Progress?

Wednesday night, I was not in the mood to sleep. Didn't get to sleep until the pre-dawn hours, slept about 3-4 hours and wasn't groggy when I got up, but wasn't really in the mood to do anything. I went to school and had an uneventful day. I got about a half-hour nap in the car, slept for just a few minutes of that, but it felt good. I was really tired by the time I got home, but still didn't feel like sleeping until about 10 PM. I was thinking about my nightly nap and wondered if the solution to my difficulties in waking between 12 - 6 AM was to just nap earlier until I was more adjusted to waking during the night. So I decided to try to nap from 10 - 11 PM. I fell asleep around 10:30, and woke up at 6 AM. I'm going to blame this in part on sleeping in my bed. Habits usually have a place, and if you return to that place, the habit comes back. Monophasic sleep is a habit that comes with going to sleep in the bed at night. So, I need to try to improve the pallet and try that again. Additionally, I blame not having my cellphone. It was charging at this time, and I didn't bother to go unplug it and set the alarm. I thought my alarm clock's obnoxiously loud nap alarm would do it. However, I find that I've been conditioned to turn that one off without waking up, and there's about a 25% or greater chance that I will just do this at any given time. I'm less likely to do it if there's either a light on in the room or it's daytime, but this can definitely happen anytime I set the alarm for night. So, I'll make two adjustments tonight: cellphone alarm and not sleeping in bed. I'll continue these until I'm conditioned to wake at night.

On the other hand, I'm definitely making some progress in that I can consistently wake up at 6 AM. I woke up feeling refreshed and decent and productive, even though it was still dark out. In the past, I've often had some trouble waking up at 6 AM, and it was especially painful during the winter when it was still dark during this time. So, I'm at least getting better at getting up early in the day, and even though it was almost dawn at 6, I did wake up in the dark without a problem and without grogginess or depression. If nothing else, I've accomplished that. If I don't succeed at polyphasic, maybe I can at least be a scheduled and non-failing monophaser who can be productive during the day. I'm still confident that I can adapt to waking myself up in the middle of the night, though.