Thoughts on Day 1

This was a difficult day since I was already tired from an all nighter the night before (grad night).  If I ever did this again, I would prepare myself more beforehand.  At grad night I had about 10 Roy Rogers and the caffein from that made the naps difficult.  I ended up skipping two of them at 2 pm and 6 pm.  All and all I stayed awake by always being active and that worked pretty well.  I am not too worried about being awake during the day since I can always find someone to hang out with who can make sure I don't drift off.

Tonight I ran into the first real problem.  I was using a count down timer on my watch so I would't have to constantly set an alarm each time I take a nap (6x a day).  However, the timer is not very lound and goes off automatically after a short while.  I either did not hear it or I turned it off without waking up.  All these years of waking up to alarms has really honed my skill at turning off things that beep while remaining asleep.  Consequently I slept for about 2 hours.  This is going to be a bit of a setback in adjusting, but hopefully I wont run into this problem again.  I have replaced the watch alarm with a small kitchen timer that does not go off until you hit it, which is very important if you are trying to cook something.  To further protect against sleeping through it, I will leave the alarm across the room.  Hopefully this will prevent any future slip ups.

I think the first day has been mostly a day to deprive me of sleep and so even this longer nap won't change too much.  I have only gotten about 3 1/2 hours of sleep in the last 40 or so hours and little to none of that sleep was REM (I didn't get any during the naps, not sure about the 2 hour rest).  Today I will really try to hit each nap as it comes and limit myself to the 30 min.  I may try adding a back up alarm as well, until I am sure the kitchen timer works.  

One thing I have noticed already is just how much more you each when you never sleep.  in the last 24 hour period I had breakfast at 1 am (bacond and eggs), 2nd breakfast at about 7 am (pancakes), lunch at about noon (BBQ chicken and fried rice), dunch (in between lunch and dinner, separate from supper) at 5ish (4 tacos 3 quesadillas), dinner at about 9:30 (pasta), left over pasta at about 2:30 am, and now I am considering cereal.  I basically have doubled my meals so I have something to eat at each waking period.  I think it would also be good to make sure I also drink a lot of water while I'm awake.  

I think in this next 24 hour period I will try exercising to see how my body is dealing with this lack of sleep, and maybe try something mentally strenuous to see how present my mind is.  I was able to work on an excell document during this current waking period so I think I am doing alright there.  I also noticed my video game skills were no lacking earlier in the day when I played Super Smash Bros. Melee at a friends house.

I am currently working on a list of things to do while I am awake by myself, so If anyone has any suggestions (or challenges) please tell me and I might just work on it.  Also, once I start hitting REM and get some dreams I may add a dream log and try to describe them as well as I can, possibly omitting certain details due to privacy, etc.