Local Insanity

This is harder than I thought it’d be. I’ve overslept every time I’ve tried to do it. I need a real alarm. The phone is too easily turned off and the computer is unreliable. My mission today is to get a better alarm.

I skipped Day 1 mostly because I’d intended to do the blog entry after my 3am nap, but the 3am nap extended all the way until 8am. I guess I’ve gotten pretty good at turning off my alarm in my sleep. So I find myself set back about one day. Today I biked to the coast from work to take my 11am nap. There was already a guy sitting in the spot I would have used, which surprised me given that I’d never seen anyone there before. I remembered that there was a path that led on some switch-backs down the side of the cliff, two of which have some overhanging rock. I stopped at the first one and slept there - or tried to.

It’s really amazing how hard it is to sleep for any length of time if you’re concentrating on doing just that. I was not sleep-deprived enough to need to get into it. I decided to skip both my 3pm and 7pm naps, since I wouldn’t be sleepy enough to do anything with them anyway. I did take the 11pm one though, and I actually did fall asleep. Waking up to the alarm and actually getting out of bed was a near thing though. It is now a quarter past 2am.

Like Steve, I’ve found it somewhat challenging to stay awake in the middle of the night. There’s this psychological pressure that tells me I shouldn’t be doing anything, that I should be asleep, to go to bed. Yet here I am, awake. I think I’ll take a walk - the night should be cool enough to wake me up a little bit. Day 2 video

I saw a journal of this over at stevepavlina.com and decided to give it a shot. Mostly because I’m curious, and I think I can if I try hard enough. I’ll get something out of it, even if it’s just learning that this doesn’t work for me. I thought that it’d be fun to record visually using my new MacBook’s iSight, which should give some idea of how insane I’m getting from sleep deprivation. Here’s day 0.

I’ve tentatively decided on a schedule of 30 minute naps six times a day at 3, 7, and 11. To begin I’ll be going to bed at 11pm, waking up roughly 7:30am, then a nap at 11-11:30am etc. The hardest thing, initially, will be finding things to do at night that are not going to put me to sleep. Here’s hoping I don’t get fired.