Update & Polyphasic Maintenance Tips

Hey world!  I’m so brainfried that even work doesn’t expect me to be working right now!  That’s quite an accomplishment, I think.  Thank various banks and title companies for royally screwing up my attempt to buy The House, possibly irreparably.

::*bangs head on desk for a while*::

So, I wasn’t planning on a polyphasic update for a little while, since you all know how hashed and random my schedule got/gets/is due to massive stress overload and whatnot — but, it turns out I have something to report after all.  I’ve actually been doing remarkably well this last two weeks with getting my schedule back on-track, and I thought I’d share that.  It turns out that the most valuable things to do have been:

*  Take extra naps, rather than longer naps.  This is hard since I’m only oversleeping due to stress and wanting to hide from the world, but it turns out that I can motivate myself to get up for an hour (and usually stay up for two) if I promise myself an extra nap.  I often can’t sleep for the extra nap, but I do get to hide in the blankets or car for another 20 minutes, and that’s worth something.

*  Limit snuggle-time.  I get this powerful urge to snuggle with my boy before I go to work in the morning, when he’s still sleeping (and, remember, there’s not a lot else for me to do).  If I nap at all at this time, I’m going to oversleep or hit snooze and end up running late for work; it’s a guarantee.  But I can set an alarm for ten minutes, which isn’t enough time for me to fall asleep (between naps), and get my snuggles in without penalty.

*  Take shorter naps / watch for best nap-length.  Don’t know why, but lately my ideal nap has gone from 23 minutes to 21 (or rather, from 22 to 20 — that’s 21 on the timer, since it takes a minute to settle in).  I’ll sleep to 23 if I set the timer for it, but I’ll feel groggier on waking.  Just goes to show that it’s a good idea to keep an eye on yourself while polyphasic, no matter how long you’ve been doing it and especially when life-circumstances go wonky.

*  Make damn sure to exercise.  I don’t feel like it (or much of anything) lately, so it’s a challenge, but if you’re me, such challenges are relatively easily resolveable by making them interesting.  So rather than abandon my usual routine altogether, I’m switching it around frantically, trying to keep it fresh and able to convince me to get up and move at least once a day.  Knowing six different taiji forms and a yoga routine has really helped…!

*  Be forgiving, and don’t give up.  Even when I deliberately throw an alarm across the room and go back to bed for two hours grumbling curses upon all of humanity, I try to let it go and move forward.  This is actually a piece of general advice-for-depressives that I’ve picked up over the years:  Don’t dwell on mistakes, because it just pulls you further under.  A bout of major depression can mean that you spend half a day or more in bed (or crying in the closet or whatever), but when that passes, you can either drop it and get up to salvage what’s left, or spend the next half a day hating yourself for wasting the first half.  But it turns out that this little brainhack is great for poly-schedules too — when I screw up, I just forget about it and keep going as though nothing happened, unless it’s to make some obvious adjustment to my naps so that I continue to get them about every 4-5 hours.  (I try to move only one nap whenever possible and get right back on my normal schedule asap.)  And even then, I forbid myself to think about the adjustments in terms of failures. 

(It’s funny — forbidding oneself from thinking negatively is notoriously difficult for people like me, but when it comes to sleep I can do it.  I think my brain is rather used to being bossed around about sleep!)

…So, all that, and this morning I realized that I’m actually back to making hardly any mistakes at all for the last couple days.  I feel like a zombie emotionally, but that’s understandable since I was running on empty last week and at the moment there’s still no end to this ordeal in sight.  But at least I’m not tired, and once again, being able to take frequent breaks for naps, and having extra time to myself to just zone out on a movie or sink into a book, have all been real sanity-savers.

Also, thanks to everyone who answered the poll about the future direction of this site — the vote was evenly split between "Just polyphasic stuff" and "Freaking everything", so I’ll aim for half and half.  ;)