So I've read a few places over the last few weeks that mention the incredibly hard, yet possibly very rewarding Uberman Sleep Cycle and I have to admit curiosity has quite overcome me. I have pretty bad ADHD and time is a concept that I find really hard to comprehend seeing as I can't really see it and I often get so caught up in things that vast amount of it pass me by none the wiser. Being as that is the case with my concept of time I was reading mostly failed, sometimes successful attempts at this sleep schedule(for those of you who aren't fully aware it's 6 20 minute naps every 4 hours... crazy.) and I just thought of the incredible enlightenment of seeing another facet of this seemingly illusive time.
Now for a little background... I work in a family owned daycare that is very flexible with my availabilities and understanding of some of my less attractive time management problems. It is also helpful that I get a good deal of vacation time. I'll be of course taking this time for the first week and I'll re-evaluate from there... I'm currently 25 and I really don't have much else to aspire to right now (depressing, I know) and thankfully no one really expects much from me at this "limbo" in my life. You should also know that I am a tremendously bad sleeper already, because I get so massively absorbed into things I have learned to bypass my desires to sleep and have on more than one occasion pulled all nighters with little effort. This paired with my deep and addictive love for video-games has made me quite the insomniac on more than one occasion. Lastly, I'm a bit of a loner. I'm an extrovert and I'm very adept at being a social butterfly but I often find social situations exhausting and my craving for personal time is so grand that I struggle to follow through on plans because I feel suffocated by them. I'm hoping that this sleep schedule, if I can manage to get past the adjustment period will give me so much more time that I won't feel so inhibited by giving my friends and family more of my time.
My life really isn't as depressing as that blurb would indicate, I promise. I'm pretty happy and I'm in a place in my life where I'm looking to discover my own path on my own terms. I don't know that this sleep schedule will help me achieve that or that it's even realistic for someone who has such poor time management skills as I do... but I won't say I didn't try ;)
My sleep schedule has been incredibly off lately, I don't like drinking caffeine anymore but I somehow manage to function on about 4-6 hours of sleep with work comfortably with no daytime naps. I guess I just have learned to function on less sleep already? Or I'm slowly getting more and more sleep deprived, I'll leave that decision up to you... Either way I was reading more in depth about this sleep cycle and thought to myself, "well, I'm already screwed on the whole sleep thing so why not give this sleep cycle a try now when I'm a good 3 days into sleep deprivation and I have some time off!" I have to tell you, the naps are meant to be "2am, 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm..." you get the point right? and it's nearing 1 am and I just want to sleep for hours and hours and I imagine that when I try to lay down for this nap I won't initially fall straight to sleep. Are you seeing where this is headed? That's right, I have no way of knowing how much ACTUAL time I will get sleeping in this 25 minute nap and my body will lift my arm across my bed and hit that snooze button with great force... A million times.
The only thing I can really hope for is that my oppositional personality will literally growl me out of bed. No matter what it is or who it is that tells me that I can't have or do something my first gut reaction is "oh yeah? you just keep thinking that." Hahahaha that's all I have. Dear god.
I'm going to go read and hopefully I'll be so snoozy by 2 that I'll immediately go to sleep.
