So I got in bed at one this morning, and conked out readily . . . then woke up again at six in the morning, on the couch.  I have only one memory of the intervening time: pulling blankets up on the couch because I was cold.  It was probably also the fact that I was laying on a comfortable couch with blankets that put me to sleep so quickly.  This morning, I had a random youtube video paused at about seven minutes, so I figure with time to get to the couch, situate myself, and pull up the video, that gives me at least ten minutes between my nap and my sleep, and probably closer to fifteen.  

I guess my body clock kicked in, because I woke up on my own a little after six and, although rather groggy, had the sense to not go back to sleep, after I'd slept for about four and a half hours.  I'm lucky that happened; if I'd slept until eight or later, I might have had a problem.  As it is, I only slept for half an hour longer than normal, and woke up two hours before I normally would, so I think I'll be okay.  I almost fell asleep this afternoon when Bryon took a nap, and I consider that to be a good sign.

I'll post again after my 10 pm nap.

It's only Day 9? Damn, I was sure it was later than that

Despite my difficulty getting up after last night's midnight nap, I did in fact stay up until 4, by virtue of Portal.  It took me most of an hour to really get going this morning, but by 10 I was really quite solid.

Then I made a mistake.

I let myself relax during lunch.  I didn't sleep or get in bed or anything, but I let myself lay back in a comfortable recliner for twenty minutes while I talked and checked my email, and I guess that sent the wrong message to my body.  By the time I got up to leave, I was completely exhausted, and it took me most of the rest of the afternoon - until 5 or so - to shake that feeling off.

I'm actually laying in that recliner again as I type this, and feeling my cognition rapidly decline, but it's okay this time, because my nap is coming up in half an hour : )

Holy shit guys

I am tired.  

Yeah, I know, it's an adjustment to polyphasic sleep, you're gonna get tired.  This is the first time it's taken me this long to get going after a nap, though.  I've been up for almost an hour, and I'm only now getting to a state where I'm not in danger of drifting off accidentally.  My eyeballs hurt, and I didn't want to get out of my warm bed with and leave Bryon there.  

This also confirmed a suspicion I've had for some time: I'm much more vulnerable to cold than I used to be.  I am, without exception, freezing when I get up, to the point where I've been getting in the bathtub and turning the hot water on and just letting it run for twenty minutes when I get up from a nap.  Now, I do live in the south, so getting cold easily would not normally be a problem.

Unfortunately, my job is that I run the freezer section of a food warehouse.  It's normal for me to spend several hours a day in a 0-10 degree environment (and yes, that's Fahrenheit).

I also scare much more easily.  I've several times had to fight off sudden, violent urges to shriek like a little girl when something startles me.  I almost did it at a lionfish in Petco.   Haha, thank god I didn't.  That wouldn't have been embarrassing at all.

Ugh, I'm getting tired again.  I need to go find something to do so I don't fall asleep.

Day 7

Hey, it's been awhile.

So here's what's gone on in the last week.  On day 3, I was unable to fall asleep for my 7 pm nap.  I continued to lay down for naps at various times throughout the evening, but I never managed to fall asleep until 11.  Then I woke up at 8.  Okay, so 5 hours of sleep isn't enough to let me fall asleep at 7.  It's like I've got a really solid wall between myself and sleep, and I can't sleep unless I can break through it with a large amount of sleep debt.

Obviously the next step would be to only sleep 4 hours a night  That, though, would mean that I would have to go into a full day of work with only 4 hours of sleep and the possibility that I still wouldn't be able to fall asleep that night. I didn't want to risk this on any more than one day, so I waited until the night before the last day of work and stayed up until 4 am this morning.

I still had my alarm set for 8:30, but I popped awake at 8 all on my own.  I felt pretty decent for only four hours of sleep.  Early on in the day, I experienced occasional waves of tiredness, but I think it was more psychological than physical.  By 11 I was going strong.

At 7, despite having only 4 hours of sleep the night before, I still wasn't that tired.  So I laid down anyway, and used a biofeedback technique I thought of.  Generally speaking, in biofeedback, the more senses you can tie into the attempt, the deeper you can reach.  So I focused on seeing and feeling myself slowly drift through this wall into sleep.  I guess the combination of sleep-dep and biofeedback worked, because the next thing I knew, my boyfriend was shaking me awake because it was 8.

I laid on the couch for about fifteen minutes as I slowly came all the way awake, and about fifteen minutes after that I started to feel good.  Like, really good.  After about half an hour, it started to wear off.  I'm still decently awake now, but I'll be ready for my next nap in two hours.