Morpheus is a Fickle Master
Posted on | June 23, 2005 at 10:02 pm | 6 Comments
Actually had some computer installation successes today. I upgraded my home studio software from Cakewalk Sonar 2XL to Sonar 4 Producer Edition, and it seems to work. Pretty cool. Maybe this will spur me on to finish off those songs I started during the National Solo Album Month thing back in November…
Also added a wireless expansion card to my DSL modem, and that seems to work too. Hooked up my Sony PSP to the Internet through it and downloaded/installed the latest software update.
Wow, Greg Kihn has sure gained a lot of weight since the old hitmaking days. Just like Mike Score in Flock of Seagulls!
But none of that is what I really wanted to talk about today. I want to go into my sleeping habits. If reading about how other people sleep bores you, do not continue perusing this entry…
I was wondering how normal I am in the sleep arena, and I fear the answer is “not”. I’m blessed in that I sleep fairly well these days, though I have an odd pattern. When I turn in at night, I usually fall asleep within five minutes of my head hitting the pillow (unless I have a lot on my mind or am experiencing physical discomfort). And it’s a pretty deep sleep – usually accompanied by a weird, vivid dream. But then I always wake up (sometimes violently) after about 15-30 minutes. It then takes me about another 15-30 minutes to get back to sleep. From then on, I sleep fairly well (though lightly – almost anything can wake me up) until about 45 minutes or so before the alarm goes off. That last period is always very light sleep, where I restlessly drift in and out of wakefulness and hear the sounds of the neighborhood coming to life. I’m not on any medications, either prescription or OTC. I usually try to eat a light dinner, to avoid acid reflux issues at night. Though I do have a light coughing fit most every time I lie down.
I find that if I take a nap in the afternoon or early evening, it’s pretty much the same thing. I fall asleep almost immediately, deeply, but then wake up after 20 minutes or so. At that point, I’m pretty much recharged and can go the rest of the day without drifting off during boring moments. If I instead try to continue the nap, it takes me a long time to get back to sleep, but then I’m usually out for an hour or so. And then when I wake up, I’m groggy and it seems like for the rest of the day, my mind/body keeps trying to return to the sleep state. So, there’s definitely diminishing returns on the nap length time. Short = good, long = bad.
I’m usually in bed around 6 to 6 1/2 hours a night, and then try to do a half hour nap when I come home from work. I wonder if I wouldn’t need the nap if I slept 7 or 8 hours a night? I kind of doubt it, since I do usually sleep 7-8 hours on weekend nights and still crave the nap the following afternoons.
So am I a mutant? I expect there are almost as many different sleep patterns as there are people.
Latre.
Comments
6 Responses to “Morpheus is a Fickle Master”
June 23rd, 2005 @ 10:55 pm
Don’t know about mutant (though how cool would that be?), but you do sound like a good candidate for Uberman (polyphasic) sleep. That’s something I’ve been wanting to try the next time I can get a long vacation, since I hear the transition can be fairly brutal.
June 24th, 2005 @ 5:33 am
Here’s my sleep pattern story – I’m also not normal, but my symptoms are different from yours.
There, that’s how to make it short. And I’ll bottom-line my advice too – read up on sleep research. Figure things out for yourself, it needn’t take a doctor. For me, sleep is the single most important predictor of how I’ll do on any given day, but there’s complications, and sometimes leeway for flexibility.
Learning is cool ‘cos knowledge is power!
June 24th, 2005 @ 6:03 am
Alan, I would be tempted to try the polyphasic thing if they actually let us take naps at the office.
Ben, I didn’t say that I wanted to change my sleep pattern or was particularly unhappy with it, just that it seemed unusual…
June 24th, 2005 @ 6:38 am
One of the most useful books I’ve ever read was “Wide Awake at 3:00 AM: By Choice or by Chance” by Richard M. Coleman, MD. Amazon has copies starting at a penny. It’s a popularization of sleep research; there are probably other good ones. It had a lot of concrete advice that helped me stabilize my sleep patterns.
When I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, I worked on a few projects that were in such dire shape that the development team was asked to work as many hours as humanly possible. On one of them I was working out of my house and found myself drifting into a rhythm of work 6 hrs, rest 90 minutes. I didn’t feel any cumulative fatigue; I felt like I could have kept it up indefinitely, if it hadn’t been terribly isolating. On an office-based project with a team of similar crazies, I found a rhythm of working 20 hours (with short breaks but no naps) and sleeping for about 9 hours was pretty sustainable.
And at one point when I was working both a day job and part time in the evenings, taking a nap in the car at lunch time worked pretty well.
June 25th, 2005 @ 1:58 pm
Rog: I don’t think your sleep patterns are optimal because you frequently nod off during movies (based upon your invention of the Nod-O-Meter). The whole idea of a Nod-O-Meter is weird to me, since I never get tired during movies, even German or French ones. I would suggest that the next time you go to your doctor, ask him/her to prescribe a non-habit-forming sleeping aid such as Amb**n (**’s since I’m pretty sure the actual brand name is spam bait). Try it for a couple nights and see it it makes a difference. I’m not suggesting you stay on sleeping pills forever, but it would be interesting to see if you felt you still needed the nap.
June 26th, 2005 @ 6:01 pm
Interesting, Sue. I’ll have to ask my doctor about it. I’m leery of medications, but trying it for a few nights might be useful as an experiment.
But I didn’t think taking afternoon naps was all that unusual, since I’ve read a lot of articles saying that doctors think companies should let their workers take a short afternoon nap, and that it increases productivity. My family has always been nap-takers, and my dad can fall asleep in mid-sentence. So maybe it’s a herditary thing.
I don’t actually fall asleep at the movies (unlike my dad), but yes I do get tired, especially if the movie is boring me (long action sequences will especially do it to me). I think I’ve been getting better about it lately – witness that the Nod-O-Meter rarely goes above one these days (MR & MRS SMITH notwithstanding), no matter how bored I am.