A Personal Journey into the world of Polyphasic Sleep

Well, having the video game worked! I didn’t oversleep, and I played quite a bit of World of Warcraft. Not a permanent solution, of course, but one that worked for me that night.

So, I have now created another PAGE (as opposed to a chronological POST like this one), that has my “Current State of Affairs” as far as sleep goes. It’ll be on the right side of the page, and I’ll update it when I’ve changed patterns, come up with new ideas or whatnot. I will still try to add posts every couple of days, but I feel it is getting slightly repetitive, detailing each nap and how it went.

I decided not to keep playing the video game, as it was a borrowed account so I couldn’t keep that character permanently. As I didn’t want to put that much effort into something that could disappear at the whim of the owner, I decided to order my own copy, and I shall resume playing if I have time, when that arrives.

More significantly, over the course of the week with my parents in town, I implemented a 3-hour core sleep. This has really helped cut back on the oversleeps. Sleeping 11PM-2AM or thereabouts and then napping the rest of the day has been a good jumping-off point for many people who weren’t able to go directly into the 6-naps schedule. As I have been unable to maintain that, I thought the core sleep might help. And it has, for about 5 days.

On Saturday, April 15, I napped, went to Stephanie’s birthday bash – a GRAND time with cool collage making, cookie decorating (I declined, as the strain of decorating tasty cookies that I couldn’t eat b/c of Passover was just too much), bbq’n, and picture snappin’. I went home and napped again after, and then started on a party circuit with Orange. First party was a Sol System shin-dig. We got there way early, danced a bit, O said he to her rock star pals, and then we headed to a birthday party for a friend of hers in Oakland. Since I was slightly nap-deprived at this point, and intended to stay out most of the night, I decided to throw in a random extended nap/core sleep, so while she went in to the party, I slept for 90 mins plus in the car! It was quite refreshing. I was groggy upon waking at 1:30 AM, but soon was back in full outside-the-house mode We went to the cracktory for PandaMoanEum XXXVIII, or whatever it was. Music was veeerrry niiiiice. Alxndr spun a sweet set, and I stayed til about 4:30 AM before cabbing home. I had planned to sleep in late after this kinda night, and did so. Woke up feeling good, and spent Sunday working at home.

My napping-with-core-sleep has continued this week, working well each time. The only odd day was last night, Wednesday night. I ran yesterday morning for the first time in almost a month. It felt really good to get out and exercise! And I ran at 7 AM in order to have the whole day to have some restorative naps without real danger of oversleeping. But I knew that my first time back exercising might incur some sleep consequences. I got my core sleep from midnight until 3 AM on Wednesday night. But when I woke up my body still felt physically drained. I tried to shake it off, but my arms, body, legs all felt weighted down. So I gave in and set the alarm for another 3 hours and slept until 6. Then I felt great! 6 hours of sleep after my first time running in a month isn’t so bad.

I napped at 11 and 3:30 today, and then headed back to SF for my first coed soccer game of the season. This will be another physical and logistical challenge – the 3:30 nap probably set me up ok for the 6 PM game, but then there is the bar afterwards, and the tail end of Thursday dinner with Sara, Orange and Dan cookin’. I brought a pillow, planning to get my nap in at 8 PM after our game, just before the bar, likely in my car. We’ll see how this works, though I _could_ go home and nap there…