Day 1

I'm surprised that I'm not tired... but I'm not. I was unable to really sleep for my afternoon and evening naps yesterday -- I was just too awake and wired, although I did still lay down and rest for a few minutes each time to try to stave off mental exhaustion -- so I just stayed up until it was time for the morning nap, figuring I would sleep extra good for it and the next afternoon nap. I went for my nap a little early, about 3:15 (instead of 3:30), went to sleep quickly, and woke up at about 5:11. Amusing that my alarm worked, but it still took me a while to wake up. And I'm glad that my alarm still isn't bothering anyone.

Since it's probably been a while since I covered this, I'll explain: I discovered that I wake up to the sound my cellphone makes when it vibrates while setting on a hard surface, such as my desk, or even sitting it on a book somewhere works well. The advantage of this is that this is a gentler sound and I wake up without being startled by the blaring of an alarm (I hate the sound of one of my alarm clocks so much that I seem to have a conditioned response to turn it off as quickly as possible and sometimes do so in my sleep without fully waking), and it seems to be a sound that someone in the next room can't hear (unlike my alarm clock). I've yet to get any complaints about it.

Anyway, I woke up very tired, probably more tired than I went to sleep, so I decided to take another nap for the one I missed during the night. It was hard to stay awake and I wasn't in the mood to fight it, knowing that I needed the rest, so I took another nap from about 6 - 7:30. However, I found it kind of hard to stay asleep, and I kept waking up and dozing off again. I guess I had it in my mind that I was determined to be awake during the morning and I had some fear of oversleeping, so I did sleep and have REM, but I didn't sleep well. Perhaps I was also just too tired to sleep deeply, something bizarre that does occur with me, and something that I think precluded my adaptation to Uberman (which was probably doomed anyway because I wasn't a firm believer in the efficacy of the strict schedule). The too-tired-to-sleep thing can sometimes happen to me after working on a project over night, or even with extreme physical activity (although it's difficult to say in that case whether I'm too tired or too "pumped" to sleep), such as on days where I spent the whole day hiking.

I was feeling a little disoriented when I got up at the end of the nap period, and I simply rested a while, but I felt much better about an hour later. I am definitely taking my afternoon and evening naps if I can make myself do so. I think I'm doing good, but I need the rest to recover from not being able to sleep much yesterday, so it is important that I try to get it to avoid crashing.