Current mood:	awake
Entry tags:	adventures, books, busy, editing, jeaux, ubersleep

Have a dream
Bear with me here. This is an approximate recounting of my activities over the last few days. I want you to read over it--just skim if you like--and see if you notice anything odd.

Wednesday
7:00 AM Got up for work
8:15 AM Finished writing a node on Groundhog Day Cake and posted it
8:45 AM Got to work with goodies
2:00 PM Lunch break
4:00 PM Got off work
4:30 PM Everything2.com votes
5:30 PM Went to anime club with Jeaux
7:30 PM Went to dinner at Don Pablo's with Jeaux
8:30 PM Went grocery shopping with Jeaux
9:00 PM Talked to Jeaux until he fell asleep
10:00 PM Posted recipes for a while
11:00 PM Put up Stupids

Thursday
12:00 AM Edited to get $PAID$
12:30 AM Wrote in online journal
1:00 AM Laughed at Jeaux when he woke up and apologized for sleeping, fed him cake
2:00 AM Bored, wrote in online journal
2:30 AM Did some more editing (yay $18/hr)
3:00 AM Researched pages for new anime I like
3:30 AM Wrote in my daily journal
4:00 AM Worked on a Web page with characters from my THTIB Encyclopedia on it, made so I could show one of my friends
5:00 AM More editing
6:00 AM More working on the page
7:00 AM Khuyem grushi okolochivayu*** waiting for Jeaux to wake up
7:30 AM Went to breakfast at Shoney's with Jeaux
9:00 AM Played with page some more while Jeaux talked and read The Onion, then left
9:30 AM Answered more e-mail
10:00 AM Noticed toilet was disgusting and cleaned it
10:30 AM Did dishes and cleaned the sink and the stovetop
12:00 PM Woo, more editing for profit
12:30 PM Got bored, answered e-mail (yes, still answering; two days ago I had over 50)
1:00 PM Bored, read people's journals
1:30 PM Ate a salad
2:00 PM Played DDR
2:45 PM Bathed
3:30 PM Online research
4:00 PM Got on Everything2.com, turned on Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, and Webcam, talked to people for a couple hours, serenaded Dan and Squirrel
6:00 PM Cleaned up junk on floor
6:30 PM Did some dishes
11:00 PM Answered e-mail

Friday
2:45 AM Played with Web page, edited my own stuff
4:00 AM Edited for more money
5:00 AM Balanced checkbook, paid bills
6:00 AM Made a shopping list
7:00 AM Answered some e-mail, read Mikey's journal
8:00 AM Read some of THTIB 5 for no reason
9:30 AM Went to the grocery store
10:00 AM Unpacked groceries
10:15 AM Searched obsessively for a song on KaZaA
10:30 AM Listened to Frente! while cleaning the oven
10:35 AM Became pleased at scent of new orange oven cleaner
11:20 AM Listened to Alanis while cleaning drawer and cabinet, rearranged all items
11:45 AM Took out trash
12:00 PM Ate grapes
12:45 PM Everything2.com votes
1:20 PM E-mail
2:30 PM Revised chore cards
3:00 PM Ate yummy canteloupe while reading
3:30 PM Web page issues
4:45 PM DDR
5:30 PM Shower!!!
6:00 PM E-mail!!!
7:00 PM Corn and fake meat, handling stuff for Jeaux, more editing
8:00 PM You're lookin' at it, started writing this journal entry

So, you probably noticed it by now. WHEN THE HELL IS SHE SLEEPING???

The answer is, I'm sleeping in between some of those things. Some people call it power-napping, multi-phasic sleep. . . .

It seems to be best known as "The Uberman's Sleep Schedule."

So, I had been reading this book called Beggars in Spain where there is a minority of the population who has been genetically engineered to not need sleep, and I found myself thinking that would be both great and terrible (like OZ!). I found myself wishing I could be like that, and one of my Imbolc wishes was that I would have more free time.

I remembered something I'd once read on Everything2.com about the Uberman schedule, and at the time I read it I thought it was weird and interesting but didn't have the guts to try it. I didn't think I'd be able to do it. I thought it would screw up my work schedule and that I'd mess myself up. Well, I guess that could still happen, it's early in the game.

Okay, here're the facts.

On Uberman, a person sleeps for about 20 minutes five or six times during the day. The point of doing that is to overall reduce the amount of time asleep while still getting all the R.E.M. sleep you need. As people who have had sleep deprivation can attest, you will soon start to hallucinate if you do not sleep often enough. Your brain NEEDS to do that because it's a computer and it needs to defrag. If you don't let it go into sleep mode to defrag, you will see the remnants of files flitting through the monitor while you're freaking awake, man.

Uberman Sleep Schedule allows you to train your body and brain to drop into R.E.M. cycle immediately upon falling asleep. After an R.E.M. cycle occurs, you wake up feeling refreshed, and you're ready to tackle the world. And actually, you're getting MORE R.E.M. sleep than the average person on this schedule.

I've done some research (though if anyone who's freaking out thinking I'm going to kill myself wants to research too and inform me of things I might not have seen, be my guest). Apparently R.E.M. sleep is the thing they're worried about you getting enough of, so making sure you get plenty of it saves you from sleep deprivation. Then I guess it's mostly just about rest and relaxation. There are a couple of things in research saying that if you do USS you're not getting certain stages of sleep where certain hormones or chemicals are usually excreted; for that reason you sometimes have to supplement with certain foods and you have to listen more closely to your body's cravings.

Hence all this grape juice I just bought.

I didn't expect it to be this EASY. I was reading that book with sleepless people in it, I got it in my head that it'd be awesome to be awake more often than everyone else, and then I re-read the Uberman node and decided hey, I could do this with a couple adjustments. I've got it so even on work days I could do five naps a day--leaving me a total of TWENTY-TWO AND A HALF WAKING HOURS out of twenty-four. Holy crap!

The articles all warn you that it will be Hell on Earth your first few days. Not so with me. I've been going for two and a half days and I've only felt a little loopy two distinct times, and I screwed up once but that wasn't really my fault. (That was when I napped too long due to being awoken in the middle of a R.E.M. cycle by the frigging PHONE. That awakening was literally painful. It now gets unplugged during naps.) The loopy times were both today, but they passed soon after naps. One of the times was unfortunately IN the grocery store. I felt spaced-out and ready to giggle at everything, and when I got home I found I had bought black-eyed peas (which I don't like) and a can of coconut milk. I think I knew why at the time. I might be able to remember. Yeah.

But other than those times, I'm doing great. I had enough energy even these first couple days to play DDR. I haven't felt tired. I'm not having to jump-start my awake times with caffeine. I don't have circles under my eyes (yet??). I've been taking my contacts out at night and wearing glasses so I can let my eyes rest a bit. I feel a little weird I guess. The sleeping is REALLY interesting. I lay down for a nap and set alarms to wake me up, but so far except for the time I screwed up due to being interrupted, I HAVE WOKEN UP ON MY OWN BEFORE THE ALARM EVERY TIME. The articles say that that will happen to you once you adapt, that you won't even be ABLE to oversleep, your body will do the R.E.M. cycle it wants and then wake you up, like "'kay, I'm done." I'm already doing that. I'll lay down and hope I'm not gonna have trouble getting to sleep, and then I lay there for a while, and without remembering drifting off or anything, suddenly I'm opening my eyes. Two times so far I vividly remembered the dreams; one was a lucid dream that was really interesting. (I actually told someone in the dream that I was lucid dreaming.) Once I remembered the vague idea, something about a guy in a suit showing me his ID. And the last couple times I don't know what I dreamed about, just that my consciousness blinked. It was so short--I looked at the clock and it had been between ten and fifteen minutes--that I wasn't even sure I wasn't imagining it, but I couldn't go back to sleep and felt like I wanted to get up, so I did.

This is awesome. One of the articles said doing this actually helps your creative centers and makes your mind sharp. I'm already noticing that, I think.

Like I said I do feel a little weird and I guess this will take some adjustment. I still think that I might not be able to do it and this will just be another experiment--if that happens, I'm all right with that, and it's said not everyone can do it. BUT interestingly enough there is evidence that lots of the great geniuses of the world did this sort of thing.

I have yet to do it for a work day. We shall see. I plan to nap just once on lunch break after downing a bowl of soup. If it only takes me ten to fifteen minutes to have a dream, I should be okay as long as I can get to sleep at work. I have slept at work once or twice and I'm cool. Probably lots of people are reading this with warning bells going off thinking "Oh my god, she's gonna screw her life up so bad with this." Guess it's possible. But lucky me, I work at a place where I have seniority and have never called in and am an employee in good standing, so if I do screw up it can be my warning sign that this isn't okay for my lifestyle right now. I'll live. The naps might be inconvenient at times but I think that since they take so little time I can work them into my already eccentric lifestyle. :)

And you guys have my promise that if I start to hallucinate or anything I'll give up. Otherwise, I'll let you know how it goes.

And while I'm at it . . . WAHAHAH I'M SUPERWOMAN, I can do anything!!!! Lookit this, cleaning, dishes, eating, editing, e-mail, Web pages, I'm gonna have plenty of time to do what I want. I don't need to sleep, I just need to have a dream now and then. . . . ::skips away::

***Khuyem grushi okolochivayu means "whacking down pears with my prick" in Russian. It just means kinda killing time, or "what the hell do you THINK I'm doing, buttwipe?" I don't know if I'm using it right. I just think so.