Day 14 - Crash and burn

I think the most surprising thing so far on this new sleep schedule is that I STILL don't have enough free time. I've wanted to update this blog a few times the last 2 days but haven't had the chance.

So I guess the moral is, if you're in it just for the additional time it might not be enough to keep you motivated :-)

Now for the update.

Day 12 - Day 12 went pretty well. I was awake during all the right times and my daily over-sleep (more on that later) was 90 minutes as usual. I felt quite good except from 4am to 7am.

Day 13 - I was convinced I had everything solved. My "nap quality" was the highest ever. I don't think I had an apnea episode all day. Except for 8:30pm I didn't even take any back-to-back naps, no over-sleeps, nothing. Even for the back-to-back nap I set the time to 10 minutes for the second nap instead of 20. Worked great. I didn't actually FEEL the best I've felt on the schedule so far, but I definitely felt better than my monophasic-self. Even my test scores (which I'd been neglecting along with the blogging) were record setting.

Then today happened. Holy smokes. I don't think I've come closer to quitting than I did today. And that's knowing that my wife will kill me if I just quit.

What happened? Okay, since you asked...

• 12:30am - Took my nap, woke up feeling great
• 1am - Went to work as per my schedule, felt great, got a bunch accomplished. From here on out the times are approximate as best I can reconstruct.
  
• 2:45am - Started feeling tired early. I should have had another hour before any tiredness crept in.
• 3:10am - Feeling really tired now, I decided it would be "safer" to take a quick extra nap in the car before heading home for my 4:30 nap.
• 3:30am - Woke from the nap feeling not much better, which honestly should have been my clue to get home and take a more restful nap. I didn't though, and decided to push through until 4am when it was time to leave to go home for the 4:30 nap.
• 5:50am - Woke up with a start. I had passed out completely, at my desk, head crashed into the keyboard (and I had the indentations in my forehead to prove it). I have no idea how close to 4am I got, but honestly I'm glad I DIDN'T get halfway home or something... Yikes!
• 5:55am - Feeling like almost total crap, I decided (bad idea) to head home to sleep better. Sleeping better wasn't the bad idea. DRIVING was the bad idea. I made it home safely and didn't even come close to an accident or anything, but I shudder to think what might have happened.
• 6:10am - Got home, went straight to bed for a 20 min nap. I know I woke up and turned off the alarm but that's all I know.
• 7:30am - My wife woke me up (and boy was she not happy about it... Neither was I)
• 8:50am - Laid down for my 8:30 nap to try to get back on track, and ended up taking 3 back-to-back naps instead of just 1 nap.
• 9:55am - My wife woke me up again (even less happy) and I went back to work.
  

So that's what I call HELL.

I can't remember at what point I considered quitting exactly, but I assure you, I really thought "to heck with this" and nearly went down without an alarm ON PURPOSE. I didn't though, and I'm grateful I didn't give up. I'm also grateful my wife had my back or I'd be in even worse shape than I am right now.

Lessons learned:

• Sleeping in the car is still a problem and HAS TO BE RESOLVED ASAP.
• Don't drive sleepy (I'm extremely grateful I don't have narcolepsy... This single incident of passing out was very very scary)
• Maybe those 90 minute "over-sleeps" weren't such a bad thing!

That last point is really what I'm thinking a lot about. Scheduling a longer "nap" is also known as "core sleep" where you get a longer block of sleep in addition to or instead of one of your naps.

Since I've started this schedule I think I've had a 90 minute over-sleep almost daily. Contrary to my expectations, these have NOT had a negative effect on the schedule that I can tell. Yesterday however was one of the first days I hadn't over-slept hardly at all and I Crashed and Burned. Big time. With a capital C and B.

I don't really have a plan for this set in stone yet, but I'm tossing around a few ideas:

• A scheduled 90 minute core-sleep daily (probably from 11:30pm to 1am or something like that) which is better than a random over-sleep each day.
• A WEEKLY core-sleep (also known as a "reboot") of a few hours, maybe as many as 5. I'm pretty hesitant about this one though.
• Outfitting my mini-van with an actual mattress in the back so I can sleep in the frickin car in an emergency. This adds a bit of inconvenience though since I won't be able to chauffeur the kids around, I'll have to trade cars with my wife to do that.

Of maybe more than one of the above.

I was also toying with the idea of resetting my day counter to 0 since last night was so bad, but I'm not going to do that. Although it was pure hell and extremely inconsistent, I didn't actually give up and go back to monophasic sleeping. So, I'm going to count it as yet another learning experience (in a LONG line now) and keep incrementing the counter.

Onwards and upwards.