Kelly - 20 something days, day 1 of solo mode.

Well, the big news is that Alex quit the polyphasic experiement. Yesterday, he decided that he was unable to transition to the polyphasic sleep schedule and now that classes were starting, he would be better off doing something more traditional. It was his original plan to get switched by school, and he said that this would be the case if not.

The good(?) news is that I feel transitioned enough that I will be continuing the sleep cycle indefinitely. I've got my classes planned out until C term, and I if I can get everything set up, I'd like to continue it all year. One of the biggest challenges is finding a class schedule that fits the naps, and it took some very specific schedule wiggling to get things to work this far.

Note that I am not perfectly transitioned yet, but even so, I would be satisfied continuing this mutant schedule all year. Obivously the plan is still to shoot for the regular uberman sleep cycle of 20 minutes ever 4 hours, which I am doing for the most part. Really, everything is super dandy except for the dreaded 7:20 AM nap (which I'm writing fresh from over sleeping until 9:30). I'm getting wonderful fantastic amazing delicious restortative REM sleeps during all my naps throughout the day except for this devil nap, where it's like I'll lay down, and before I hit the pillow, the wake up alarms are already going off, telling me "wake up, wake up, you feel like shit." Usually Alex would fight me out of bed at this point and I'd be a groggy subhuman for a little while, or at least until I brushed my teeth (mouthwash is particularly effective for igniting all of your "oh crap, wake up, you're on fire" nerves), but without my fantastic little side-kick, it's much easier to say, "Oh, well, I'm awake now, I didn't get any rem sleep, so I'll try the nap again in an hour", at which point, I set my alarms an hour ahead and promptly fall back asleep, failing hard. Or perhaps, I'll get on the computer, attempt to do anything and just fall straightaway into awkard pose sleep™. Both of those actually happened today, in succession.

You may ask how I might adjust to this, and get some delicious rems during this time, and the answer is really, I have no idea. I do know, however, that this will stabilize into something, because I have classes during this hell period (basically all my classes are during the worst part of the day from sleep, go figure). So in order to not die in class, I will have to adjust. The trick is that I won't be able to over sleep because I have classes, and I'm pretty sure my will power here is in favor of classes, or at least so far it has been. I'll be all right conceding to a secondary nap before the 7 nap, if it will help me get REM sleeps or at least off set the crap feeling a little bit, I'm not terribly picky about sticking to this schedule like it's set in stone. I have adjusted, I am functioning perfectly all right during pretty much all the other times: my body goes straight into restful sleep at all other times. Maybe this freaknap is a culmination of the overlap I've accrued during the day, or maybe it's the dying shout of my cicadian jungle beats, not going down without a fight. The truth is, I'm pretty satisfied right now.