hacking Sleep
I’ve struggled with sleep issues for most of my adult life. The issues are all over the disorder map, so discussing them all would take a while, and would inadvertently give out more personal information than i’d like. (nah, Just kidding, I’m an exhibitionist of the nth order).
Observation 1: On the rare occassions that I go to bed on or before 11pm, like other human sheep-beings, I end up needing close to 9 hours of sleep to be satisfied.
Observation 2: Ditto for the episodes of sleeping between 2am and 4am. 9 hours seems to be my norm.
Obviously I’m not one of those freaks, who need just 5 hours of sleep to get by[no offense to said freaks].
But WAIT… there’s more.
Over the past 5 years, i’ve discovered that, its possible to hack/mod my circadian rhythms by sleeping later and later, and waking up MUCH later. My body seems to ignore ‘normal’ signals like, sunlight in my face and the birds chirping and screeching, that works on regular people. After weeks of this schedule, I was convinced I had a Vampire gene in me somewhere.
Sleeping from 9 to 5 when the world toils away is kinda cool in a creepy kind of way.
It gives the creeps to lots of friends when they realize that the world is asleep for the most part when my mind is most active. In the end, I decided to skip the Vampire meme and stick with ‘Geekus nocturnalis’.
All is well with the circadian world, until exam time approaches. Unfortunately, Kerala University is run by a bunch of boring ‘normal’ sheeple who work 9 to 5. Hence, the big spanner in my sleepworks. How do you write an exam, when your brain is just about ready to shut down, after a long night of uber-unProductive Internet surfing and trolling… It boggles the mind.
I finally had to put my foot down yesterday. Translation:By some miracle, I managed to doze off at 11pm. Then, slept lightly for 3 hours, wake at 2am; Then FORCE myself to dream about ‘brazilian hotties who are great cooks’ , and sleep another 2 hours. (I know, I must be getting old when I have to FORCE myself to do these mundane things) The short story is I’m awake and jumping much before dawn.
Things I’ve done since then: Took an hour-long stroll along the old-fashioned surroundings outside my lodge; walked past the village temple and marvelled at all the regulars who drop-by to make their peace with the maker at sunrise. This boggles the mind. But all in all, it was a pretty novel experience.
I wonder if I can keep this up untll my brain fails-over to my sun-safe defaults at noon. (<- notice the jargon overload; thats the sleep deprivation talking.)
No wonder…. I’m feeling sleepy already.
arghhh. FAIL.