4 days in, and this is what my chart looks like. The grey lines are planned naps and the very light blue are a halfway point for naps.
Today I changed my schedule from 12/4/8/12/4/8, to 11/3/7/11/3/7, it seems like a more convenient number, for some reason. Doesn’t look as pretty on the chart though.
I don’t remember ever oversleeping on Thursday, but I put it there so I must’ve done. (I actually looked at that oversleep Thursday night/Friday morning and couldn’t even remember it then, maybe I was accounting for the fact I was sitting in another room and generally nodding off) I guess my brain isn’t used to going to sleep right away, it’s used to me sitting in bed quietly for a couple of hours first. Half an hour seems to be the point where I start falling asleep, you can see I’ve managed to actually nap if I’ve laid down for half an hour first, but won’t that make my brain keep the same habits? I’ve tried going for a sort of meditation-thing before naps, just sitting for 15mins ish, that’s the purple, gonna see if it helps at all. There’s been more yellow the past couple of days too, which is a good sign, despite the oversleeps in the morning.
Also, despite the lack of sleep, I’m doing ok, the 3 hours in the morning I woke up a bit groggy, but that wore off after a couple of minutes and I’ve been fine from there on. I only fell asleep in the mornings at all because I was stupid and was reading on my bed. I need to be more active around that time. I don’t remember dreaming anything yet and the times I have managed to sleep, it’s always been at least 15 minutes lying awake first. The only times I’ve actually felt tired or sleep deprived at all was 1400-14:30 on Thursday. Maybe it’s because I worked myself up to this over a week or two, it’s affected how my brain deals with lack of sleep, I didn’t go from a normal 10pm-8am monophasic pattern, I went from something like 8am-2pm, working my way slowly up to the 8am over a week or so. Even Thursday wasn’t as bad as some days I’ve had when I’ve tried to sleep deprive myself before, I wasn’t at the point of zoning out totally or hallucinating. I could keep up a conversation.
Thursday was an odd day though, around 9am I was sitting here, feeling really tired and sleepy, when suddenly I got a sensation like goosebumps passing over me, and just like that, I was wide awake and alert, even several hours later I was still feeling good and energised. Was it an adrenaline rush? The body producing it’s own caffeine? The only way I can describe it is “WOOSH!”
I’ve also been using this time to try and take a shower and brush my teeth every day, I didn’t go to the dentist for like, 10 years and nobody ever really encouraged me to brush my teeth. I just never got into the habit, trying for it now. (Blame it on the fact I’m British and before we moved all we had was a bath :p)
I’ve had so many periods of time in my life when we’ve had no hot water, at the old house the boiler broke down and we just had no money to fix it, it was still doing central heating, just refused to heat water for baths or whatever. That wasn’t the first time that’d happened either, it happened with the previous boiler too when I was younger. One thing I have noticed is that when I don’t wash my hair for a while, it goes really, really nice. Takes a couple of weeks to get there, but once it settles in it’s not bad. So on top of this polyphasic thing, I’m washing my hair in just hot water every day and making sure I brush it well, no shampoo or conditioner at all, if it fails then it fails, nothing ventured nothing gained. And it’s not like I was planning to leave the house much anyway.
Only thing I’ve noticed about that so far is it doesn’t feel as smooth after I get out of the shower, but it is only 3 days in. Saves me a hell of a lot of time too.
Feel free to comment if you’ve actually found and are reading this. And if you’re thinking about going Polyphasic, don’t give up! It’s taken me the better part of a year to motivate myself this far. (I’ve also decided, I really don’t like this blog layout, I should do something about it)
Tags: Day 4, hair, Polyphasic Sleep