Thread: Queen Zukin's Dream Journal

End of Day 1

Haha, this should really be more like 'End of Day 1/2' because I didn't wake up until around 9am this morning! All in all today went pretty smoothly, I didn't oversleep because I couldn't even fall asleep at any of my nap times. I'm really awake right now, surprisingly awake. Maybe it's all those times today I just got to lay down. Hmm...

Eeeks. Uberman scares me. :<

Best of luck to ye!

End of Day One: Bystander's Edition

Today, Zukin was mostly her normal self. She became mildly tired and a might bit edgy towards her 10:00 nap, where she started to drift asleep. Wake ups were not needed.

Predictions for the Next Day: Oh dear, I am 99% sure she will not be as happy as she was yesterday. I am expecting more violence and aggression, and very necessary wakeups.

~Joe

End of Day 2

I never knew that a single day could be so long...

Today went pretty well, I've managed to fall asleep about 80% of the time when I nap. I can't think as clear as I could yesterday, but hopefully that will mend itself eventually. I haven't overslept at all yet, so that's good too. I've found it extremely helpful if I have someone ready to call me a minute after my wake up time. It eliminates even the thought of pressing the snooze button because I know that he's just going to call me in a few seconds anyways to make sure that I'm awake.

The only thing that has been really bothering me so far is hunger and dehydration. I always seem to be hungry now, but I don't have an appetite and nothing seems to really fulfill the hunger. It sounds a little bit contradictory, but that's the best way I can explain it.

My energy level has been great, especially right now. I'm not even tired, though I was this morning. However, I found that if I go outside into the summer heat, I feel exhausted again. Staying cool indoors makes me feel lively apparently.


1:13 AM Update:

I have found what my stomach has been craving all along...Green beans. :bravo:

End of Day Two: Bystander's Edition

Today, Zukin started the morning with a nearly fake over happiness. This was frightening. I've never seen her so energetic. I feel that, after seeing her long period of thought to make a single wrong move on the game "Connect Four" that this may have been a reaction to partial fatigue.

Later in the day, she became a little erratic, getting excited about one thing, then losing interest gradually until she showed dislike for it (moreso than normal.) Afterwards, she became completely exhausted, maybe a bit grouchy as well, and then after her next nap, this was eliminated, and she became lively again. Just before I left, she became a word she dislikes, to avert the usage of said word, she was acting a bit giggly and pulling off innocent faces to get me to either do something or not do something.

Predictions: I did not see as much aggression of violence as expected, so I am expecting another increase of that. I feel that it will be far harder to keep her awake and wake her from her slumber. I am also interested in seeing how her piano lessons go, as she needs to focus heavily for that, I believe.


~Joe

End of Day 3

Still good so far! For each nap now I've been able to fall into a deep sleep within the first 5 minutes. The sleep is so 'intense' that I need to wear my bite splint again just to sleep. I haven't really done absolutely anything productive during the 1am-6am shift, I pretty much spent 5 hours straight last night playing iSketch and Annagramatic.

I woke up from my 6am nap and went straight into zombie mode. I think I turned off all of my alarms (I don't remember) and told Joe that I was up. I walked upstairs to the living room and apparently set my alarm to go off in 5 minutes so I could take a short nap. My reason? I was totally convinced that there were sharks outside, and the sharks were tired of being outside for so long and needed to nap too. At least I set the alarm for only 5 minutes, haha.

The 7am-9am block was filled with grogginess, I sat out on the porch for who knows how long and dreamt with my eyes open. It was similar to the HH & HI that I see before I sleep, but mainly just random fleeting thoughts that have no relevance to each other.

Somewhere before noon I had finally made it back to the basement and was trying to make an escape out of Zombie Mode. DDR worked excellent for the occasion, however it led to me vomiting whatever was left of this morning's breakfast. Unfortunately vomiting also raised my energy levels straight back to normal again, right before I was about to do my reaction test. I think that today's reaction time is a little bit skewed because of that event.

I was stuck with a nagging nausea for the rest of the day. I'm pretty sure it's just one of the symptoms of sleep deprivation, but it could also be due to some inner ear problems I've been having lately.

My hunger still hasn't quite tamed itself yet. I've been coming to the realization that a new sleeping schedule also calls for a new eating 'schedule'. I can't eat as much all at once as I used to anymore, I have to eat smaller quantities of food more frequently.

Besides the nagging nausea, Day 3 was relatively easy. I still haven't had any damaging oversleeps. I just woke up from my last nap of the day and this is the first one in which I actually feel really refreshed, so hopefully that means that I'm making progress.

Glad to see things are still going well. Very nice of you to be considerate of the poor sleepy sharks. If you can actually get to the point of being fully rested on that sleep schedule it would open up amazing amounts of time. Keep it up.~

I just hope you don't hurt yourself... :/

Bystander's Edition:

I called Zukin today a few times, she was out of it almost each time. I feel that the fatigue is taking her. I heard the news of her vomiting and felt like total crap for not being there, alas scheduling had different plans for me. I had to call multiple times on multiple occasions, meaning her sleep is becoming deeper and more demanding of her consciousness, I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I pray this doesn't get too much worse tomorrow, as I won't be able to help as much.

~Joe

End of Day 4

Day 4 seems to have a certain new quality about it that Day 3 didn't possess...It's sneaky. Day 4 is waiting to engulf your being with sleep at the very first moment you fail to keep waking lucidity. Or at least it started out that way.

I was having problems with my 2am nap. I found that I wasn't able to fall asleep during the time given, and that sleepiness accumulated exponentially and put pressure on my 6am nap. To fix this issue, I've decided to temporarily start my 2am nap at 1:55am, which would give me an extra 5 minutes to fall asleep.

So this morning, not having had a fulfilling 2am nap, I made a terrible mistake. Earlier, I had turned my phone to vibrate to make sure that my phone wouldn't wake anyone up if I got a text. I forgot to turn it off of vibrate when I went for my 6am nap. I'm pretty sure the phone still woke me up, but I didn't have that jolt of energy I get when I use the loud alarm on my phone.

My friend apparently called me to wake me up, and I don't remember any of this. All I remember is believing that I was on a railroad or something. I eventually figured out that I had dreadfully overslept by half an hour . I've read that oversleeping once or twice is no big deal as long as it doesn't become a habit, so I'll be tightening my grip a bit to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

What's even more amazing though is that I slept through my alarm clock. Before beginning this experiment, I read other people's blogs and they would talk about sleeping through their alarm clocks. I giggled because I didn't see how that was even possible...Oops.

Unfortunately, once again I couldn't keep my lunch/breakfast down. I'm trying to figure out why this is happening, so far my hypothesis is that this is happening only when I am both eating and moving around. I'm used to eating a small meal while engaging in some other activity, such as cleaning or DDRing - both are the possible reasons why I lost my lunch.

It's amazing how fast my body has been catching on. This morning I could feel it especially so. I would feel energized until around 20 minutes before my next nap, where it felt as if I had run into a brick wall. As the day progressed I started losing that drowsy period before my nap, and now I'm happily energized throughout the latter part of the day. I'm not sure if this will continue to hold through, as I've been having issues with keeping awake in the mornings.

Day 4 was definitely better than Day 3. Hopefully Day 5 will continue to follow the pattern.

**Possible Dream

I say possible because I think that I dreamed this...It may have been a commercial that was wrongly stored in my brain as a dream, but I think it's a dream. In my short little dream I was at a dreary carnival. They were really outdated and there weren't any rides or anything high tech.

I hope I can start remembering all of my dreams again. I read somewhere that along Week 3 of being on Uberman your brain patterns change to finally be more efficient and to include REM when you nap.

I know from my mother that a change in sleep schedule causes nausea. It is common to feel queasy, and I know you have a weak stomach (no offense.) If all of thise truly can become habit as you say it can, then it will subside as the normalcy kicks in.


I don't feel like posting the Bystander's edition. I just feel a bit off from all of this, and everything that's been happening with a few of my other friends.

~Joe

Sounds like you're doing pretty well! Keep it up

Thanks guys ^

End of Day 5

Skipping naps...It's a type of torture.

I was fully able to wake up from my 6am nap this morning and get dressed without even a hint of drowsiness. My mother and I went out to town together. She didn't want me driving, for obvious reasons. Though I think I could have been able to drive myself easily though I know it would scare anyone who knew the circumstances. We were getting home late, and it was edging 10am. I was forced to take a nap in the car to stay on track with my schedule. Sleeping in the car didn't get me very far, I probably didn't get into any deep sleep but just skated around the realms of light sleep for 25 minutes.

We got home around the time my 10am nap ended. I knew that I couldn't sleep more, though I would have loved to, but I would have to wait it out until my 2pm nap. Those 4 hours were miserable . I was trying desperately to stay awake, sometimes I would just fall asleep with my eyes open. It got to the point where I had to resort to getting my chalk and going outside on the driveway just to try to keep awake. Even that didn't help, I briefly fell asleep while drawing on the driveway.

I eventually made it to my 2pm nap where I decided that I must do a little catching up on sleep. Because seriously, even Nancy would call this over the top. So instead of sleeping 25 minutes I slept 40 for that nap. Hopefully I didn't screw over my schedule for the rest of the day. Lesson learned...Do not skip a nap!

The rest of my naps for the rest of today were normal and refreshing. I'm still not able to remember my dreams, which is killing me.

You probably know the essential place of REM, that without it a body would lose its ability to retain body heat regardless of attempts to warm up the surrounding environment. In this way the body has an astounding ability to activate REM sooner and more often in a sleep deprived individual. It might be possible you're entering a type of REM during each of your naps but the deep and concentrated nature of your sleep prevents you from recalling dreams. There's also the bit that dreams in NREM are possible. Overall I think there's hope for dreaming somewhere down the road.

Sounds like you're also experiencing instances of microsleep (falling asleep for a few seconds or less). When you get these a lot it's quite an abysmal task to stay awake. I know, I've had to fight through them whenever I pull an all-nighter for any reason and it seems like nothing I do stops my head from nodding or my eyes from staring blankly. It's good you're recognizing when it's become too much and respond with longer naps. There's no need to subject yourself to torture. I also like how you have a family willing to support you in this project. My parents would probably look at me like I was growing a third hand.

I'm really enjoying reading your updates. As always, best of luck.

Bystander's Edition:

She's changing, a lot. She gives off that she is extremely happy and awake, but it seems slightly fabricated, though this is due, probably, to a lack of sleep. Her vision is failing, she saw four things that just flat out were NOT there when she came over, a bits of lethargy are present as well. I am afraid. Her mood seems to also be changing, and she didn't seem as pleased to be around me, which was a bit depressing. This entire project seems to be consuming her, yet I am obligated by my own promises to sit back and help it happen, regardless if she gets hurt or not... :S

~Joe

Originally Posted by XT-421

Bystander's Edition:

She's changing, a lot. She gives off that she is extremely happy and awake, but it seems slightly fabricated, though this is due, probably, to a lack of sleep. Her vision is failing, she saw four things that just flat out were NOT there when she came over, a bits of lethargy are present as well. I am afraid. Her mood seems to also be changing, and she didn't seem as pleased to be around me, which was a bit depressing. This entire project seems to be consuming her, yet I am obligated by my own promises to sit back and help it happen, regardless if she gets hurt or not... :S

~Joe

Haha wow that was a bit pessimistic, wasn't it?

Seems like you have the willpower! Impressive.

End of Day 6

I thought it was supposed to get easier from about Day 4. I've had the worst time when it comes to 5am - 11am. As soon as it reaches about noon though I'm completely okay. My 10am nap was almost a disaster. I woke up to my alarm confused. I was for some reason believing that I was a woman trying to get a birth certificate for my child and had to go through the Secretary of State. When I woke up I wondered where my papers went off to, and I was seriously searching all over the room until my friend called and asked if I was awake yet. I was startled at his answer and just said, "Wait, what?" realizing that I wasn't who I thought I was.

Trying to stay awake from there was difficult like it had been all morning. I was having microsleeps just walking up the stairs...I had made a deal with myself that I would refrain from sweets during the adaptation period but this was an emergency. I ate a popsicle, and it helped a LOT. What did I do wrong? Shouldn't it be getting easier? I've been graphing my reaction times everyday at noon for the past 6 days, and so far they have really only gone up (I would have expected that they would have started to return to normal or go back down). I wonder if this correlates.

I've been thinking about reducing the number of alarms I'm using in order to help me remember my dreams better. Every time I have to turn off an alarm it's another distraction from trying to remember my dreams, if I'm dreaming yet. However, I'm also major afraid that I'm going to oversleep. I've noticed that during my 6am nap and my 10am nap I'm most likely to oversleep. I'm going to kill two birds with one stone - during those naps I'll sleep in unconventional places. This will train me to learn to sleep in awkward places and I have less of a chance of oversleeping when I'm in a weird position.

Originally Posted by GestaltAlteration

You probably know the essential place of REM, that without it a body would lose its ability to retain body heat regardless of attempts to warm up the surrounding environment. In this way the body has an astounding ability to activate REM sooner and more often in a sleep deprived individual. It might be possible you're entering a type of REM during each of your naps but the deep and concentrated nature of your sleep prevents you from recalling dreams. There's also the bit that dreams in NREM are possible. Overall I think there's hope for dreaming somewhere down the road.

Interesting that you say that! During the beginning of the experiment I always felt painfully cold, like a vampire. Being in the basement was near intolerable because of how cold it was. I'm no longer that cold, I've definitely warmed up. Could this mean that I am experiencing REM then?

Originally Posted by XeL

Seems like you have the willpower! Impressive.

Just coming back from being attacked by micronaps, that really made my day.

End of Day 7 & Week 1

I'm proud of myself that I have been so fortunate to make it this far. There have been times when I was so close to just giving in and sleeping.

My 6am and 10am naps are still the little tubby turbos causing me so much grief. For my 6am nap I slept on the couch, but that didn't seem to help because I still overslept by about 5 minutes. For my 10am nap, I slept outside and of course went into a mad state of confusion when I woke up. When I woke up, I forgot that I had taken the nap and for some reason I also thought that I was a firefighter (??? lol). My friend called me for my wake up call and I was confused because I had forgotten that I had already napped lol.

I'm not sure how adversely sleeping in 5-10 minutes on my 6am nap is going to affect me, but it seems like its becoming a habit on those naps. Sleeping in a weird place didn't really help much either. However, I don't want to sleep in at all so I'm curbing this immediately. My next 6am and 10am nap will consist of sleeping on the floor in my sleeping bag with too much clothing on. I don't care how miserable I become, this needs to be nipped in the bud.

My 2pm nap yielded me my first recalled dream ! In my dream I was staying at a cabin and my family and cousins were there camping too. The cabin was really small and muggy. Somehow I got all of my clothes ruined, and my cousin told me that he would let me borrow some of his clothes. I told him that his clothes would not fit me, he is too little. He pulls out girl clothing out of his suitcase...

Later, I go back up to my room in the cabin and talk to some friends over chat. My friend had changed his name to 'Frogic' and was jumping wildly around. [/dream]

On a note not related to sleeping, I've noticed something strange happening. It's most likely the result of sleep deprivation, but it's interesting nonetheless. 2 dimensional pictures have taken on 3 dimensional qualities. It's sort of bizarre, the people in the picture are spatially distinguished from the background. Like watching a movie in 3d. Very curious.

In the end, today was better than yesterday. Fortunately, zombie mode is either starting to subside or I'm gaining more control over it. I didn't have to fight off that large chunk of zombieness through the early half of my morning but it seems now as if it were equally distributed throughout my day. Feels kind of fading, alertness wasn't as high as it was the later half of yesterday. I could probably fall asleep just sitting here...

This was a good read

Ya, uh, you totally had me confused for a moment. You tried to convince me that you had yet to go on your nap.

About that vision thing, that is very strange... Tell me if something new comes up because I'd like to see what happens.

~Joe

Good job on recalling a dream.

I forgot that I had taken the nap and for some reason I also thought that I was a firefighter (??? lol)

Man! I've had a similar experience. I once woke up and wondered where my treasure chest had gone.

Beginning of Day 8

I'm separating Day 8 into several parts (keep reading). If it's getting to be like, Day 18 or something and I still haven't adapted, someone just tell me to stop already .

I read a polyphasic blog last night that said there were 2 main challenges when trying to convert to the uberman schedule. The first challenge was to be able to get your needed sleep in 20-30 minutes. The second challenge that polyphasers face happens around Day 8-12, when staying awake is the hardest.

My very first nap of Day 8 already proved the sentence true. I woke up on the floor in my sleeping bag with several sweaters on. Of course the idea of wearing too much clothing and napping ultimately failed because it's already 50 degrees in here. With that much clothing on now, I just enjoyed my nap even more.

However, my goal was achieved. I didn't sleep in even a second. However, a new problem was awaiting me upstairs. It was the luxurious envy of sitting on a couch. I'm not sure what happened, but when I sat down on that couch I was out for 2 hours. I woke up to my mom's friend telling me not to worry about sleeping in, because it was summer. If only things were that easy. Oh, and I also woke up with the firm belief that I was ruler of Russia.

I had a dream somewhere during that period. I dreamed that I was on vacation again, and that there were a bunch of wild geese outside our house. A few of the geese were lame though, and so we helped to heal them so they could return to the wild.

So I'm really hoping that succumbing to the couch's evil desires won't set me back too far in the adaptation phase. After I woke up I felt incredibly disappointed with myself. I'm trying to channel those feelings of disappointment into feelings of hope now so I don't give up. I've noticed that I'm most likely to nod off within 30 minutes of awakening. If anyone has any ideas on how to keep me awake and interested those first crucial 30 minutes I would love to hear it! My only idea right now would be to break up these forums posts into 6 posts a day. Right now I'm covering an entire day. I thought maybe if I broke it up then I would have something to do directly after a nap.

Ps: You know there's something wrong with your family when no one asks any questions about why I am sleeping in the middle of the computer room in my sleeping bag with 4 jackets on.

Running? Walking? Playing an intense video game?

End of Day 8

I feel so much better now. So I guess maybe I'll split the day up if I need too. I'd prefer not to...It looks prettier being in one giant chunk .

I've been really surprised at how often I've been feeling like a zombie today. On the usual day the severe drowsiness passes over at noon. I'm wondering if this was caused by oversleeping 2 hours this morning or if I'm approaching another hard part. Because I was so extremely fatigued, I had to insert a small 20 minute nap at about 3:30pm. That seemed to help a little.

Originally Posted by XeL

Running? Walking? Playing an intense video game?

Walking doesn't keep me awake . The new DDR mats I ordered a week ago came in today. I'm very excited! I had a lot of fun double freestyling and playing Oni mode. So, this is probably what's going to be keeping me awake the next few days.

I've also decided I'm not going to worry about recalling my dreams yet. I need to focus on getting out of bed ASAP.

Ok, just woke up from my 10pm nap. This was the first nap that I woke up before my alarm clock went off. It feels really great, nice and refreshed!

I was going to wait until about Day 20 to post the graph I'm making of my reaction times, but I might post the first half on Day 10 because the trend in the graph is not what I expected.

Walking doesn't keep me awake

Damn. O_O

Also, what about caffeine tablets? Or just coke/coffee?

I'm glad you managed to get up before your alarm went off! Progress!