Day 6: Rejuvination

[12:34am Thursday (CDT)] As of yet I have not entered my 2am nap. I wanted to write a little before hand to solidify in my mind my goals and plans for tonight.

• Getting up after the nap is finished is key


• Remaining awake during not-naptime (or !naptime) is the goal


• If I feel noddy-drowsy then I have to get up and walk around for at least 5 minutes


• I will walk around for at least 10 minutes following each nap.

Now, because walking is not going to hold my attention, I have my ipod and some audiobooks to keep me company. I've always imagined myself walking around every night and every day and confusing the mexican staff, but so far I've only spent my nights in the room or on the balcony.

I have had way too much Coke since coming to Mexico (because mexican coke is so much better), and today especially. My last nap or two were not fully restful because I did not get to sleep until late in the period, and even then it wasn't deep. It's as if I've lost the art of falling asleep. My method before was counting from 0 to 10 and back to 0 repeatedly at varying speeds. This keeps the forefront of my attention busy and distracts it so the rest of my mind can shut down. It worked really well up until trying to fall asleep on Sunday night (Day 3). Normally, I do this until I start mixing up the order of numbers or skipping/repeating numbers, or forget to count entirely. I know that this is when I'm about to fall asleep, and usually takes somewhere between 1 and 5 minutes. The problem is that if I have caffeine or a lot of noise around me then it doubles the time this takes, and also makes a constant chatter in the back of my mind that doesn't get distracted or shut off by just ignoring it. Essentially the chatter keeps up even when I'm ready for sleep and forces me to remain in "unsleep".

As a side note, supposedly there is chatter going on in our minds constantly and processing information while we're awake, but we're so used to it that we don't even notice it. When the uberman schedule is adopted, much of our "chatter" thoughts are replaced by "sub-language" thoughts. That is, as the brain quickens it begins to think in terms of the ideas being percieved rather than in their linguistical equivalences. This helps speed of thought

...and 2am was a success, almost. A new beast has reared its head. The alarm went off at 2:20 and I woke up and thought "Huh. Why is it going off now? I never even went to sleep" and then I reset the alarm to 2:40 and went back to sleep. I got up at 2:40 just fine and figured out that I had slept both times. Gotta not do that again. I walked in a circle between the two hotels which took about 15 minutes. Dad is still up working on emails.

...and 6am was even better. It was also normal sleep, but I wasn't disoriented upon waking. Perhaps this schedule can be rescued from the gutter and not be thrown off too much by the oversleeping. Just have to get it in control through force. But on the other hand, I can't get too confident in the fact that these went well, because overconfidence is what lost me the other night.

;hunter