Monday, August 4, 2008

no turning back now

as soon as i started looking into polyphasic sleep, the floodgates were already blasted to pieces and the levees dissolved. extra time PLUS weird and generally positive psychological side effects? i think so. i think yes.

due to the latter, i was originally determined to go right for uberman. 20 minute naps at 2 6 10 14 18 and 22 oclock. however, i've encountered a minor but possibly deadly roadblock: my job. i think the job is everyone's roadblock. mine happens to have shifts of 4 hours, 4 - 20mins being the maximum amount of time between naps. from all the other polyphasic blogs i've stumbled across, it seems as though after the body has adjusted to the schedule one can afford to push a nap forward or back a little bit, but until that adjustment point STRICT ADHERENCE DOWN TO THE MINUTE seems to be crucial.

though most of my shifts fall into the same slot, there are times when it would fall across one of the nap times. this is the biggest issue. the second issue is that even if i limited my shifts to only one time slot, which i'd rather not do as i am in sort of in dire need of money and would be much better off with the flexibility to take on last minute shifts, which happens fairly often, there's an additional issue of my work not particularly having a place to sleep right before/after the shift, unless i sat on the toilet at the station for 20 minutes or slept on the train on the way home causing me to go past my stop and have to turn around and maybe miss the curfew (if you want to hear about these things, look at my other blog.). much of this stuff could end up being the end of me even if my body was all nice and adjusted.

so i've decided to amend my plans in favor of the more flexible and attainable "everyman" schedule (approximately: 3 hour core sleep + 3ish naps which can be shifted around a bit without too much trouble). but! as much as possible i will try to place the naps into the same slots as i'd need to be taking them on uberman, with the core sleep in between two uberman nap points. by doing this i hope to acclimate my body to naps at those times, so that maybe it wouldn't be so farfetched to transition into uberman. i would still like to shoot for the uberman moon with this thing, but i suppose i've let go and resigned myself to the idea that maybe it won't work out this time around. but really my main incentive for looking into this was to have more tiiiime, so everyman should be just fine.

by the way my discovery of the polyphasic subculture occurred as a result of a brief internet search on how to survive on less sleep, which im surprised i had never done before as it's always been a fantasy of mine. but this time i was inspired by a sort of freak occurance, wherein after two final-exam-related nights of 4-ish-hours sleep, i felt absolutely the most energy i've ever felt in my life. it was incredible, i felt like there must have been speed sprinkled into all my meals while i was blinking. i tend NOT to be a highly energetic person, so feeling like i had consumed 4500 cups of coffee and feeling the unexplainable urge to move at 34million miles per hour when there wasn't anything to be particularly excited about was really something else.

over the past few weeks i'd been casually playing around with taking daytime naps and sleeping in varying amounts of less. i was waiting for my schedule to clear out, which it now has so i thought i'd officially start last night but i completely failed. was not adamant about leaping right out of bed after the 3 hour core, and fell back asleep, also causing me to miss breakfast. angry at myself. but at least it was just a matter of me being stupid and not the inability to hear the alarm or anything like that. sooooo lesson learned which shouldn't have needed to be learned, as it's extremely obvious. in my defense though, i only slept in for exactly another 3 hours, which gives me hope that my body is already giving me the go ahead.

as i'm going on a trip with my coworkers tomorrow, i guess i'll again postpone my official beginning until tomorrow night when i get home, though as it's already becoming normal and nice i'll still probably have a nap or two today and 6 or less hours of sleep tonight.

(edit: i did end up taking a 20 minute nap around 2pm and 6:30pm, and had myself a nice little lucid dream during the former. as i wasn't tired at all at 10pm i didn't take a nap, though i'm disrupting the schedule a bit. i think i'll maybe take one in a second at 11pm or maybe 12am, and then sleep the 3-6 core as i'd attempted yesterday. if i can manage to sleep in the car on the way to my coworker day tomorrow, perhaps not taking one until i get home at 10 or 11 or so won't be too much of an issue in the longrun. so i guess for now i'll continue to call this day one, though this may change if tomorrow falls apart.)

oh yeah and the title of this blog, "okippa," is slangy japanese for something like "still awake" with a nuance of "really should not still be awake."

No comments: