Uberman restart (Days 1-2 Summary)

This post is a continuation of the previous post.

Due to the 10 hour oversleep on (Tuesday December 16th, 2008) , I felt that most of the sleep deprivation I had accumulated was now gone, and I could just "restart", fresh. For clarification, days start at 12:00 AM, so the hardest part of the day is mentioned first.

Most of my naps, I'm doing in my bed. I'm just most comfortable there and can fall asleep the fastest. If I start having a lot of oversleep problems, then I'll change that. I'm also using nap mp3's in order to sleep. I use the 23 minute version found at http://polynap.grelly.com/?page_id=7

The nap mp3 has white noise for 23 minutes and then wakes you up with chickens/roosters/music and so on.

Day 1 - Wednesday December 17th, 2008

This new day 1 didn't go exactly as I planned. In the early morning phase of it, I watched some tv and played some video games (Tales of Vesperia). Unfortunately, at 8:30 AM, I decided on an extra nap and ended up sleeping until 12 AM --- basically causing a 4 hour oversleep. Other than that, I felt alright and the rest went without a hitch.

This oversleep was bad, and made me realize that although I made it 12 days through Uberman before, I needed to be vigilent about getting up during naps again. I thought it would be easy because of my previous experience in the fall, but that is clearly not the case. Not a great start, but it's a start.

Day 2 - Thursday December 18th, 2008

I had problems deciding what I would do in the early morning. I ended up watching some Beach Girls (it's a mini-series my mom lent to me --- I'm not going to put it to waste), played some Halo 3, and at about 5 AM watched some Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. At my 8 AM nap, I slept until 10 which sucks. It was the old "let's take a second nap" problem. I need to stop that. But, it was only 2 hours, so I'm getting better.

I was SO tired after this oversleep. I don't even know how I woke up, but I'm happy I did. To keep myself from going back to sleep, I watched a couple episodes of Scrubs, which made me waken right up :) I love Scrubs -- it's an amazing show.

I took my 12 PM nap early (at 11:30 AM), because of a doctors appointment. Even so, the rest of the day seemed to go well. I'm starting to dream and sleep for a lot more of my naps now, then I did on Day 1.

I was in a social situation today where I had to wonder off to get my 8 PM nap. It's the day my mom was celebrating my brothers birthday (my parents are divorced), and we were watching a movie. My mom went to get a smoke break at about about 7:55 PM, so I decided to take that opportunity to say "well, since you're taking a smoke break, I'll go take a quick nap. Be back in 20 minutes or so".

Learning to adjust and go and take naps like this in social situations will be hard, but well worth it. When I did Uberman before, I sometimes skipped naps or moved them because of social situations. However, slipping off to have a nap isn't *that* bad, 20 minutes to most people is nothing. Pushing myself to do it will be the tough, but rewarding, thing.

3:50 AM, Friday December 19th, 2008 (start of day 3)

I decided to give an update on the last week because I was up at 2 AM, and people in the #polyphasers channel on FreeNode were talking about who was keeping a blog. I figured I now had the time to kill to continue this blog, which had the original intention of being kept. My mental state is normal, for the most part. I can feel a tad bit of tiredness and my eyes are tired, I have to blink once in a while.

My largest goal for later this morning is to NOT TAKE AN EXTRA NAP. Not even at 2 AM or 6 AM, and definitely not directly after one of my normal naps. I feel a lot better after I move around and wake up after 10 minutes anyways. The problem is waking up and getting out of bed, of course.

The actual naps are weird. I know I'm sleeping, but sometimes I'm not sure. It seems that I go directly into dream imagery from consciousness, which is a weird feeling. I can wake up from that pretty quickly too, and for almost no reason. It seems my naps are going:

sleep->wake->mental imagery (dream?)->sleep->wake->sleep->wake->sleep->wake

It's really weird.

Overall, I've learned a few things so far:

1) Avoid taking extra naps, as extra naps lead to extra naps, which lead to oversleeping.
2) Do not take an extra nap immediately after a scheduled nap time.
3) When the alarm goes off, GET UP! If I move around a bit, I'll feel better within 10 minutes or so.
4) If really tired, watch Scrubs. It wakens me right up :)

I'm slightly scared for day 3. From others blogs, specifically Placebo at http://polynap.grelly.com/ , day 3 is supposed to be really hard. I guess it's something to look forward to :)

Anyways, that's it for this update. The rest should *hopefully* happen as life happens.