So it has now been one full week since I last slept more than an hour-ish at any given time.
I’m going to be both brief and honest here.
I forgot to write things down each time I got up this past day because I busied myself with stuff other than this journal, so I cannot honestly recollect exactly how I felt upon waking each time (since I did it so often!), if I got to sleep on time, if I overslept, or what EXACTLY I did during my day in what order. I do know that overall I have been relatively untired until about within a half hour of naptime, and though sometimes it can take up to fifteen minutes, I do fall asleep and wake up feeling like I slept for a few hours.
I have found that if I have to postpone a nap, I can do so up to two hours without any adverse effects. Skipping a nap altogether doesn’t seem to have an effect right away, but after waking from the next nap, I feel like shit on a stick for the next two cycles. But by waking up into the third one, I am generally back to normal if I keep them at their proper times, or spaced about four hours apart each.
There is no real division between days, so if you attempt a polyphasic schedule, choose a “new day” time that makes sense for you, whether it’s midnight, or sometime around dawn. Otherwise, if you don’t make this distinction, you’re going to find that one day bleeds into the next, and it can disorient you if you were previously a normal nighttime sleeper with activity during the day. I personally chose 7ish for the start of a new day, because that’s pretty much when the rest of the world starts waking up (except for my household lol).
I’ve heard it said that vegans/vegetarians are more likely to adapt to a polyphasic schedule than carni/omnivores, and some have even suggested that a person should switch to vegan/vegetarianism if going on this sleep schedule. Something to do with needing more energy to digest meat, and thus more sleep is required. I honestly could not tell you either way. What I can tell you is that I FUCKING LOVE MEAT AND I WILL NEVER GIVE IT UP. Being an omnivore doesn’t seem to make it more difficult for me, but I’ll never know if vegetarians have things easier, so please don’t ask me.
I think that about wraps things up for the daily “experimental” updates. Of course I am going to remain on this schedule for as long as possible, and if anything new occurs to me, I’ll be sure to make a post about it.