fact that it was pushed back an hour made me feel really naughty. I turned off my alarm and forgot about the time afterward, and when I looked up, it was almost an hour past when I was supposed to have been sleeping. I tell myself this is a good thing, though, because I have sign language class on Sundays- at eight. Eight also being when I nap.

Cycle five: 5/10. Average. Pretty low-key. I didn’t do much. End of story.

18. Nap six: 2/10. Guh. No sleep. Waking wasn’t so hard, but only because of that. End of story. The next cycle had better be good to make up for this…

Cycle six: 6/10. I got ravenously hungry near the end… I think that that might become a regular thing, because it’s happened several nights in a row now. I had some fantastic egg salad last night. I think I might grab some fruit later. (This never happened, resulting in the hunger continuing to ravage my insides for the rest of the night. And most of the next day.)

More notes: As I’m starting to learn more about this, it’s making more and more logical sense; I can’t fall asleep properly in a half hour. Perhaps when I do get this working reliably, I can try shortening the time, but for now I’m going to need closer to fifty minutes. Twenty to wind down.

It might be interesting to know that when I was at my most sleep-deprived – right when I woke up from the second nap – I was also coldest. I’d assume this has something to do with the fact that I had two fans running (still have one going, actually), but I’ve also heard people say that their circulation goes to pieces when they’re sleep-deprived. Anyone think this is worth further investigation? It did take me a while to warm up, and I had to put on a hoodie, which is completely unheard-of for me.

Uberman Update Two

Alright, back on track!

I’m feeling pretty good right now, despite the fact that I feel completely and utterly like a puddle. An oily puddle. A gooey, oily puddle made of something that quite possibly was ooblek in a past life but no longer has any semblance of playfulness or innocence and instead takes on a sinister façade of indifference and malice to the- Ahem. Sorry.

I am actually feeling good right now. I do feel like a puddle – a really, really tired one at that – but mentally, I- Okay, I’m not getting anywhere with this. Mentally, I feel that way too.

Let’s just suffice to say I’m tired but happy BECAUSE I-can’t-believe-it’s-taken-this-long-to-get-here I just made it through my first true 04:00 nap. I consider this sort of a reboot to the whole Uberman project, especially considering how unstructured and truly naughty yesterday was. I’ll call this day three.

A few notes on the experience that I’ll get down now (while I still remember them you have NO IDEA how much sleep deprivation has been wreaking havoc with my memory):

As I mentioned in the note I left for my parents (acting essentially as a fourth backup alarm), I set three alarms, each more devious than the last. Like previously, I set my watch and threw it across the room without watching so I’d have to find it to turn it off. Then I set my second alarm for two minutes after that and placed that on my dresser (it’s too delicate to ‘hide’, if you can call what I was doing with the watch that). Then I set a third alarm for two minutes after that with a handy little [FREE] application called [unsurprisingly] Alarm Clock. It lets you play music as your alarm, plus also there’s another function that does something that I haven’t tried because honestly, if there are two options to wake up and one involves doing it to music, who cares what the other is? Especially when it’s the prelude to that cello suite (yes, it’s the one you think it is). Or Rainbow Stalin. Anyway, I locked my computer so that I would have to type my password to stop the alarm.

I had originally set all of them for five (and 05:02, and 05:04, pet the gicture?). But then I couldn’t sleep, so I reset them for five fifteen. But then I couldn’t sleep again, so I reset them for five fifty. Both the fact that I couldn’t sleep and the fact that I really couldn’t sleep surprised me… I would’ve thought that after what happened some cycles previously, I would be more tired than ever and easily able to fall asleep, but this wasn’t the case.

I’m boring you, though! Plus, I want to get out for a run and it’s already nearly seven. I need to be back for the next nap (because I need the next nap badly). So here’s the rest of the story, really fast: I fell asleep. Then I woke up.

No, but really, I woke up. Easily. The watch woke me. I shut it off. I went to the other alarm right as it rang. I shut that off. I forgot about the third and started using my computer. The third rang. I shut that one off. That reminded me of the note, and I went and got that from the top of the stairs, since I no longer had any need for it. I woke up. Dude. That worked out. Happy pandas.

Oh, and also, new words that suffer from sleep deprivation: across (malformed: accross) and sleep (malformed: seelp). Funnily enough.

Right! That’s it for now! Ta!

Uberman Update

I am positively insidious. I am evil and pernicious and devilishly, seductively subversive. I am working against myself, and I am not to be trusted.

That is to say, I messed up again. Or rather, my body messed up again.

I have two alarms- one set on my watch and the other on my iHome. The watch is effective because when I set it for the next time I’m to wake up, I hide it. The iHome is effective because I sleep in a loft, and it’s on the ground floor of my room. I figured I’d be safe.

Apparently, at around four thirty, I was so tired that my body actually found the watch from where I’d hidden it, turned that off, climbed down my ladder, turned the other alarm off, climbed back up the ladder, and promptly went back to sleep again. This happened again at around seven thirty, although admittedly my watch would have been easier to find, and my iHome wasn’t set. I am impressed with my own dexterity, but this is discouraging at the very least, and demoralising at its worst.

I need a more reliable way of waking up.

Uberman Log, Day Two

Note: May be confusing, ‘do’ to the fact that I wrote this in segments. Self-referential humour, whoo! (Points if you understand why I tacked that last sentence on.) (Extra points if you see the humour in that last one, too.) (Even more points-OKAY ANYWAY.)

7, 8. Naps one and two and cycle one: Yeah. You know how this went.

Cycle two: 5/10. Broke even with this. Even meaning halfway. Halfway meaning halfway decent. I didn’t run, didn’t shower, didn’t eat breakfast… I was just a little discouraged by the nap failure earlier. I was relatively awake, but still a little hung-over, if you will.

9. Nap three: 7/10. I think my best yet. I have this theory about sleep… I think maybe that it takes a bit to catch up to me. So all of that extra rest from the mistake is just coming now… Bam! Awake. Or awaker. In conjunction with that, the extra tiredness that I got from the mistake helped me fall right asleep, along with some meditation. (About which I was talking with Braeden. She’s a firm believer that it’ll get me closer to sleep and I have to agree with her. I only did it for two minutes, this time, and it was still easier than ever to slip into dreamland.)

Cycle three: 5/10. Got ready for things to be done. Had an egg salad sandwich and brushed my teeth. When I figured out that Juliet was stopping by with Alyson, I took a shower. They gave me lemon squares and a ring! I am a size six and a half, by the way, though it’s better to err on the side of caution and get a seven, I think. Edit: I vary between the two with definite reality; this morning my method of putting the ring on involved ice.

10. Nap four: 2/10. Horrible. I hardly slept. I’m starting to settle into the schedule, and I get the idea that the middle of the afternoon is not the best place to sleep no matter how much REM you’ve been getting. But we shall see. On the bright side, using my watch as an alarm is working. I just set it for a half hour and then toss it where I can’t see so I have to find it to stop it. Take that, magical turning-off-the-alarm-while-asleep skills.

Cycle three: 6/10. In terms of wakefulness. I gamed a little. Had dinner. Was unproductive. But that’s not necessarily a problem. Tomorrow, we shall see how things really go… If I don’t start getting stuff done then, we might have a problem.

11. Nap five: 5/10. Average. I didn’t really sleep, but I did drift off just at the end, which is becoming the norm. We shall see if this continues.

Cycle four: 6/10. I think the worst may be behind me? I did get that unplanned recharge time in the morning, but I still feel alert and fine, overall. I do feel the weariness setting in, though; we’ll see what happens after nap five…

12. Nap six: 1/10. I didn’t think things could get any worse, but they definitely did- I did not sleep. Period. I was so awake, in fact, that I got a song idea. Helpful, but not helpful (especially because I’ve since forgotten the idea). I welcome the sleep deprivation only with the knowledge that it will make me better at this faster.

Cycle six: 3/10. I’ll say this: I was awake. That’s essentially as far as my alertness goes, though. Around 02:00, I started researching a question that’s been bugging me with what few resources I had in my room: Does blood clot due to being exposed to oxygen, or some other factor? Needless to say, I didn’t get far, and the question remains unanswered. Funnily enough, though, I discovered something else- while medical texts are nearly impossible to read while listening to Nelly (as I found out a few cycles earlier via Hot In Herre (yes, that’s spelled correctly)), they’re actually quite good for reading while sleep-deprived. Perhaps my reading speed and comprehension are impaired, yes, but at least I don’t have any trouble with nodding off like a lot of people starting the Uberman have said they do. It might have something to do with the complexity of the text- keeps my brain on its toes.

A couple of overall notes: Social interaction seems about normal, though one continuing effect I’ve noticed is that I keep forgetting words or accidentally misusing homonyms. One recurring one is typing ‘do’ instead of ‘due’. Anyway, the true test of whether or not the worst is behind me will be what happens tonight, I think. Last night was when things really hit me. My brain is really still operating monophasically.

I’m writing this around three thirty, about half an hour before my next nap is scheduled. When it gets to be three forty-five, I’m going to reset my countdown alarm (which has helpfully been able to ring every four hours without resetting) back to 4:00 so that I can do this again for the next couple of cycles and tack fifteen minutes onto my sleep time. I seem to be having trouble actually falling asleep- I can’t actually say anything as to what’s going on in my brain when I do finally get to dreamland, but I’m just having so much trouble arriving that it seems like I’m not even adjusting; just harming myself.

Hopefully, fifteen minutes will act as a buffer: I know now that I can easily stay completely awake for a full half hour with my eyes closed, waiting for sleep- but can I do that for a full forty-five? Somehow I doubt it, especially given the way my eyes feel right now. I measure the depth of my folly in losing sleep by how horrible my eyes feel, and currently they are about five sixths of the way to apoplectically puffy and furious.

Also, did you know that if it weren’t for the process of cells selectively committing suicide, we wouldn’t have fingers or toes? That’s cool stuff, in my opinion.

… Also, did you know that I get really wordy and manic when I lose sleep?

Uberman Log, Day One

You’ll see soon why I’m posting now instead of at around six, which is when I’d planned on it.

(Things which may need explaining:

1. I’ve taken to calling the four-hour chunks of time cycles.
2. I use European time, or as close as I can get.
3. One noticeable effect of sleep deprivation seems to be that I’ll skip random words in sentences. (A question I asked Bee this morning that perhaps I should be asking myself: ‘Did sleep?’ This prompted a laughing fit which last for several minutes. Which is probably another sign.))

1. Nap one: 2/10. Disaster. The night previous, my last day of truly monophasic sleep, I’d stayed up late and slept until 13:00. The day previous, I did not rest at all and stayed awake from 13:00 all the way to 04:00. (Note: This was unplanned. My entry into the world of Uber was rather sudden and based on whim.) The plan went something like ‘I’ll be so tired I’ll just fall straight asleep!’ But it worked out to be something more like ‘I’ll be so buzzed I just lie in bed awake, even when I get pissed at myself and set my nap time to be an hour instead of thirty minutes!’ From 04:00 to 04:30, I sat excitedly in bed, slowly losing hope as time went on. From 04:30 to 05:00, I fumed in bed, slowly getting more dissatisfied as time went on. Luckily, I was able to drift off just slightly directly before my alarm went off. I’m only just barely conscious of time stopping its passing- or, rather, I can only just barely tell that I wasn’t conscious of time’s passing for a fraction of a minute before my alarm went off. Anyway, this means that I technically still haven’t pulled an all-nighter. 😛

Cycle one: 9/10. Pretty damn productive. I won’t be too boring and go through everything, but I watched the sun rise, went for a run, made breakfast for myself (eggs, garlic toast, leftover ambrosia salad with extra fruit (DELICIOUS I want this for breakfast EVERY day), orange juice, and an apple I saved to eat between cycles that for normal people traditionally have food in them), blogged, and talked to people. I just felt like I was flying forward in time and for once I could control the trip. I got the time-slowing-down feeling, even in a slight form, from the very first cycle. Also, I wasn’t yet tired enough to impede anything I tried to do. You watch, it kicks in.

2. Nap two: 4/10. I don’t remember it very well, but I do remember it was much the same as nap one. Fortunately at this point I really was tired enough to fall asleep fast- it’s just that for me, fast means in about twenty minutes instead of about thirty. (Note: I may change my nap time to forty-five minutes for a bit. I seem to have trouble actually falling asleep, and I don’t want this to mean that I’m getting close to ten minutes every four hours instead of twenty to thirty.)

Cycle two: 6/10. Again, barely any recollection. I should have done this during the day, when I remembered. I do remember that I tried to eat the apple and it was one of the disgusting ones. Productivity plummeted, but I think I started my Spanish homework. (The assignment that was due July tenth.) (… Don’t worry [too much], I finished it last night and sent it off this morning.) I probably played a lot of flash games, too… I seem to remember getting really good at the Space Game, Dolphin Olympics, and Gemcraft.

3. Nap three: Okay, honestly, I only remember that I fell asleep a little faster than before. This one was at noon.

Cycle three: … Same deal. Today I’m rating and commenting on things as they come, then blogging about them.

4. Nap four: 3/10. This was at 16:00, and I remember trying to get to sleep was pretty bad. I don’t sleep during the day, after a rule. Somehow, I’d forgotten that in the planning stages of this process.

Cycle four: 3/10 as well. I remember this being a time during which for whatever reason it was almost impossible to work. I’d told myself I would finish the essay this cycle. Then didn’t. I wasn’t too awake, either.

5. Nap five: 2/10. I didn’t get any sleep. I think the rest that I was getting all along was catching up with me, because…

Cycle five: 6/10. The most productive cycle since the first. Not that I actually got much done, it’s just that I felt fully alert and completely capable, as far as this project goes. I talked to people, which is something I always enjoy, edited some lyrics Juliet sent me for better songwriting, and caught up on things. I also tried meditating before the next nap, which seemed to help a bit.

6. Nap six: 4/10. The last nap of the bigger cycle that other people call a day. Went surprisingly well, after the 20:00 buzz cycle. Waking up was more difficult, though. This is where I started to think something was wrong with my alarm.

Cycle six: 7/10. This was another extremely productive time. I’m pretty sure my favourite cycles are going to be the ones from midnight to four and from four to eight. I finished that essay and scared Zach a little by talking way too fast at him for about three minutes, then signing off to go to sleep without warning. I also ate a banana earlier. Bananas are delicious, but I hate how the taste of them stays with me. Note: Eat bananas with other things to wash down the taste.

End of day one.

7. Nap (seven) one: 6/10, sleep-wise. Oops. Whoops, damnit all, and more oops, otherwise. I had moved my alarm up to my loft, because it was getting hard to hear, and I wanted to make sure I woke up. I also set it for 04:50, instead of 04:30. My little gift to myself, because I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep. Ironically to both of these points, I proceeded to wake up at 09:50. Apparently I can now turn off my alarm in my sleep. It’ll be going back down on the ground floor of my room.

And that’s as far as I am now- I’m on cycle one of today, cycle seven overall. As bad as the oversleeping is for my schedule, there are positive points to be taken from it. For one, when I woke up I felt horrible- and I’m not talking about beating myself up over not getting up, I mean that I physically felt terrible. I had a pounding headache, which I never get, I was stiff, and my eyes were disgustingly crusty. I take this to be a good thing because it means that when I’m off the normal schedule, my body rebels. Good for it. Shows character.

For two, I woke up at 09:50. That is POSITIVE. I slept for four hours, not ten. Get where I’m going with this? I also woke up naturally, without any outside help. Even if the last positive thing is dubious, I’m sure that this is a good sign. It means I’m getting better at the whole polyphasic deal.

As a side note, other people have reported that once they get this schedule rolling, they can take the training wheels off- that is, completely remove the alarm from the equation. I doubted I would be able to do this, but this is a new development… Maybe there’s hope?

Anyway, that’s the first day. I’ll be updating tomorrow with today’s news, or maybe tonight, if I get bored.