I hate my brain. I have been looking over my notes, and the 9am nap and the waking period following it have been giving me trouble for a while now. This cycle has shown the most trouble waking up from naps, the most incidents of unintended sleep, and the most severe fatigue and sleepiness.
Today brought some extremes, leaving me feeling good during three consecutive cycles, and very bad during the next.
I dreamt again during my 1pm nap today! I did not remember the dream immediately though, it took some 5 minutes of being awake before pieces came back to me. This amplifies my concerns that my naps might be too long; maybe I cycle out of REM back into SWS, making me wake up groggy and not remembering my dreams (if any).
After this nap, I seemed to alternate between feeling alert and feeling a bit tired.
Day 9 was rather uneventful. How I feel varies strongly from one waking cycle to another. I had some trouble falling asleep for the 5pm and 9pm naps, but I felt relatively rested during the 9pm-1am cycle.
I did not feel particularly tired or narcoleptic during my 1am-5am waking cycle, so not taking the extra 3am nap didn’t prove difficult.
I was very narcoleptic during the 9am-1pm cycle, to the point where a walk outside in the cold barely kept me awake. The 9am-1pm cycle is frequently the worst of all.
Today my sister and I visited my mother for a late Christmas dinner, which also meant I was napping over there.
I was getting a bit fed up with napping on my bed, so I tried something else; I napped in one of my comfortable chairs (which is also where I had my successful Ubernap yesternight). I couldn’t wear my headphones comfortably, so I put them around my neck and turned the volume way up so I’d still hear them. I also couldn’t use my wakeup light for this nap. The nap was not very different from bed naps; slept for the usual time, woke up feeling similar.
The lack of sleep was really starting to get to me, and the lack of real progress was demotivating. I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, because I had completed six full days of perfect schedule adherence (except the 4-minute oversleeping incident yesterday) without a significant result. Judging from what I’ve read, I should be seeing the effects of adaptation after 4-8 days.
The next nap, at 5pm, was fairly normal; I woke up feeling groggy, but I started feeling better fairly soon.
At about 5.45pm my sister Nicole arrived. We chatted for an hour or two, mostly about sleep and Uberman, and then went out for some groceries. We got chips for her dinner, and I ended up buying a small snack too.
Today is day 5, Tuesday. I woke up from my 1pm nap about an hour ago. The last 24 hours have been… Interesting.
Today is day 4, Monday. I’ve had my 1pm and 5pm naps now, and the 1pm nap was rather interesting. I didn’t wake up feeling like a zombie from this nap, but not particularly refreshed either. I did feel a bit weird and disoriented.
It’s now more than 72 hours ago since my last night of normal sleep.
One thing that stands out is that I’m sleeping differently. I seem to fall asleep a bit faster, and I no longer wake up by myself before naptime is over; I have to be woken by the mp3 and the wake-up light now. Because of that, the risk of oversleeping increases, so I’ve been setting Diana’s old-fashioned noise-box as a backup alarm. Being analog, the thing is not very accurate, so I’m setting it for approximately 40 minutes after lying down.
To help with my polyphasic sleeping experiment, I have taped cardboard over my bedroom window, so I can sleep in complete darkness. I hope that helps me fall asleep.
But complete darkness makes it harder to wake up, and waking up is already plenty hard when you’re adapting to Uberman. So I thought that a light that would go on when my naptime is over would be great; complete darkness for sleeping and light for waking up.
Friday was more interesting than Thursday.
Wednesday night, I had my last “normal” night of sleep. I say “normal” because I could barely sleep; I just couldn’t get my mind to shut down, so I slept no more than 3 hours. Well, that’s one way to get a head start on the sleep deprivation 
Thursday I felt a bit crappy because of that, and I didn’t get all the errands done I hoped to get done.
I didn’t start napping until Thursday evening (I didn’t see the point during the day on Thursday). The night was not hard at all, I felt some fatigue, but nothing major. I don’t think I slept during any of my naps.
Other than that, the first day was of course rather uneventful.
So, I’m going to adapt to Uberman, or fall asleep trying.
Last night was my last night of normal sleep for a while. It’s Thursday the 17th now, which I’ll call day 0. Thursday night will be night 0, Friday will be day 1, etc.
Saturday is the start of the Christmas break, two weeks of no obligations. With a weekend on either side of the break, and starting on Thursday, that gives me about 18 days to adapt to Uberman.
Several months ago, I read about polyphasic sleep on Steve Pavlina’s blog. Polyphasic sleep means sleeping for multiple short periods during the day rather than one long period at night. The particular sleep schedule Steve was writing about was called the Uberman schedule, which involves sleeping only for 20-minute naps every four hours, for a total of roughly two hours per day.
