Saturday, September 19, 2009

First Post, Wherein Xialuote Gives Some Background to the Blog

I've been experimenting with sleep patterns for a few days now.

Last Thursday (or would you say the Thursday before last? I'm always confused by these terms), after yet another night of attempting to stay up to complete an assignment, followed by a day of sleep deprived haze, I was attempting to find some amusements before bed, because I was basically too tired to sleep. This is a state I've found myself in many times before. After a day of fighting to stay alert, fueled by the adrenaline rush of meeting a deadline at the last minute, I was feeling wired that night. When I'm sleep deprived, it's like being high and hyper. I get to a point where I know I'm dead-tired, but I feel great anyway. I don't want to sleep.

I was hunting on YouTube for something to watch to try to calm down before sleep. I'd lately been looking for episodes of Pete & Pete (one of the best shows ever), and I came across the "Nightcrawlers" episode, which is about younger Pete's attempt to stay up for 11 days straight. Fun episode. Anyway, while watching it, I glanced through the comments, and came across a thread wherein a few folks were discussing sleep habits. One mentioned something about the famous rumors that Einstein had an odd sleeping pattern wherein he worked for a few hours and slept for a few, rather than being monophasic. Now, this wasn't my first time hearing something like this. Occasionally, such rumors crop up, but they never seem to be substantiated. I vaguely remember the episode of Seinfeld wherein Kramer attempts to follow a plan of taking short naps every few hours, because some historical figure was said to do it. And he failed. Such claims that someone actually did this always seem to be unsubstantiated, and short attempts to duplicate them fail when someone gets tired and gives up after a day or two, declaring that there's no benefit to this sleep pattern, because they were tired after trying it for a while. Obviously, it goes against everything that's natural, right?

At this mention of the idea this night, however, my curiosity was engaged. I began pondering the possibility of alternate sleep patterns with more than passing interest. I thought about the implications for my own life, should such a pattern be possible. I suppose it took considering this idea in the frame of mind I was in to really catch my attention. Throughout my teenage years, I had done a very loose and inconsistent free-running sleep. I slept when I felt like it and for as long as I liked. Sleep was a nice pastime when I was tired and had nothing else to do, and I often looked forward to it. I slept all night if I felt like it, I slept from morning to night if I felt like it, I napped when I was tired. I slept on my bed, on my couch, on my closet floor, on the floor in front of the TV. I just basically did whatever felt right at the time, and got up when I either had something to do or no longer felt tired. The idea that I could get more out of sleep or have a more practical application of it wasn't a concern.

However, when I began a busy schedule at college, sleep deprivation was no longer a novelty. It was a real concern for my health. I began having fits of depression as a result of both being sleep deprived and not having time to do the non-school-work activities that I wanted to do. Nothing sucks like trying to be monophasic and either not having the time or failing to fall asleep due to stress. And I never got used to having to quit what I was doing for the night and go sleep for 9-10 hours (about the time I have to sleep in order to feel well-rested with monophasic sleep, especially when I'm sleep-deprived and not on a regular schedule). I often couldn't make myself do it, and ended up staying up too late trying to cram in a few hours of Stuff I Wanted To Do and then getting a short and crappy sleep that left me feeling tired and depressed. It was really irritating to think about how I'd have to stop in the middle of what I was doing and go sleep for 9 hours and then wake up in a totally different state of mind.

I had gone through whole months where I was very sleep-deprived and extremely unhappy about it. It hadn't occurred to me during that time that there was some alternative to sleeping at night that could work, and as a result, I had many days where I stayed up most of the night and day while trying to complete some project. It left me feeling horrible about everything, especially my failure to have a regular, healthy sleep schedule. I felt like I was killing myself because I was either too stressed or too busy to get in a solid 8 hours of sleep. I tried different things to try to do it, but even if I cut out extra-curricular activities, I still could barely finish what I wanted to in a day and then have time to relax and hibernate for 8-9 hours. I felt like a miserable failure and didn't understand why others could do it but I couldn't.

There are a myriad of reasons why, at that moment and ever since, something -- anything -- other than trying to be monophasic and failing looked appealing. And I finally decided to investigate and try to get some conclusive information on whether or not anyone had successfully slept polyphasically (a term I'd soon learn) for any period of time and whether it could work for me. My journey began here.

To be continued in tomorrow's post.

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