Ahoy there, 4am! I’ve missed you!

::breathes deeply::

Aaahhh, four a.m.  I've missed this time of day — it's so peaceful, and there's time to watch a whole movie (or whatever) before the sun even comes up.

Today is Thursday; yesterday there was no chance I was getting my weekly post done (nor was there on Tuesday, when I usually actually write them).  This is great because I have a job again — YAY! I still won't know I get to keep it for a few months, but for now YAY AND YAY AND YAY — but awful, because said job is eating a good 10 hours out of the middle of a day that had already filled up with several hefty non-job tasks…none of which have gone away now that there is a job.  Waugh.

In short, after working (for the moment, I work from home) on Monday, I looked at my husband and said, "I don't think I can do all this, without my Everyman schedule back!"

He agreed that, even on paper and using a calculator, I actually have more work to do than I can be awake for, even if I work continuously (and eff that), sleeping monophasically. And let's not forget that I'm not actually getting enough sleep on a monophasic schedule anyway, and that 6/1 as a substitute was okay, but not great, and I was missing the nap far too often and just ending up sleeping 6 hours.  Yikes!

So I checked in with my BFF and she agreed.  Now, I have managed in the course of my life to attain a very high-quality best friend and husband, and when they both agree on something, I almost never buck it.  Together they are more powerful than you can imagine, like one of those click-together giant robots.  ;)

…I had quit polyphasic sleep, remember, because my schedule got way sloppy when I lost my job, and it was difficult almost every single day to carve out time for my naps.  Now, what's happened is that my schedule got that full, and I have no choice but to force myself (and others) to make time for the naps, because I *can't* make enough time to do without them!  But I almost don't care what the reason is; I'm polyphasic again, hurrah hurroo!  ;)

So, two days ago (Tuesday) I took all my naps.  My husband took a look at me at ten o'clock that night and said NO.  "Sleep debt accumulates," he told me, "And you still haven't managed to catch up any of the sleep you missed [going out of town recently].  I demand you get one night of more than enough sleep before you start this."

We all know that sleep-debt is part of what makes the brain/body switch over to a polyphasic schedule, but we also don't know whether starting the adaptation process while already sleep-deprived is a good idea or not; so I had mixed feelings about his advice.  But in this case, he was very right; for the last seven days straight I'd been operating in a thick fog, and I didn't even realize it until I slept 9 hours (like the dead) on Tuesday night.  WOW did I feel better on Wednesday.  So I took all my naps again yesterday (couldn't sleep for one, but I laid down anyway), and then I stayed up last night — I was tired, but not horribly so.

Getting up at 4a.m. … yes, well, there are more fun things than that, especially the first couple times.  But I'm here and I'm quite functional, barely a yawn, and in less than 4 hours it'll be naptime again.  (On Everyman 3, I get up at 4 and take my first nap at 8; then my next at 1-2pm, then another at 7-8pm.  That's the schedule I held, with very little modification, for a few years there.  And it's back!  I'm so geeked. WOOT!)

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes me to "switch back".  I was on this schedule — Everyman3, which is one three-hour core nap and three 20-minute naps — for over three years before I quit it, and it's been, um, about 3 months since I started having such trouble getting my naps and "gave up".  But good lord, that "giving up" cost me almost four hours a day, plus a lot of soreness and grogginess and quite a bit of stress and feeling rushed, all of which could have been so easily solved…by a little 4am-time.

Good morning!! 

PD

Gorgeous creative-commons photo by Martin Pettitt — thank you!