Fell off the face of the planet

Well, if anyone was keeping up...
As you can see.. I disappeared for a bit.

Actually, I tried it for a bit longer, but
got bored with posting the same stuff each time,
so thought I'd post less often. However, I only
worked at this for another 2-3 days and then
decided to quit.

A few factors came in to play.
1) I realized that even though my time is very
flexible working from home mostly, that I
really did LIKE the flexibility. Which meant
that having to work around so many naps was
a bit of a chore. And then several spontaneous
plans/invites came up, which were hard to work
around.
2) I don't get sick very often at all, but every
couple of years when I do... I'm told to take
lots of vitamin C and get plenty of sleep.
That type of sleep needed is not REM, but rather
the "other" types that obviously have a lot to
do with healing and recovery and our immune system.
Since little long term research has been done on
how cutting out those other phases of sleep are
going to affect us over the long term, I started
to think this might not be such a great idea.
3) Even though I had not gotten to many days of this
under my belt, I was not seeing some of the MAIN
advantages I wanted to see... the remembering of
my dreams, and lucid dreaming.

When added all up.. I was starting to come up with a
lot of negatives, and not seeing any of the positives.
I've decided to try something else that was suggested
which is to set my alarm for 5 hours from whenever
I go to sleep for the night.

I also might consider making an adjustment so that I
take a single nap somewhere around 2-4pm... Many other
countries call this a "siesta" and is part of their
regular daily cycle.... fitting it properly in to
their normal workday.

Day 5 (cycle #0025 - #????)

01:00 - Start cycle #0025 (lay down for nap)
01:20 - Wake up with phone alarm.
Food: juice/water


03:00 - Start cycle #0026 (down for nap)
03:20 - Wake up with phone alarm.
Food: potato, water/juice, grapes

05:00 - Start cycle #0027 (down for nap)
05:20 - Don't think I fell asleep, so wanted to try again
05:45 - Didn't fall asleep again! - let's try again
06:10 - Just didn't get out of bed. Hmm
08:07 - Got up on my own
Food: cucumber, water/juice

10:00 - Start cycle #0028 (nap)
10:25 - Wake up (phone alarm)
Food: vitamins, juice, cottage cheese/protien/banana

cycle #0025 (Day 4- 23:00)

Sleep/Wake: 20 min nap went just fine. had dream.

I think I'm going to start putting all cycles for a day in a single post now that I'm doing them so often. I seem to be writing less about it.

cycle #0024 (Day 4- 18:00)

Sleep/Wake: set alarm for 20 min again as I laid down. I might have drifted off.. it's hard to tell if I really fall asleep or not. However, I feel fairly tired right now... good thing I'm gonna get another nap in 2 hours

Activities:

shelves

Email/networking

Pandora.com

cycle #0023 (Day 4- 16:00)

Sleep/Wake: I might have dozed off during this cycle's nap.

Activities:

cleaning off living room shelves

cycle #0022 (Day 4- 14:00)

Sleep/Wake: don't think I fell asleep in the 20 min alloted time, but do feel rested.

Activities:

Finished watching "Dracula"

Chatting/Email friends

Handled some biz email, prepare/sent invoice, etc

cycle #0021 (Day 4- 11:00)

Sleep/Wake: think I made it to sleep near the end of my 20 min allotment.

Food: 3 soft tacos (ground beef, cheese, potato, onion, beans, sour cream, lettuce) yum!

Activities:

Off to lunch at Granddads with Father and Sister

cycle #0020 (Day 4- 09:00)

Sleep/Wake: Hmmm.. no good! I remember waking up at 4:30, but not making myself get out of bed... of course, you know the rest. :( Woke up on my own a bit after 9am. That's a pretty long sleep period. At dinner last night Wayne made the comment a doctor had told him to set his alarm for 5 hours from when he went to bed. Actually, I'd PREFER to spend 5 hours asleep at one time, than to spend 3 hours asleep spread out over 6 times a day. Maybe I'll try that if I can't get my body through this adjustment. I think I'm going to try to give my body even MORE chances to get it's required REM in quick naps... this means temporarily trying 2 hour cycles all day until it locks in.

Food:

Activities:

Watch more "Dracula"

Adding music to my Pandora playlist (this IS included in my regular sites), email with friends

cycle #0019 (Day 4- 02:00)

Sleep/Wake: not much problem getting up, but felt tired. Don't remember anything about my dream.

Activities:

Started watching "Dracula"

UPDATE (03:50): Going to make this another 2hr cycle. g'night

cycle #0018 (Day 4- 00:00)

Sleep/Wake: phone alarm woke me up. I don't remember what I dreamt.

Food: juice, prunes

Activities:

Chatting w/friends, caught up on past email that required extra attention, regular sites, etc

cycle #0017 (Day 3- 22:00)

Sleep/Wake: woke up via phone alarm. Not sure about dreams, but I feel fairly well rested

Food: finished the salad I threw together from earlier.

Activities:

Chatted with friends, read news, socializing, regular sites.

Creativity: One thing I've heard from others is a heightend creative ability. While I admit I have not tried any of my creative hobbies, I don't feel any special abilities at this time. of course, I'm still in day 3!

UPDATE (23:50) Well, think I'll take an early nap since it's been 2 hours. I think the is the minimum time I'd want to allow between naps, but hopefully this will help to make sure I'm getting a bit more REM more often during this phase.

cycle #0016 (Day 3- 16:00)

Sleep/Wake: woke up a few min early on my own. had dream, but don't remeber it.

Food: (17:30) a bunch of various things from Ryan's Buffet. various veggies, meatloaf, turkey, etc.

Activities:

Wayne is picking me up for a Ruby on Rails meeting. Must shower, more typing soon.. this will be very interesting, since we are going to try to do dinner first, and the meeting starts at 7pm (which is my next nap time), so I'll be pretty late for it... maybe I'll try to nap from 6:40-7, and turn the blessings of polynaps short sleep requirements in to my advantage rather than disadvantage :)

UPDATE (21:29) Didn't end up napping around 7pm, so going to do it now. Don't feel too overly tired, but could use sleep.
back at 22:00

cycle #0015 (Day 3- 13:00)

Wake/Sleep: Took at least 15 min to get to sleep; probably due to the extended sleep I had earlier. Started using phone alarm as my first alarm, to see if that will be able to do it when/if I'm away from home; had no problem. I know I dreamt, but don't remember it.

Food: couple spoonfuls of kidney beans, BIG salad (spinach, mixed nuts, celery, carrots, cucumber, a few bites of left over steak and sauted onions. YUM!

Activities:

socializing (online)

took care of some biz stuff

UPDATE (15:55) Gonna try 25 min nap and see what that does. I hope it doesn't take to long to fall asleep.. hmm

cycle #0014 (Day 3- 10:00)

Sleep/Wake: You might notice the extra time jump from last cycle. I let my body catch up on sleep and wake up normally. Some people regularly implement a few hours of "Core Sleep" in their plan. I have not done that up until now, and would prefer not to, but I'm not totally opposed to the idea if it turns out there are sleep benifits or it's just something my body is going to require. However, I think I'd like to limit them to about 90 minutes if possible and see if it means I can cut out some of the daily naps. I'm going to continue to try and do without. We'll see.

Exercise: My calves are getting a little sore from doing 100 jumping jacks every 4 hours. Not something I'm use to, and possibly not getting enough protien. Maybe I'll try to limit exercise to night time cycles since it DOES help in getting/keeping me awake.

Food: (10:30) half container cottage cheese with added protien power.

Activities:

Biz email, invoices, follow-ups, etc

Personal/social email, regular sites, etc.

cycle #0013 (Day 3- 04:00)

intro: Yes. I'm here, but sitting to write anything would be bad right now - more soon.

UPDATE (10:02): Well, as you might be able to tell with the LONG pause in writing, "something happened". I woke up at 04:30 as planned and stayed up for an hour. During which time I constantly stayed moving.... walking around the house. I was SO tired I'd stagger slightly, perhaps bump in to a wall every now and then. My eyes were trying to shut so badly that it was almost impossible for me to keep them open even while walking! I tried playing Frozen Bubble to get my mind occupied with something else, but after a few minutes I found myself trying to doze off again. I found myself trying to justify and rationalize various reasons to go to sleep. Finally, I decided it had been an hour, and so if my body wanted sleep THAT bad, then perhaps I should give it a 30 minute chance to get REM, so I did (05:30-06:00). The alarm went off, but I was still dead tired, so I "let's let the body catch up with what it needs and continue from there". This lead to sleeping until 08:57, but I laid in bed a few minutes trying to plan things out, which led to another doze off and waking up at 09:55.

I don't really see this as a set back. The way I look at it, is that because I had originally (Saturday night / Sunday morning) only gotten 3 hours sleep, which was suppose to be my last full night (and didn't get it), then I started off at a deficit, and so Sunday's / Monday's naps were trying to catch up on lost REM rather than "get ahead". NOW, after sleeping until my body feels fully rested and woke up on it's own, I'm going to assume it's where it should be, and so today's naps will be extra REM... hopefully to stockpile and be ahead of tonight's requirements.

cycle #0012 (Day 3- 01:00)

Sleep/Wake: Ugh.. tough to get myself out of bed. Alarm woke me up without problems, except my thought was to hit the snooze. I ended up laying in bed another 5 minutes which was dangerous. There's no reason for this. Just GET UP! I know I dreamt, but don't remember anything about it.

Exercise: I knew I NEEDED this quick to get my heart rate up and get me out of that "want more sleep" state... finally got up and did it.

Food: I knew I also needed THIS quick... to give my stomach something to do, and give me an energy boost. (01:45) juice, grapes, mixed nuts, 12 grain bread, Optimum Zen cereal (dry)

Activities:

organizing living room shelves (I need something active.. not sitting)

UPDATE (03:50): I feel very tired, the last hour has not been very productive and I found myself moving slower and spending a lot of time just looking around not being sure where I wanted to put stuff. I am pretty sure the next cycle (4am) is going to be even worse -- getting up and being drawn back to bed.

cycle #0011 (Day 2- 22:00)

Sleep/Wake: alarm woke me up, no problems. I do remember I had a dream, but don't remember enough about it to describe it. This is a bummer, since remembering my dreams and lucid dreams were two things I was really looking forward to with this! Once 1 or 2 days go by I think I'm going to adjust the sleep time and see if that helps.

Exercise: same as normal

Food: (23:00) juice, a couple grapes, baby carrots, prunes

Activities:

Socializing with friends

Too much lounging around, listening to Coast To Coast, being lazy... this is only making me more tired :( STOP IT!

cycle #0010 (Day 2- 19:00)

Sleep/Wake: alarm woke me up. Don't remember any dreams, maybe just that I remember "something" ? Maybe I should shorten the nap length? I feel rested, but still could use more sleep.

Exercise: as usual

Food: (19:40) half can of black beans, juice. (21:15) baked potato with jalapenos! =)

Activities:

More cleaning (you might get the idea the place was a mess)

took/posted some pictures

baked some potatoes :)~

UPDATE (21:45): I expect the night time to be harder on me, so I'm going to do 3 hour cycles in hopes to get a bit more REM, since I'm still in the adjustment phase. See you at 22:30 !

cycle #0009 (Day 2- 15:00)

Sleep/Wake: Alarm woke me up, no problems. Don't remember any dreams, but think I probably did. I feel pretty refreshed. The eyes are feeling a little less tired, but I can tell my body still would prefer more sleep.

Exercise: same as usual.

Food: (15:55) fruit juice, half can of kidney beans, small slice of left over quesadilla from the weekend, a few baby carrots and a couple grapes. -- Later some mixed nuts, grapes, carrots, juice

Activities:

Hanging new fabric over shelves in living room.

Email, visit regular sites

UPDATE (17:31): Been keeping rather busy/active hanging this fabric, and still feel pretty good, so gonna push out another hour before the nap. (18:40) Started to get pretty tired the last part of this hour. Look forward to the nap.

cycle #0008 (Day 2- 12:00)

Sleep/Wake: Phone rang 3 minutes in to my time for sleep. I was just falling to sleep. I was amazed when I saw it was only 3 minutes in to it. It seemed like I was around 6+ minutes in to it. I didn't take the call, but it still messed me up from getting settled back in for at least 15 more minutes. Can't remember a dream this time, but who knows. I feel pretty much as I did last cycle.

Exercise: same as before

Food: grapes, celery, olives, grapefruit juice. This is certainly not my normal diet, but I haven't felt like cooking anything yet. Perhaps tonight.

Activities:

Going shopping for house stuff. I should be fine for driving.. at least until 14:00.

UPDATE (14:45): Just got back from shopping. Driving was not a problem at all. I seem perfectly fine except it feels like I'm up past my bed time, and time for sleep. Again this feeling really only kicked in the last hour. I think being out and about made it easier... I could probably go another hour if I wanted to push it, but I'm sticking to my goal of trying to quickly give my body many chances to learn to get to REM in 30 min... not deprive myself of sleep. night night.