Since becoming polyphasic (I prefer to call it anasomnatic now), I start an inordinate number of my sentences with "If anyone had told me..." For example, behold the following paragraph.
If anyone had told me that I would be able to, within the space of a simple 20 minute nap, go from an alert awake state to that of sleeping so deeply that I would not only not be disturbed by an alarm, but also that I would reach over in my sleep, pick it up, turn it off, and then return to sleep without remembering it, I would have bet them $100 USD.
And they would have won, for that is what just happened. Alert all day; five-thirty rolled around, and since I am attending a virtual course this week I was able to simply turn around and lay on my bed for my 5:30 nap. A little while later, I awake. What happened? What time is it? Where's my alarm clock aka iPhone? I climb out of bed, look around, the other clock says 7pm. I turn around, I find my iPhone in my bed, alarm disabled. I piece together a semi-somnabulistic zombie-like state, where I awake but am not conscious, manage to pick up, look at and turn off the iPhone alarm, then put it back down beside me in bed and with the disturbance rectified, I slip back into blissful unconsciousness.
Lesson to be learned: even for a nap, I now need multiple alarms. Since I have become a little lazy in getting up in the mornings, on my iPhone I have been setting several alarms to go off in succession, each about 1 to 5 minutes apart. It has worked; if I don't get up on the first one, I usually get up on the second or third. But I set up to 10 of them more and more widely spaced right up until the time I absolutely must get up for example, to go to work.
I now need to do this for my naps.
And is this healthy? I would argue that it is. I just went through another 3-day long cold; that's two colds since I have been anasomnatic, and my colds up until now have always been 2 weeks long.
If anyone had told me that less sleep could be healthier...
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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