One week to go

Next week Sunday night will be my final night of sleeping like a regular human. Or perhaps Saturday night, I haven't decided yet. I guess it depends what time our big group of bikers want to check out on Sunday morning - if it interferes with nap time I might just sleep one more evening.

Whilst doing yoga last night just before midnight I slowly became aware of a very heavy and subtle sleep bearing down on me. In yoga, I've just been learning to do some particular leg stretches slowly and deliberately, without any jerking movements, and finding myself going deeper into the stretch with more ease. The sleep that came dropping down around me like a thick, wet blanket employed the same technique. No sudden drowsiness, no hard fatigue, just an ever increasing pressure that soon became almost unfightable. I've put it down to not drinking enough water yesterday, but it's another interesting method my body is employing when I'm tired, a method I found a lot harder to combat than the fast fatigue.

In other news, I missed my 10am nap this morning due to some check ins. So far I've been really good at coordinating this, but for some reason this morning just passed me by. Now, even though I had a very deep six hours last night, I'm really feeling that lack of nap now, I suppose simply because I'm now used to it. On the plus side, it still makes me think I can get used to six naps a day. We'll see next week!

Egads, that's it!

I've been beating myself up for the past week over being so tired on what basically amounts to about an hour's less sleep than I normally get. In the past few days, however, I discovered the presence of a virus lurking in our little community. My conclusions are unsubstantiated by acknowledged medical scrutiny, however I believe my little sleepy sufferings have been caused by this very virus.

One of the little babies here had it and it made him irritable, messed with his glands and gave him mouth ulcers. I had a sore jaw over the past two days and today my glands are a little swollen. In light of my previous anxiety however, this is all good news as it indicates I have not become what medical experts solemnly categorise "a big girl's blouse".

I did sneak in an extra nap this morning and happily woke unaided about 25 minutes in, feeling quite good about myself. All else is well and I'm counting down the days until I start the experiment properly - less than two weeks to go now.

Why the long face?

Man, have I struggled today. Despite sleeping like the dead last night and managing to wrangle a fairly easy day for myself, I've been working hard to keep my eyelids open the entire day.

Late this afternoon, an old country guy turned up in a huge horse truck. He probably wasn't that old, but country guys sometimes look a lot older than they are. What the sun does to paint after beating on it for a few years, it also does to the skin of farmers, and it can make a strong man of forty look around sixty. This guy also spoke in the particular nonsensical dialect that I've heard quite a bit since moving out to the country. If you'd like to try it, attempt to steer clear of consonants, and speak in a fairly high voice. Be sure to ask lots of questions, especially when you're fairly sure the person you're speaking to is unfamiliar with your dialect and is picking up maybe three out of every ten words. Laugh a lot too, but not when the other person tells a joke. When that happens, look hard at them like you're gauging their tongue's suitability as a paint brush.

I didn't catch this guy's name, but I worked out he was here to collect a horse. The owners of the resort had told me that someone would be coming for a horse, but that he would know the horse and know where she was and that I probably wouldn't even know that he'd been here. Unfortunately, that guy sent this guy, and this guy had no idea what horse he was collecting. After a fluke phone call when I actually reached the right person to give me instructions, I joined him in his cab and off we went.

Truck drivers are such talented people. They can maneuver a leviathon through the eye of a needle if they have to. I've seen truck drivers perform such incredible feats with their vehicles that you would swear they were illusionists messing with your mind. This guy wasn't one of those drivers. As we lurched up to the old, narrow wooden bridge that crosses Tobin's Creek, he glared at it with little appreciation and muttered something about how we needed to build a wider bridge. Or he might have been talking about fishing, Christ knows really. We edged onto the bound logs and as it creaked beneath us he asked me to check his left side to make sure we weren't going to go over. I couldn't even see the back tyre under the horse carriage, but told him we were fine anyway. Ultimately, I thought he'd have to be really bad to not make it.

We made it and finally came upon the horse paddock. I'd been told there were two horses there, one that looked like she had a draught horse background with a large white stripe on her forehead, and a smaller one with a smaller white stripe. It was the latter who we were there to collect. I was also warned that she would probably be very skittish and not at all happy to come with us. We'd brought a big bucket of hay along in a clear and obvious offering of bribery.

The hay was unnecessary at first, for this skittish mare came right up to me as soon as she saw me. I don't know what it is with me and animals, but sometimes we just click. I'm really not a horse person - the one time I remember riding in Melbourne with my friend Kate I lagged so far behind the horse started trying to hitch a ride home. But this one walked right up next to me and followed me through to the cattle rounds (or whatever the real farm people call them), allowing me to close the gate behind her. We gave her some hay, and with very little effort, my illegible friend coaxed her into the ramp area and into the truck. (Perhaps he was speaking horse to me.)

I'm not quite sure why she was being collected, but my understanding is that she was being taken away to become a mummy. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's a habit of mine to anthropomorphise, and I had an image of her being thrust into the mean streets of Armidale, or Tamworth, dressed up in a frilly saddle and made to pimp herself to any young colt passing by. Or even worse, she would be locked in a small and seedy horse hotel as rippling studs lined up to have their wicked way with her.

To make things harder, her draught horse companion knew what was happening and was very unhappy about it. She ran back and forth along the fence as we led her in, neighing loudly and snorting in a way that sounded like frantic warnings. "Don't go with them honey! I know they're promising a good life and luxuries - hay every day, carrots whenever you want them - but they're lying! They'll steal your soul!" She chased the truck all the way to the gate near the bridge, and when I got out to open it for the truck she ran up to me, not in a threatening manner but pleading, sensing that I was really on her side. When she realised there was nothing I could do she stared sadly at me with her round, brown, disbelieving eyes, and walked to one side with her head low. As the truck shuddered off away from the closed gate, she threw her head back and literally howled at the sky. Have you ever heard a horse howl? Along with the tortured cries of a baby and the records of Australian Idol contestants, it's something I never want to hear again.

So very soft

The thing that keeps going through my head at the moment is that I should have started writing about this experiment when I actually started doing it, rather than three weeks before when I'm in what I'm lovingly calling rehearsals. But I'm noticing little snippets of information so I suppose I may as well document it.

The main thing I've noticed is the planned nap time of 6pm is working like a charm. Each day, around 5:45pm or so, I get very drowsy. I head to my room, set my alarm, lay down and fall asleep within a couple of minutes. At first I woke up about three or four minutes before the alarm went off, lately I'm sleeping 'til it rings. I usually feel pretty good, but only after about five to ten minutes of dopey eye blinking and walking as if through yoghurt. Not that I can't function, I think I've always been very good at snapping awake and looking like I've been up for hours, but I definitely have that nap buffer that I'm working through.

The big core sleep at night is working a little differently. I'm either completely wiped out around nine to ten and have to struggle to keep awake until eleven, when I usually do an hour or so of yoga, or I feel fairly calm and relaxed and don't struggle at all. Either way, by the time I finish meditating around 12:20am, I am wholly ready for sleep. I slip into bed as quietly as I can so as not to disturb my girlfriend and, like the naps, fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. I'm also sleeping straight through to my alarm, but finding it very easy to get up right away. Although I must say that most mornings, if I had the luxury of a non-competitive conscience, I could very easily fall asleep again.

Once again, can you believe I used to sleep four hours a night with no problem? I've grown so very soft.

Today I've also been aware of a sore throat coming on, the kind that feels like there's a thick bruise sitting just under the Adam's apple. Angie's got something like that today as well (the sore throat, not the Adam's apple), so perhaps it has nothing to do with the sleeping. It might have something to do with the goddamn cold water in the river that I persistently throw myself into every morning, but who knows? It's one of those things that will either be non-existent in the morning, or will have taken a strangle hold over my vocals chords, playing gleeful compositions of coughs and wheezes. I'm focussing on the former, of course.

So I still have a few weeks to go until launching the Uberman schedule proper, but these instant sleep naps are really encouraging. I'm very excited to think I may fit into the apparent 2% of people who this sleeping pattern suits marvellously. I'll at least try it until I collapse, I owe my competitive conscience that much.

Late night reception

I'm sitting here in reception at 11:20pm trying to stay awake until 12:30pm, and musing over how ridiculous this is. This time last year I would still have been working, the headlining band probably not even having started, and not looking at getting to sleep for at least another four or five hours. On top of that, I would have been awake by 6am to get to an airport to fly somewhere else.

Now, however, I'm in the country and have grown used to going to sleep by around 9pm and waking up at 5am. To prepare for my Uberman schedule (which I'm going to start in three weeks, on March 8), I've switched my current sleeping pattern to a six hour chunk (from 12:30am to 6:30am), with one 25 minute nap (at 6:00pm). I've also changed my exercise schedule to slot in nicely - I wake up, go for a run, swim in the river (although that's starting to get pretty freakin' cold, I'm not sure how many more weeks that little caper will be happening), then start work. At 11:00pm (most nights, clearly I'm not doing it tonight), I do yoga and meditation, then fall asleep about ten minutes after finishing that.

I'm enjoying this rehearsal run, I must say. It's already challenging making sure I stick to my 6:00pm nap, and I've realised I'm going to have to rely on every last vestige of rostering skills (not to mention more than a dash of blatant pleading and begging) to be able to duck off for a nap three times a work day. I'm considering converting the small office next door into a makeshift bedroom, or naproom as the case may be.

I've also noticed that for the first time that I can remember, being really tired isn't always resulting in an almost frenzied hyperactivity that seems to be my body's equivalent of a lawnmower's violent shuddering when almost out of fuel. In a few cases I've been amazed to feel everything slow down quite remarkably, to the point where the tiredness seems to bring everything into a slower focus. If this kind of thing happens when I'm just napping six times a day, I'll be ecstatic. One downside is that I've been dropping things a lot since yesterday. Most things, in fact, that I try to do anything with, I drop. That may have nothing to do with sleeping though, I suppose I am pretty clumsy at the best of times, and I may just be making unreasonable associations.

I'm going to have to start coming up with a huge list of things to do, I've worked out that sitting down reading the five million or so books I want to read probably won't be a really viable way of staying awake in the first few weeks. After watching the special features section of the movie 21 today, I thought I'd take a leaf out of Steve Pavlina's book and teach myself how to count cards, I want to get some more writing done (I have a list of short story competitions stretching to July), and I might even come down here and do some resort work late at night (for instance, I just vacuumed the restaurant before coming on here). I also plan to do lots of walking. Perhaps I'll finally teach myself to draw too - oh, and I'm still working my way through an audio course on learning German. I think I might need a few more activities than this somehow.

I've got to say, I enjoy sitting in reception playing Melvins loudly. It's not often I can get away with that.

Here we go again

I thought I'd decided no more blogging, journal writing, or general blabbing about inanities online. Especially since I moved to the country, when everyone knows hardly anything of interest happens in the country.


But then I decided to embark on a polyphasic sleep experiment. I was reading a blog by a guy called Steve Pavlina, and thought - I could do that. With a little more research I stumbled upon a whole online clan of polyphasic sleepers, or wannabe polyphasic sleepers. I suppose I should have realised that early on - what else are you going to be doing at 3am other than talking to others who are awake wondering how to keep themselves that way?


The basic premise of polyphasic sleeping is to extricate yourself from the standard and generally well-considered pattern of a solid night's sleep (which usually varies from between about six hours a night if you're my grandmother to about fourteen hours per night if you're my girlfriend), and attempt to utilise more hours by sleeping in much smaller blocks of time, more regularly.


The pattern I'm going to throw myself into is the Uberman schedule, which sounds superhuman for a reason. This pattern consists of six blocks of sleep in each twenty four hour period, each block lasting around 25 minutes. I'm going to be starting this in a couple of weeks when I am fortunate enough to have a week with very little work on. Word on the blogs is that Week One will have me staggering around like a Romero extra, so I probably don't need to try that during a heavy workload.

As for right now, I'm working off six hours sleep a night with a 25 minute nap once a day. For anyone who knows me, they'll think that's weak. I used to get by on four or less for days at a time, but since beginning my new country lifestyle a year ago, my sleeping habits have changed dramatically.


For those who don't know me, I used to work in the music industry and would spend many long days on the road, selling merchandise for bands. Last year I moved north of Sydney to a small place called Mt Seaview, about an hour's drive inland from Port Macquarie. I manage a resort here and am a part of a much larger project that will, with any luck, eventually see the creation of an eco-village and educational centre. Pretty exciting. At any rate, I can really see how sleeping as little as two hours a day could help with all the efforts I'd like to put into both this project and my own learning curve.


Anyway, that's probably enough information for one post, especially seeing as how I only just started and no one's following. I almost added the word "yet", but I'll be tentative for now.