Polyphasism: The parallels of religion and polyphasic sleep.

Time to subject polyphasic sleeping to the usual scientific scrutiny I require of everything (I do try to be an ideal scientist). This website seems to give a full rounded view of polyphasic sleeping. At first.

Religious fanatics

Note: Here Suby is responding to some comments about religion.

Objections to Polyphasic Sleep

The people I talk to show a wide range of support for my transition to polyphasic sleep. Most react with “Interesting… Let me know how that works out for you.” The best of them are thoroughly enthusiastic and lament their own poor schedule that prevents them from joining me. The worst, though, point out what appear to be pretty major objections to polyphasic sleep being possible. I’ll talk about some of them here.

Setbacks

Now that I’m on my own for napping, I need to take extra care against my post-nap untrustworthiness.

I didn’t.

I overslept again on Sunday, and it was completely my fault. I awoke after my nap at 1630 and turned off the alarms, but I didn’t get out of bed. I should have known better by now to make sure my alarms are not reachable while part of me is still under the covers. I slept an extra seven hours, my worst yet.

Despite this, I do still feel like I’m making progress. I’ve been falling asleep extremely quickly for my recent naps. Every time I oversleep it’s a setback to my becoming fully polyphasic, but I don’t think it actually sets me back in my schedule. That is, even with oversleeps, I make progress. It’s just slower progress than I could make otherwise.

A Reaction to Jesus Camp

I just watched Jesus Camp and I think I would classify the movie/documentary as horror. What we hear about in the news is the crazy suicide bombers, but what you don’t hear (maybe cause they aren’t detonating themselves) is the brainwashing that takes place in the middle of America.

Another Day Down

Now that Suby really is quitting on me, my future as a polynapper got that much more uncertain. No, I’m not having second thoughts. I’m just thinking about this past week and how many times he’s saved me. I woke up before him maybe twice and had to wake him up. He did the same for me closer to twenty times. The two times last week that I overslept were both while I was trying to nap alone. In the middle of the nights – in my untrustworthy, sleepless state – just having him looking over my shoulder kept me going. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to make the transition alone. Suby has been priceless to me. It’s painful to watch him give up just because he was unlucky enough to have a harder transition and couldn’t make the switch in the time he had available.

Hopefully I’m beyond the critical point now. However, last night (Sunday morning) was really tough and I’m not sure why. I hadn’t been oversleeping or not sleeping during the preceding naps. Nothing was particularly different. I simply felt more compellingly tired than I have since the first few days of the switch. Although Suby is officially no longer napping, he had slept most of yesterday so he ended up hanging out with me all night again anyway. When I woke up at 0430, I probably would have gone back to sleep (I didn’t remember the nap I just took) if he hadn’t stopped me.

Still, I made it. Every successful nap brings me closer to my goal.

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 9 : A second perspective.

As Manxome already pointed out, it is part of the polyphasic initiation ritual to blog about your experience, especially during your transition phase. So this is my account of attempting polyphasic sleep.

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 9

I started posting about my polynapping somewhat later than is traditional, so instead of a blow-by-blow account of my agony and ecstasy, here’s a summary. This is Day 9 of being polyphasic for me, and I’ve been going long enough to have some perspective and reflect on that first week.

Intro to Polyphasic Sleep

It seems to be something of a tradition to start a blog when one begins the transition to a polyphasic sleep cycle. Certainly most of my enthusiasm for the switch was generated while reading other personal accounts of switching.

In the beginning…

Once upon a time there were two college students. They got it in their heads to try this crazy thing called polyphasic sleeping. After a few days of intense sleep deprivation, one of them had a revelation: “Let’s start a blog!”
And it was so.

Welcome… to the Edge of Reason.