So I just want to begin by outlining some of the obstacles of starting this process right now. I just got home for a 6-day vacation which leaves me at day 5 of the assimilation process when I have to make the drive back to school. My parents, aware of the allnighters I've had at school, want this vacation to be about rest and relaxing for me. Little do they know that I will be resting less than I ever have before. The thing is that I can't tell them what I'm doing cause they'd freak, but I also have to manage to avoid family activities during the nap times. Furthermore, if I do turn into a zombie, they'll worry.
So I've decided to make my 20 minute nap schedule 4 am, 8 am, 12 pm, 4 pm, 8 pm, 12 am (easy ain't it). So I arrived back home today, ate a delicious home-cooked meal, and then went up to hang out with some highschool friends who go school in the city. We drank a bit and whatnot, and then I took my first nap at 12 am. Since I wasn't tired, I basically just lay in bed with my eyes shut for 20 minutes to let my body know what was gonna happen.
I got back home around 3 am, unpacked some of my clothes, talked with my friend Sarah who was staying the night and getting on a train to Pennsylvania the next day as she snuggled comfortably into her sheets. Reading that the key to this whole thing was staying busy, I started working on this blog.
As hard as I tried and as uncomfortably as I sat, I felt my eyes sagging. I read articles about massacres in third-world countries, I read NYT op-eds, and even my favorite celebrity gossip sites, but I felt like shit. It had barely been a few hours, and I was plummeting to failure. 4 am rolled around and I set my alarm for 20 minutes and passed out. While I may not have gone directly into R.E.M. sleep, the second my head hit the pillow I was out. When the alarm clock sounded minutes later, I had woken Sarah up and we briefly spoke about how I was going to pull this off.
I'll be honest, I was considering throwing in the towel. Not even more than two naps, I was just so tired and ready for a warm comfy bed. Sarah told me to think about it, but she thought that this vacation might not be my time (perhaps Thanksgiving where I'd have a full 10 days to get used to it). I stayed awake, working on the blog, listening to loud music (THIS IS KEY, really helped: I suggest Mars Volta, really gets the job done). But then something amazing happened ... I started feeling better.
While I definitely could have fallen asleep at any point, I wasn't nodding off and my eyes were wide. As I write this now it's 7:46 am, the last 45 minutes took a turn for the worse, but from what I've read, fatigue closer to nap time can be expected. I eagerly await my forthcoming nap, but I gotta say if I wake up as energized as I did after the previous nap, I might just pull this off.
Check in soon. Peace.
