Everyman Report: Vacation Results

So, the conference-plus-week-in-Boston is over. I had a great time, especially with the latter (the former being fun but holy-gods stressful).

You’ll recall from earlier posts that the conference knocked me off my schedule pretty bad. It really only took 24 hours of concerted effort, and one tired night, to get it back. That’s impressive in itself, but what really took the cake was what I discovered happens when, instead of a nice stable work-routine, you have Tourism filling up your days.

In short, I found that I can freely swing naps a half hour in either direction with no negative effects. After a few days, it became natural to, even if I was home and could nap dead on time, start checking my watch a half hour before a “naptime” and then “feel out” when exactly I should go down — very often it seems that a quarter after is the best time in terms of utmost comfort and automatic waking up. A couple times I even had to shift naps by one or more hours — in which case I only shifted ONE nap, and then went right back to my schedule; I’ve tried “shifting everything” in the past and that never works out well — which made me tired, yes, but not for long.

• If I had to seriously shift one nap (by 1-2 hours) but got it, and then took the next on time, I was fine after the one I got on time, and a bit tired in-between, as well as waking up somewhat groggy.
• If a nap got so fux0rd that I missed it (more than 2 hours off), I took the next nap correctly and was tired afterwards, but woke up well after the next nap.
• Only exception was the core — see below.

The core is what makes Everyman really inherently flexible, I think. I always plan to get up at 5:00 now, since that seems to be a natural wake-up point for me (though it sure wasn’t when I was sleeping monophasically!). If I’m tired at or before 2:00, I go to bed at 2 and sleep 3 hours. This has been happening less as time goes on — if I got all my other naps in well, I usually wasn’t getting tired this week before 3, sometimes 4, and as long as I went to bed when I was tired, I woke up fine at 5. Neat, eh?

Here’s the really cool part — when the schedule gets REALLY screwed up, as it did during the last 48 hours. I had a 12-hour drive home yesterday, and I remembered from my trip out that the car was hideously difficult, if not impossible, to sleep in (plus this time I had much more stuff, so the seats didn’t even recline–aurgh). I had trouble sleeping Friday evening, but did lay down, and then decided I would try to sleep extra during my core to compensate for what was sure to be a rocker of a day (and it was) on Saturday. I slept from 2-7, after waking at 5 and convincing myself to take a longer snooze. Oddly enough, I still slept like a brick at 9 a.m. (That’s really not so odd — my 9 a.m. nap is special; I ALWAYS fall out for that one like a bowling ball off the Eiffel Tower. If I’m going to have trouble falling asleep, it won’t be at 9 a.m.!)

We left at 1:00; I tried to snooze a little at noon, since I knew I wouldn’t get my 2:00, and that probably staved off the 3v1l a little bit. And I want kudos, because at 6:00 and, to a lesser extent, 11:00, I managed to sleep curled up in the front seat of a compact car. Not laying *across* the seats, or sitting up — I actually fit on the butt-and-floor bits of a single car seat. I should have gotten into stuffing myself in phone booths when I was in college, as apparently I have the necessary skill!

However, I didn’t sleep well at 11 (the curled-up-on-the-seat trick is HELL on your neck; I’m still sore), and then I couldn’t at 2, because we kept thinking we were almost home, though road-construction actually delayed us until 4. I was beyond exhausted. I stumbled through the door, flopped on the couch, flipped the bird to my alarm clock (it would have needed resetting, and I probably couldn’t have done it for a hundred bucks) and passed out.

I slept three and a half hours. Woke up at 7:30 feeling pretty good, and felt great after my 9:00.

The upshot being, I slept between 3-5 hours per day the whole time I was on vacation without stressing about it, and fell right back onto the schedule after a 12-hour car ride.

Heidi is absolutely right in her recent comments about the nature of Everyman and the necessity to “feel out” where your napping and waking times should be. This means a very long adjustment period — I still haven’t really gotten the “flow” down yet, though it’s coming, gradually, as I tweak things — but one during which you get to be mostly functional, which is important for a lot of working people, including myself. (There’s also an inherent problem with taking a sabbatical of some sort to adjust to Uberman — you may get over the physical part, but then you STILL have to re-write your entire life around the schedule, and that’s harder than it sounds, even on its own.)

And while there’s lots more to talk about, that’s PLENTY for now; it’s good to be home and great to be polyphasic. ;)

-PD