Dan's Polyphasic Blog: Everyman-in-Training

Summary: I think I’m well on my way to adaptation. The first few days of this attempt were pretty sketchy, so it’s probably closer to being approximately day 10 for me. I’m still getting pretty tired at times (it’s worse during the day, these days), but I haven’t screwed up very much in a while.

I think I’m starting to understand why most people who do Everyman don’t blog every day. First of all, it’s not nearly as difficult, which, frankly, makes the experience a lot more boring. This isn’t really a bad tradeoff, though. It’s just less bloggable. Also, you don’t have as much free time that needs to get wasted when you’re on Everyman. This is slightly related to the first one. Since you’re doing better, you don’t have as much “dead time” where you cannot do anything productive. I found blogging to be a great way to get through the first hard part of the night, when I was on Uberman. There has never been a time, recently, where I haven’t been awake enough to do something else that I really want to do.

So, that being said, my adaptation seems to be coming along pretty well. I’m still tired a lot (especially at work, where I sit in a chair for hours at a time), but I have been getting up after my core without issue (the real test will be on the weekend, I fear), and I haven’t fallen asleep unintentionally since my last post on the weekend. I did move a nap by about 3 hours one day (yikes!).

Some interesting things that have happened:
On Sunday, my parents invited me out for lunch. I was playing a game, and made note of the time, so that I didn’t miss lunch. When I finished up with the game to get ready to go, I realized that I needed to take a nap yet, too, and I hadn’t accounted for that! So, I went for lunch without the nap. I was okay until about 14:00, after which I started feeling a lot more tired. I spent the afternoon hanging out with my family, again, but as soon as we got to their house, I took a nap (at around 15:30, I think). We played a lot more of that Wii Sports Resort game. It’s actually a lot of fun (recommended, if you enjoyed Wii Sports at all). I took another nap at my regularly scheduled 17:30-ish, and I felt reasonably good after that. I don’t know if this has had any subsequent effects; I didn’t extend my core the next night as some people sometimes suggest, and I took all of the other naps following it at the right times. However, I’ve been feeling tired for most of this week, and I don’t know if the moved nap contributed to this feeling, or if it’s just regular adaptation woes.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, Jeremy and I went out for coffee until 03:30. On Monday, Jen joined us, as well. The people working the graveyard shift are getting used to seeing us there . Going out for coffee is a lot of fun late at night. You get quick service, because no one else is around. Also, for some reason, the place we go to does a lot of their baking early in the morning/late at night, so they have a shelf full of muffins, scones and other baked goods for the choosing .

I’ve spent a bunch of time in the last few weeks playing games on my computer at night, but in the last day or two, I’ve done some reading at night with some success. Reading is something that I’ve meant to do more of, and I want to lose the gaming habit (yeah, right!), so I’m going to try to do more reading at night. The reading I had been doing previously had all been non-fiction, useful stuff. This is the stuff that makes you tired. The stuff that’s been working well has been fiction, which is much more exciting, and does not make you tired. Eventually I’ll read the useful stuff, too, but reading fiction sounds a lot better to me than playing the same tired games all night.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 11:16 and is filed under 3rd attempt (everyman3), progress report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.