Polyphasic Sleep, Day 26 January 26, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [News], Movies, Sleep, Blogging , add a comment
26 days into it already? Not really, it feels more like 52 days. 
I’d like to share a dialogue from one of my all-time favourite movies, Adaptation. It’s a scene where John Laroche (Chris Cooper) sits in a car with Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) and explains about one of his passionate interests. In case you haven’t seen the movie yet, you’ll like it if you’re a lurking fan of my blog.
John Laroche: Look, I’ll tell you a story, all right? I once feel deeply, profoundly in love with tropical fish. Had 60 goddamn fish tanks in my house. I skin dived to find just the right ones. Then one morning, I woke up and said, “Fuck fish.” I renounce fish, I will never set foot in that ocean again. And there hasn’t been a time where I have stuck so much as a toe back in that ocean.
Susan Orlean: But why?
John Laroche: … Done with fish.
If you haven’t seen the movie, then this dialogue might sound a bit odd and you’re confused over what I’m getting at. I’m a person just like John Laroche that I’m so incredibly and entirely occupied and passionate about something for a certain amount of time and when the next object of interest comes along, the previous one is most often totally forgotten. I’ve always been this way. And like Laroche, I don’t really know why. I can’t say that I share the same coarse language or that I first renounce something before moving on to something new though as in the example above.
Ok, so what does this have to do with polyphasic sleep? The thing is that when I was two weeks into the system, I felt pretty accustomed or adapted to it. This turned out to be a false notion once I got obsessed with something else - in this case, optimizing, socializing, monetizing and promoting my blog, which has totally occupied my mind and time lately. I could bring up a list of excuses that indirectly caused me to slowly forget the lifestyle of a systematic polyphasic sleeper, like the fact that we’ve got blizzards, heaps of snow and -15 degree temperatures demotivating me from going on my 6-time per day outdoor exercises.
Another thing that forced me to dramatically alter my weekly schedule was my extensive to do list for January. There were loads of things that I had to do and I’m very satisfied with my results. There are only a few things left for me to do and I couldn’t have achieved it unless I put most of my mind’s focus on getting them done. Therefore, I wouldn’t classify my current situation as a failure in any way. Written lists of what I have to do and by when are overriding everything else and I intend to keep it that way. I’d still say that the main reason I’ve lost my polyphasic balance is how my mind prioritizes things.
For the last few days now I’ve been getting a core sleep between 4 am and 9 or 10 am. Then I’ve tried to take the usual naps, but those usually haven’t worked out because of the long core sleep. I’ve been so dreadfully tired at these times that I unconsciously stop the playback of my polynap audio files. Afterwards when I look at my player it shows that I didn’t stop it until far into the worst bagpipe sounds, very closely to that ultimate computer beep tone. *shivers* Go here if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Today I managed to get myself up at 4 am after my nap and it took an hour or two to snap out of what I could classify as level 3 on my 1 to 5 alertness scale.
So what’s next? I’m still going to bed as scheduled and constantly using my audio file to help wake me up. I’m pretty much done with how I visualized that this blog of mine would look and function so I might simply have to adjust my mind’s attention totally on polyphasic sleeping again. I don’t think I’ll be running my 20-minute route in the near future though, but I’ll just have to empower myself to at least take the 30-minute walks six times per day again no matter what the weather. Looking outside my window at the hostility of it, it’s actually sounding a bit challenging in a lunatic and desperate kind of way.
There’s another great quote I’d like to share from the movie that goes perfectly along with the previous comment above.
John Laroche: I’m probably the smartest person I know. 
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Polyphasic Sleep, Day 20 January 20, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [News], Sleep, Blogging , add a comment
The snow melted temporarily so I did some more running for a couple of days. I took the same run as previously but this time I broke into the 18-minute range. Contrary to earlier, I ran at 4 pm instead of 4 am. However, once night came along I started feeling really sleepy dreading that I would oversleep, and indeed I did. I’d call it somewhat of a complete crash because I slept for 5-6 hours straight.
Naturally, I couldn’t sleep well on the naps the following day and seeing as I felt normal on the physical level, I did the same run again at the same time. The next night I overslept again by 2-3 hours. So, now I’ve come to an intersection where I should either try to outlast and outperform my body’s need to recuperate from the physical activities while still sticking to the schedule and not oversleep or go back to walking and such. It’s not that I feel drowsy or sleepy overall from this change of rhythm, but I’ve felt more like a monophasic sleeper during these last days than a polyphasic sleeper.
Another common pattern in my behaviour is that once I get a new point of interest I’m bound to start slacking on the previous one. This time it’s my blog optimization and promotion that has taken my biggest interest. No harm in that I say, because it’s what I’ve planned to do. So, even though I’ve identified myself as being a polyphasic sleeper for a few weeks now, I’m still reminded to stay sharp and keeping at it to my best ability. Having a core sleep period every 24-hours just hasn’t and won’t be a part of my plan since I’ve only had dreams on those and none on my naps. It’s not a foolproof way to measure REM, but it’s the closest one I’ve got, and it’s sub-optimal to me.
On a side note, I’ve received 10 entries to the upcoming carnival, which is a very adequate rate and I’d like to give you some heads-up. The most common category has been Motivation & Productivity with already five submissions while Blog optimizing & monetizing, Health & Exercising plus Widgets & Software are blank. I’ve decided to keep the current category structure for at least the two first carnivals and depending on the feedback, make some alterations from there. It also looks like the amount of feed readers is on a healthy rise, so remember to subscribe through any of the links on the sidebar.
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