Not Here Anymore

Hey folks -

If you're interested in seeing my pictures and reading about my current journey across America (I'm hiking my way around the US as I write this) then please check out Western Walkabout and follow my quest!

I've been traveling a few weeks now and I find myself farther east than I expected or wanted to be. I'll be visiting a friend in Pendleton, OR and then heading back southwest into California and following the US border south, then east, around the Florida panhandle and back up the east coast. I'll be taking side trips along the way to visit friends who live on the inside of the US and maybe taking a trip into Mexico and one into Canada on my way back west along the northern border!

So please, come check it out! I'll be posting as often as I can, putting up new photos, and having quite an amazing time.

Nap Posts Over

Starting right now I am over with my nap-time posts. I will continue to blog about my daily experience but it will be at the end of the day encapsulating the entire day. I'll be jotting down personal notes then using them to reconstruct my day for everyone else.

I truly think by this time tomorrow I will be fully acclimated to polyphasic sleep. I may be contacting a doctor or sleep technician to ask their opinion and to do brain scans to see if/how things are acting any differently because wouldn't it be fun to know?

8 PM Nap Day 3

MaiTai, my 50 lb Amish dog curled at my legs, her head gently laid against the side of my knee. Monster, my heavier Old English Sheepdog asleep on the ground next to me.

I didn't sleep as well for various reasons (I can't remember, but I had a good reason like....noise) but definitely slept comfortably.

Hopefully the tiredness will go away quickly since I don't want to spend a whole wakeful phase wishing it was time to go back to sleep.

On My Way

I don't feel bad at all. I don't feel like I've had a full night's rest either, but close to one at least. And this is with the mailman coming during my nap, which set off Monster with her barking and her carrying on. I was so sound asleep that I'm pretty sure I only woke up after at least two or three full barks from her.

And despite the fact that I sleep soundly, the mp3 wakes me up well. The sound of the chickens clucking opens my eyes immediately. I've only made it past the rooster crowing once and I think that might have been a fluke.

Of course, now night is almost on us and so we'll see if my mood stays so chipper or if it's dependent upon the sun being out.

Day 3, Noon

I'm still feeling good. I keep waking up half way through my sleep period as though startled by a "falling" dream or maybe a noise from the house but with my headphones on blaring white noise it's a little difficult to imagine it's a noise waking me.

Thankfully, today, the girls just curl up at my feet on the couch and go to sleep. I'm taking each nap on the couch instead of in the bed because I don't want to get caught in the trap of staying in bed simply because I'm used to it.

For that matter, I'm also wearing jeans when I'm not napping. No comfy clothes to lull me into a false sense of peace which then drags me down into sleep. No, I'm wearing clothes that will purposely feel rough-textured to help me keep awake. Hopefully I won't need to do this much longer because I'll be used to the schedule and won't need to stave off sleep in a one-on-one-no-holds-barred grudge match.

Second Wind

At the advice of my wife I put on some loud TV shows via Hulu, ate a piece of fruit for a little extra sugar and vitamin C and just relaxed for a little bit. I had to fight off sleep every time I rested my head on my hand but finally I was able to fight off the haze of sleepiness that's been surrounding me all morning.

I'm feeling pretty good now. Still a little tired but not to the point of dropping off to sleep in my computer chair which I almost did about 2 hours ago.

Hopefully this means the worst is over. I am a hopeful man.

In Depth (8 AM Nap)

No questionnaire this time because I was feeling bored with them. I just thought they'd be a nice template when I was feeling overly tired.

I just got done with my 8 AM nap on day 3 and I'm not quite sure yet how I feel about it. My eyes are a little blurred and are giving me some trouble about going back to normal so my guess is I'm a little more tired than I'd like.

At the same time I'm feeling okay. Not great and definitely not fantastic, but I'm feeling okay. Tired beyond what I have words for, I'm considering eating a piece of coffee candy to give me just a small touch of caffeine though I normally wouldn't consider touching anything with caffeine in it, but I'm okay.

My last wakeful period was my worst so far. My brain started to turn to mush and I swear I could feel it leaking out of my right ear as I started my 8 PM 20 minute nap.

I'm doing extremely well with not oversleeping and I think that's incredibly important. Even if I end up taking an extra nap (not in my plans, currently) my research suggests it's more important that I not go over the 20 minute mark. Steve Pavlina did this in 2005 and his most important discovery was that you could take more naps if you wanted to without messing up your acclimation but if you oversleep just a little everything goes to hell.

One small side affect that I haven't seen from anyone else so I'm wondering if it's just something I ate: My stomach is upset and I find that I have to use the restroom before every single sleep session.

Still tired but kicking.

Odd Thing

As I stand here by my computer, reading about polyphasic sleep and sleep deprivation I am experiencing an almost 3D-like affect of the text and pictures in each article. I'm guessing this is a side effect of mild sleep deprivation.

Polyphasic Questionnaire: 4 AM Day 3

Yes/No questions, explanations not required but would be good:

1. Did you oversleep?
~No

2. Did you fall asleep during the assigned nap time?
~Yes

3. Did you get up immediately upon waking?
~Yes though I do feel quite tired

4. Were you comfortable?
~Yes

Answers are based on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being "absolutely horrible" and 10 being "perfectly fine, great even!"

1. How rested do you feel: 5

2. How tired are you: 6

3. How healthy do you feel: 7

4. How confident do you feel that you can continue: 5

Long Form Questions:

1. How do you feel? Please describe:
~Tired, dragging. I just woke up though so hopefully this goes away quickly and I wake back up but right now I am ready for bed.

2. Did you do anything that helped you feel more awake between naps? If so, what?
~Citrus, but the smell and the taste seems to help.

3. Please describe any dreams you had during your last nap:
~No dreams that I can recall.


Anything else?

~I am definitely feeling my tiredness now. Going to go shower.

Report

Whoa. I'm actually starting to feel it now, about 40 hours into the experiment. I'm actively fighting against sleep and have had to get up out of my chair to walk around, get an orange, rock back and forth on my heels to promote blood flow and a bunch of other things that are supposed to help stimulate wakefulness.

Each thing works for a short time but only a short time.

My 4 o'clock sleep comes in 23 minutes at which point I will be setting the laptop computer and my desktop computer to ring alarms 3 minutes apart from one another. I'm concerned that I will sleep past the loud sounds on the mp3 sleep recording so I've added a few layers of defense against that.

Just gotta stay up a little longer, take a nap and then go from there. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

Polyphasic Questionnaire: Midnight Day 3

Yes/No questions, explanations not required but would be good:

1. Did you oversleep?
~No

2. Did you fall asleep during the assigned nap time?
~Yes

3. Did you get up immediately upon waking?
~Yes

4. Were you comfortable?
~Yes

Answers are based on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being "absolutely horrible" and 10 being "perfectly fine, great even!"

1. How rested do you feel: 4

2. How tired are you: 6

3. How healthy do you feel: 7

4. How confident do you feel that you can continue: 6

Long Form Questions:

1. How do you feel? Please describe:
~I'm slightly nervous because I almost slept through the mp3 this time and didn't hear it make the chicken noises at all. I'm tired enough that next time I should probably use a second alarm clock.

2. Did you do anything that helped you feel more awake between naps? If so, what?
~Nothing different but this time I'll be taking a shower.

3. Please describe any dreams you had during your last nap:
~No dreams.


Anything else?

Nothing off the top of my head. Just very tired right now.

Polyphasic Questionnaire: 8 PM Day 2

Yes/No questions, explanations not required but would be good:

1. Did you oversleep?
~No, in fact was awoken early by dogs

2. Did you fall asleep during the assigned nap time?
~Yes, definitely

3. Did you get up immediately upon waking?
~Yes

4. Were you comfortable?
~Yes

Answers are based on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being "absolutely horrible" and 10 being "perfectly fine, great even!"

1. How rested do you feel: 5

2. How tired are you: 6

3. How healthy do you feel: 7

4. How confident do you feel that you can continue: 7

Long Form Questions:

1. How do you feel? Please describe:
~Tired now. The girls prematurely woke me up when they ran to the door as though someone were here. I, of course, had to check this out just in case someone really WAS here.

Also this is twice now that I've had hiccups within minutes of getting up. Strange.

2. Did you do anything that helped you feel more awake between naps? If so, what?
~Not this time, nothing in particular.

3. Please describe any dreams you had during your last nap:
~All I remember is dogs and a cheese grater and trying to keep it away from them. Most dreams were micro-dreams, flitting away as quickly as they came.


Anything else?

~I'm going to have to make sure the girls are well-secured when I take my naps. I can't have them messing me up again.

Polyphasic Questionnaire: 4 PM Day 2

Yes/No questions, explanations not required but would be good:

1. Did you oversleep?
~No

2. Did you fall asleep during the assigned nap time?
~Yes

3. Did you get up immediately upon waking?
~Yes

4. Were you comfortable?
~Yes

Answers are based on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being "absolutely horrible" and 10 being "perfectly fine, great even!"

1. How rested do you feel: 5

2. How tired are you: 6

3. How healthy do you feel: 8

4. How confident do you feel that you can continue: 8

Long Form Questions:

1. How do you feel? Please describe:
~I'm tired now. Waking up was easy but there is definitely a pull on my eyelids toward the "closed" direction. It should disappear soon, I hope.

2. Did you do anything that helped you feel more awake between naps? If so, what?
~I played Rock Band, which seemed to help me wake up during the time I was playing but not particularly after I was done.

3. Please describe any dreams you had during your last nap:
~Snippets of dreams that I can't quite remember, lost between sleeping and wake.


Anything else?

~Nope, doing fine. Probably going to watch some Hulu.com since I see Chuck season 3 started!

Odd Things

1. I am already having snippets of dreaming while I sleep which theoretically isn't supposed to happen until day three or four. This is really really good because it might mean that my transition phase is minimal.

2. Maria likens the way I'm acting to how I act when I'm high on caffeine. My brain-to-mouth filter is gone, I'm talking about not much, but I keep babbling on. I'm even a bit "peppy."

3. I am WAY better at drums on Rock Band while slightly sleep deprived.

4. I am WAY worse at singing while slightly sleep deprived.

Just a few things I've noticed that I thought I'd share.

Sleep Questionnaire: 8 AM, Day 2

Yes/No questions, explanations not required but would be good:

1. Did you oversleep?
~No

2. Did you fall asleep during the assigned nap time?
~Yes

3. Did you get up immediately upon waking?
~Yes

4. Were you comfortable?
~Yes

Answers are based on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being "absolutely horrible" and 10 being "perfectly fine, great even!"

1. How rested do you feel: 5

2. How tired are you: 6

3. How healthy do you feel: 8

4. How confident do you feel that you can continue: 7

Long Form Questions:

1. How do you feel? Please describe:
~I woke up feeling awake. Tired, but no aches and pains and no overwhelming urge to simply turn off the mp3 player and go back to sleep.

2. Did you do anything that helped you feel more awake between naps? If so, what?
~I took a shower and that made a world of difference. I also ate an orange which may help.

3. Please describe any dreams you had during your last nap:
~No dreams.


Anything else?

I'm feeling more awake than I did 4 hours ago, which is good, but still I am definitely tired. I know I fell asleep but at the same time it doesn't feel as though I did. I guess that's kind of the point.

4 AM Nap

I haven't yet been awake 24 hours but I can feel the drag of sleep pulling at me, trying to get me into bed. I definitely fell asleep this time, the clucking of chickens barely waking me up but still doing the trick.

My typing is messing up slightly, just little mistakes here and there that I don't normally make but I'm awake enough to catch and correct them, thankfully.

Thought

If nothing else good comes of this experiment, I have made two loaves of bread tonight, a gallon of sauce, and done two loads of dishes. PLUS I'll be getting my daily quota for work done before I would normally even be getting out of bed.

Midnight Nap, Day 2 Begins!

Despite getting up only 14 hours ago I have started to feel a vague desire for sleep. When I put Maria to bed at 10, our normal bed-time, my body started asking questions like "why aren't you getting in there with her?" and "um, dude, isn't it time to go to sleep now?" I guess my body and brain are pretty well trained to go to sleep at a very specific time.

Hopefully I can turn that into training to go to sleep at very specific times.

I may have actually fallen asleep for a few moments here and there this time but it's hard to tell. I know I spent at least the first ten minutes trying to get comfortable on the couch; I have to find some better headphones for this experiment and maybe that will help.

As soon as the dishwasher stops I am planning on making some pasta sauce. If there's only one thing to be said about this it's that I'm cleaning the house and cooking like a fool. The bread just went into the oven right after I woke up but before I started writing this.

8 PM Nap

My 8 PM nap ended up starting at about 8:03 PM and you're really not supposed to start even a minute or two late within the first week but that's okay. I'm still feeling good and just getting my body/brain used to the idea of sleeping with headphones on, listening to white noise and waking up when the white noise stops and the clucking chickens/crowing rooster begins.

Still doing absolutely fine and am having an easy time of it. Ask me in 12 hours if this is still the truth.

4 PM Nap

My 4 PM nap went well.  Again, I didn't fall asleep, but that's because I only woke up about 6 hours ago.  These naps are just to try to quickly train my body that it needs to get up when the rooster crows in my polyphasic sleep mp3.  Hopefully that's working.

I'm guessing my first "trouble spot" will be around 8 am.  I'm not planning for trouble exactly, but that'll be about 24 hours awake so that's usually when the brain starts to go "Hey!  What are you trying to do, exactly?"

Doing it Differently This Time

When I first tried polyphasic sleep (specifically the Uberman schedule) I went 24 hours without sleep and then took a 20 minute nap, followed by 20 minute naps every 4 hours.  I lasted approximately 2 days before succumbing to a massive cold possibly brought on by lack of sleep.

I think jumping straight in with no sleep might have been the problem, so this time I'm easing my way into it.

Last night I slept my normal amount of sleep (plus a little extra because it was cold and I didn't feel like getting out of bed).  I got up, went about my day, and just now at noon I took a 22 minute nap.

I'll be taking another nap at 4, then 8, then midnight, and so on.  Hopefully, by easing my way into this sleep schedule I'll avoid the first 24 hours of sleep deprivation and slip more gracefully into the new schedule.

I fully expect tomorrow to be hellish, and am ready to fight through whatever comes my way.  This week I may not be very friendly to people but thankfully I don't have to go out and talk to anyone face-to-face.  Working from home and making my own hours are two major factors contributing to my ability to even try this.

I will attempt to make a post after every nap.  Being on the computer often makes me kind of sleepy so I'll be trying to avoid it otherwise, but a quick update after every nap (at least for the first few days) will hopefully be enlightening to everyone else trying to hack their brains in the same way.

I should note that I'm using a white noise mp3 at grelly.com, found here.  It's 20 minutes of white noise followed by sounds to wake you up.  Very helpful.

A New Start

The Polyphasic sleep experiment begins anew, starting tomorrow.  Tonight I sleep, and then I only nap.

25 minutes every 4 hours, Uberman schedule.

I will be keeping notes on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/jfargo) and then trying to compile it all together into posts on here every few hours, writing at least once a day with my general reactions.

Hopefully this time it will last more than two days and I won't get The Cold From Hell.

Cooking is a balm for me. Whether it's the sizzle of the diced onions hitting the super-heated oil in the wok, or a long and slow braising of a pork loin in home made apple sauce, it makes me feel good about my day.

Everybody has little things they do that help them feel better. It's nice when it turns out that not only does your way of reducing stress make you less tense, it also gives you a good skill, and makes the world a little more delicious.

What's your way of de-stressing at the end of a hard day?

Fallen

Sometimes, little things jump out at us as important.  We stop and look at these small pieces of beauty and wonder what is it about them that catches our attention, makes us want to examine them.

It's these moments that inspired such sayings as "stop and smell the roses," prompting us to just take a step back, admire the beauty, and then go on.

Simple things.  Beautiful things.  These are what we build our world upon.

Or at least, they should be.

Shiny!

What you're seeing here, next to the mess to the right, is my brand new set of stainless steel Cuisinart (little R thing goes here but I don't know how to do it) pots and pans. There's also an 8 quart pot that goes with the set, and 3 mixing bowls (free with purchase, whoo!), but those didn't hang so well on my makeshift pot hanger, so they're not in the picture.

I've always been a Teflon, non-stick, kind of guy, but every professional chef I've read seems to say the same thing: You can't make really good food with non-stick, if only because you can't deglaze the pan to make a delicious sauce from the brown bits left behind. I guess I'll soon find out if I'm able to make delicious foods with a "professional" set of pots and pans.

That large one on the left there is for Maria. It's a large wok, and while she's not a big fan of big flat bottoms, I think she'll be able to get it to work for her. The rest though, are all mine! Mwu-ha-ha-ha!

Yes, that's an evil laugh.

What?

One Foot After The Other

I keep moving, the rhythmic thump of my feet on the track jars through my frame.  I feel every muscle, every bone, contract slightly at the impact, and then another, and another, and another.  I'm moving forward, the best direction for anyone to move.

Running gives me a chance to see brand new things.  While I pause to catch my breath, my breath might catch as I see a new scene that would make a great picture.  I take a moment, take the shot, and continue running.  Taking pictures gives me reason to run new places, and running gives me the opportunity to take new pictures.  It's a fantastic cycle that feeds into itself.

Plus, it helps me get in shape.  Another plus.

Talent

This is Adam.  He's a new friend of mine from a local geeky group I'm a part of.  His talents are many and varied, like making me look bad at juggling by being at least ten times better at it than I am.

That being said, I'm a WAY better photographer than he is.  Oh, wait.  He's a professional in the movie business, has much better equipment than I'll ever have, and can take still photos that seem to move when you look at them.

Hmm.

Adam's one of those talented people that everybody loves, but secretly wants to slap across the back of the head.  Or maybe not.  That's probably just me being jealous of his skills.

Still, jealous or not, it's fun to watch him grab those juggling balls and go at it.  He's good at what he does; even in this photo of him he looks better at juggling than I am, and that's impressive.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go practice juggling.  For about a year.