Polyphasic sleep schedule Day Eight

I made it through the doubts and drama of this morning and am happy to report I've been feeling much better since my 10am nap earlier today. I spent a few hours conducting some more online research and found a lot of polyphasers found that extra bump when they least expected it, and I was warned it could last a couple of days, or even resurface again at some point in the future. But it does seem fairly common, so I'm content to work with it as best I can and keep forging ahead.

The rest of today has been much more bearable, and whilst I'm still a little drowsy even now, it's not that desperate, frantic fight against sleep that I had earlier. Of course, it's not yet midnight, and I usually hit my low spot after the 2am nap, so we'll see how I go! I plan to counter attack with cold showers, long walks under the spectacular starry sky I'm fortunate to be under tonight, and maybe another cooking experiment.

I thought I'd write a little bit more about dreams again. Since starting this schedule, I've noticed my ability to recall dreams has hit a success rate of nearly 100 percent, which is virtually every nap I take. This is remarkable for someone who rarely ever remembered his dreams, I'd guess maybe five to ten percent of the time if that. Obviously it makes sense if I'm waking up during REM sleep, but it's still so exciting to have this whole dream world open up to me.

I've had a couple of nightmares (my nightmares are often nothing like the horror films I love to watch, but usually involve very normal circumstances with the horrible twist of having loved ones die or something similar), and a couple of very strange dreams where I'm connecting with animals. I had a dream yesterday where I was in a basement somewhere with a large horse that couldn't seem to find the ramp leading up and out. He panicked to the point of squashing me against a wall, slowly but surely squeezing the life out of me. I put my hands up on his neck and shoulders and patted him, whispering, "It's okay, you're okay, calm down, you're okay." He finally quietened, then very clearly I heard a voice inside my head that said, "Excellent, I've never been able to connect to a human like that before," then the horse turned and calmly walked up the ramp and left.

Something that I'm finding really strange is the sense of smell coming in to my dreams. In that last dream, I could smell the horse so strongly as he pressed me into the wall. In my 6pm nap this evening I dreamed that the people who live here were having a huge party in one block of motel rooms, and when I poked my head in, I was overwhelmed with the odour of cigarettes, alcohol and that musty, seedy party smell so many parties emit. This was such a throwback to the parties that used to occur frequently in the share house I rented in Newtown with some friends, and the smell was so strong I was almost shocked into waking.

Angie's sister does a lot of study into this kind of thing, so I think I'll hit her up and see what her thoughts are. Perhaps I can be a study subject for her! At any rate, I'll post any information I find about it.