1:09 PM; ? hahaha....

So, fail! Just FYI after that last post I fell asleep between 1 and 4 (PM)... so it took me longer to fall asleep, but I still fell eventually. lol, but I would have pushed onward once again, however, my mom can't handle the "immense amount of stress" that SHE'S receiving from me doing this thing... (???) Anyways, I'm going to relocate to my dad's place after the New Year's festivities, and restart! Just as an interesting note, however... I'm noticing that the past couple of days (I've been sleeping monophasically... is that a word?) I've been more tired upon waking up, despite sleeping from 2 or 3 AM to an equivalent PM hour, and I also kinda feel like shit in general when I wake up because I feel as though I've wasted a lot of time. Basically, I'm excited to restart the polyphasia. More in a few days..........................

5:42 AM; 4

Success! Now I just have to stay awake... I've got a couple things I can/need to do (wrap presents, clean my room) to keep me busy for a little while, and hopefully after that I'll be comfortably awake until 9, when the cleaning people show up and I won't be able to go back to sleep.

4:59 AM; 4

Okay - so I'm at another crucial point in the day... I feel slightly tired, but definitely capable of waking up. Let's see if I can actually wake up and stay up at 5:30. Hopefully I can, because my mom is going to piss her pants if I don't clean up my room and do other various pre-teen-esque chores around the house before 9. Anyways, if I wake up and stay up I'll post on here at around 5:40. Wish me luck, I haven't succeeded in this part yet.

8:41 PM; 4

So I failed again this morning. Went to sleep at 6 and woke up at noon. Tonight I'm going to try setting multiple alarms. I think the problem is that I am turning off my alarm before waking up enough to remember that I am doing an experiment and that I can't go back to sleep. more later....

6:12 PM; 3

Well I am feeling tired still, so apparently I didn't get too much sleep this morning, which is a good thing. Tonight I'm going to have my own personal movie marathon to help me stay awake and give me something to look forward to when I wake up for the night time intervals other than quietly loitering in my own house, waiting for time to pass.

12:18 PM; 2 going on 3

ugh. Well I went to bed at 5 AM feeling particularly capable of making it through the night, and I just woke up. Alarm must have been set wrong or something. Well if my mistake on day 1 wasn't big enough to effect my transition, this mistake surely is. Doesn't matter in the long run; I am going to continue to attempt to adjust. Setbacks like this are quite frustrating though. My next nap is at 1 PM, day 3. I am still tired, I think, so maybe I didn't completely restart the experiment.

4:33 AM; 2

I'm almost to the 5 AM checkpoint... I was barely able to get any sleep at the 1 AM nap, so I've been looking forward to 5 AM since my alarm went off at 1:30. I went downstairs and watched TV for pretty much the whole time (thank you Adult Swim. special thanks to Metalocalypse, best show of the night), and now I only need to kill about half an hour until I can go to sleep. Hopefully I am getting to the point where A) I fall asleep nearly immediately after laying down and B) my body immediately enters REM sleep. I don't have much planned for when I wake up. I still have some laundry downstairs to take up, but that will only keep my occupied until about 5:40. At 6 I can bother my mom by making some coffee. Hopefully the gesture will soften her sentiments to this experiment. At around 2 AM she came downstairs nagging me about how it is my right to "do this REM thing if I want to" but it is not my right to "stress everyone else out." ha... I'm pretty sure I'm not the one forcing her to be stressed. Anyways... 20 more minutes until I can collapse. I'm thinking about lifting and jogging between 5 and 9, but simultaneously I'm thinking about how tired I already am and how tired I was between 9 and 1 on day 1; I don't want to worsen my odds of making it through the 9 to 1 interval, considering that my schedule didn't go according to plan between 9 and 1.

12:56 AM; 2

Alright so I've been sticking to the plan for the most part. After my 9 AM slumber, I took a shower, and when I got back to my room I laid down for a second .... which turned into like an hour. Fuck. Well that may have restarted the process, but I'm not giving up on this, so although tonight will probably be just as much of a battle as last night, I'm going to push on... I'm going to see if TV and movies can hold me over til the sun rises. I noticed that my weariness/grogginess wore off almost completely as the sun rose at around 6/6:30 this morning. Another post coming soon... but for now I have to sleep.

8:17 AM; 1

Whew. So when I woke up at 6:10 ish I felt like shit. I ended up laying on my back concentrating on not closing my eyes for like... almost an hour maybe 50 mins. Then I distracted myself by moving laundry from downstairs and putting it in my drawers. This woke up my mom, and she asked me to make her coffee and for some reason, while I was trying to figure out how to assemble the coffeemaker (I put it together wrong 3 times before I got it to work), I suddenly felt awake and not in imminent danger of falling asleep right where I stood. It's also light out now, which is probably helping a lot. Anyways, I definitely feel as though I will make it to my 9:30 nap without any more problems.

6:35 AM; 1

I am so tired. I slept from about 5:40 until about 6:10. I'm trying to think of things to do. I just played Halo for a little bit, but that reminded me that my neck is still pretty sore. Lifting or exercising is only going to make me more tired, I'm not really hungry so I can't spend time eating, and I'm afraid that if I start reading I'll fall asleep mid-sentence. Looking forward to 9:30.

5:07 AM; 1

For reference - day 1 is the first 24 hours after I woke up from my final monophasic night. Day 2 is the second 24 hours.....

So it's 5:09 right now. I'm going to get 30 mins. at 5:20 and looking forward to it... I'm not so much tired as I am sore; I played football this afternoon and my back is killing me. So playing video games and reading - the two activities I was counting on to hold me over until the morning - are no good because the worsen the stiffness. I haven't been extremely strict about sticking to me sleep schedule. I meant to wake up at noon today and sleep for 20-30 mins at the beginning of every 4 hour interval (12, 4, 8...) but I've ended up sleeping 20 mins at 4:30, 8:55, and 1:20, after waking up initially at 12:30. I figured that this being the first day, being off by 30 mins isn't going to effect my chances of success too much. Hopefully this attitude won't be my downfall. Since the whole point of this week of adjustment is to deprive myself of sleep, I figure that missing sleep is only going to bring about that mental adaptation more quickly. I simply have to make sure that I am sleeping enough as to be able to stay awake when I need to. At 4:30 I slept in a car, at 8:55 I laid in bed and drifted off for about 5 mins before my alarm went off, and at 1:20 I didn't come close to sleep. I've found that I've built up my expectations for this so much that I'm finding it difficult to go to sleep. I need some good movies. Well, it's about 5:20, so I'm going to see if I can actually fall asleep for a little bit - I'm allowing myself 30 mins this time around - before I force myself out of bed a little before 6. Hopefully my back won't feel so stiff when I wake up...