Day 8
Blake
Last night actually went well. I'm forced to confess that I did take a nap halfway through the evening (forgive me, for I have sinned), but all in all it was pretty good.
I definitely have to get more disciplined about getting out of bed. I have the tendency, left over from my monophasic sleep, to lay in bed for a little while after I wake up. I do this whether or not I'm tired upon waking. This works fine (not great) if I've been asleep for several hours, but it's really counter-productive on my new schedule. The longer I lay around in bed, the more likely I am to get tired again. That seems really obvious, but it's giving me a lot of trouble for some reason.
In other news, I went out yesterday and bought a sketchpad Moleskine. If I can't read, I figure I can at least write and draw in my spare time. That seems like it would be a really good use of my time that would occupy my brain enough to keep me awake. I'm excited about how this turns out. Maybe if I come up with any late night scrawlings that I'm not completely embarrassed by, I'll post a pic. No promises though. =)
I'm working hard to dig deep and push through this. The comments people have left have really been helpful. It's good to hear from people who have done something like this. We don't really have a frame of reference to work with, so when people tell us our problems are normal, we accept it blindly and move on. We'll take anything that makes us not feel like polyphasic phreaks (potential band name).
I talked to Caitlin about arrange a phone call after the midnight nap. That's always the one I'm mostly likely to have trouble getting out of bed for. I figure if I'm talking, it'll be easier for me to wake my brain up. Plus, I have trouble sitting still while on the phone. I'm a pacer. I pace. You can't sleep when you're pacing... usually.
We're determined to see this through. We're still learning a lot and trying to find the best way to do things, but I'm glad we haven't given up. I think that by itself is a victory. I really feel like we're not far off from having this thing figured out.
Caitlin
My midnight nap didn't really go very well last night. It took Scout a good hour of fighting with me for me to finally sit up. She even tweeted about it.
I finally managed to wake a little bit up around 1:30. We watched a couple hours of TV and I went to bed with her. About this time, I was pretty convinced I was done with this.
Woke up, went to work, a little bummed that I was probably going to stop this experiment. Although, I started to get tired around 10ish, ready for a nap. I thought that I would continue taking scheduled naps until I finally decided for sure, so that I wouldn't be horribly off schedule.
After reading the encouraging comments from yesterday, talking with Blake some, combined with how well my noon nap went, I finally decided to continue on. For at least a week longer. So for the next week, unless it gets really really bad, I'm going to tough it out. I'm excited about this again. And my 6pm nap went well, which helps keep me encouraged.
I don't really have much else to say today, so I leave you with my self-appointed theme song for the experiment.
side question: what's your caffeine intake before and during the experiment? and how does caffeine affect your body normally?
i think you should be video blogging this, if you can. it would mean you wouldn't have to write so much and we could see what you're going through first hand, it would be a lot more personal. it would be great viewing, like bear grylls the survival man, and you might get more people following this :) x
Scott - I've thought about doing something like that, and honestly I meant to have more photo and video stuff for the blog. I'll probably still keep writing, but I'll see if I can stop slacking with the pictures.
I had a very successful experience with biphasic sleep when I lived in Spain, wish I could go back to it, but the nature of my work prevents me from doing so.
I believe you are very right about caffeine, taking some can only inhibit your ability to control your sleep. I've gone cold turkey on caffeine one year ago and now realized I'm actually more awake even though I work more than 80h/week. At some point, caffeine doesn't wake you up as much as making you sleepier the rest of the time. The real trick at being awake and aware is to have something that drives you, a project at which you would be passionate about.