Getting Older: Life, And How It Ages You

I feel old, audience. I'm not, but I feel it. In fact, I hardly have any room to talk. I can eat whatever I want and not gain a pound, I can pull all nighters like nothing else, I love soda and candy and energy drinks and video games. But, despite all of that, I feel old.

I love books, but especially old books, and the smell and feel of them. I'd rather take a walk in the rain or sit and stare at the city off of a cliff than play video games. I wear out the seat of my pants faster than the soles of my shoes. I prefer a nice cup of coffee and a good conversation over a crazy party, or even a mild party. I often catch myself wanting to say, "What is with kids these days? When I was their age..." or "Ugh, stupid teenagers. They have no respect." I like philosophy, classical music (Mozart makes me want to weep on occasion), and jazz. I used to play the cello, and I've always loved acoustic or string instruments. I think society has gone to the dogs and I don't understand music or fads these days. I actually want to build my wardrobe entirely of sweater vests and collared shirts, because I really like how clean cut and snazzy they look. I use the word snazzy or spiffy at all. And I just got my first summons for jury duty.

Now, there are probably a lot of you saying, "Yeah, what? I like a lot of those things too. I still feel young and fresh." But it's not that I like a lot of those things. It's just that when I'm in a modern setting, or I look at society today, I feel like an old book. I feel like I've been around forever, and that I don't belong on the same shelf as all the new books. I feel like I belong in an antique shop or an old bookstore, or on the bookshelf of an avid collector of rare literature. I just feel like I don't quite belong in society. And, still, a lot of you are saying, "Yeah, what? I feel like that too. That's not a unique feeling."


I half expect to see this guy in the mirror every  morning.



Let me make this clear: I'm not talking about nostalgia. I'm talking about the feeling that you get when you look down at the envelope in your hand, read JURY SUMMONS, and realize that you aren't 13 anymore, before your first girlfriend, your first kiss, talent show, junior prom, big break up, R-rated movie in theaters, huge party, graduation, whatever. You have a moment where you feel like you were about to wake up and get ready for ninth grade, but then you realize that almost six years have passed and you don't know where they went. I can remember my thirteenth birthday like it was yesterday. I remember where I was and what I did. But all of the years between then and now feel like a huge blur. It feels like they were ages ago and that I don't know the world that I knew then anymore.

Honestly, I feel like I could relate well to Rip Van Winkle at this point. You just fall asleep one day and then wake up and the world has changed. It has, to quote Stephen King, "moved on," and it just keeps moving. Time just keeps rolling on and on and it's harder and harder to grab onto. I can think of one song that always says exactly what I'm thinking, and that's "Can't Repeat" by The Offspring.

 

I woke the other day
And saw my world has changed
The past is over but tomorrow's wishful thinking
I can't hold on what's been done
I can't grab on what's to come
And I'm just wishing I could stop, but

Chorus:

Life goes on
Come of age
Can't hold on
Turn the page

Time rolls on
Wipe these eyes
Yesterday laughs
Tomorrow cries

Memories are bittersweet
The good times we can't repeat
Those days are gone and we can never get them back
Now we must move ahead

Despite our fear and dread
We're all just wishing we could stop, but

Chorus

With all our joys and fears
Wrapped in forgotten years
The past is laughing as today just slips away
Time tears down what we've made
And sets another stage
And I'm just wishing we could stop

Chorus

I heard that song for the first time somewhere around my thirteenth birthday, and I used to like it because, duh, it's The Offspring, and because a couple of the lyrics sounded pretty cool and kinda deep. Now that I'm older, the song rings truer and truer every time. It's exactly what I'm feeling in audio form.

Everyone has those times when they feel old. It's usually at the kind of point in life where I'm at right now, where there's a huge change about to happen and you realize just how different your life is than what you thought it would be when you were young. I couldn't have guessed that any of what has happened in the last six years was going to happen when I was thirteen. I couldn't even imagine the experiences I would have, the people I would meet, the things I would do, what I would learn, who I would become. I had no idea what a blog was or that I'd be writing one. I hardly knew anything at all, and I can say that comfortably because I don't remember anything about being thirteen that hasn't changed violently at some point or another.

So here I am, at 2am, typing a blog about feeling old, seven days away from my nineteenth birthday, singing "Can't Repeat" along with the video link, and feeling like my life started without my permission long ago and that I was too young to recognize the sound of the starting gun. And now I'm too old to start running without feeling like I'm going to finish last, and my knees are going to give out, and the arthritis in my hips is going to keep me up all night, and why did I sign up for this marathon anyway? Now I have to dig the cane out of the back of the closet and hobble around like i'm seventy or something. Oh, and now look, the audience is out on my lawn again. I thought I'd seen the last of those whippersnappers when I threatened to beat the freckles off of em if they didn't leave my hedges alone. Now I have to call their parents, who are obviously ill fit to be raising children, didn't teach them respect when they were kids, and now look where the world has gone to.

You tell em, Clint.

You see what I mean? Old. Minus the arthritis and yelling at whippersnappers about my hedges, this sounds like my thought train most days. I feel like my soul is old and it doesn't belong in this young body. And, to make it worse, my soul is only going to continue to age as my body does. Because life never stops moving, you never stop aging, and every day you're closer to dying. I've decided that I want to die young so I don't ever have to be a person that can truly say they don't know the world they live in anymore. I don't want my body to break down and have to rely on drugs or medical treatments to keep my body kicking, all the while forgetting more and more and never feeling like I belong in this world anymore. I want to die at a good age, where I've experienced life to the full and I'm ready to settle down and relax. And then I want it to end, before I start to lose that feeling that life has been good and that it's time to step back. I want to die feeling that, and have my death be that retirement.

I'd like to close with another quote from Stephen King, this one about aging, but I can't seem to find it online, and I don't have the book with me right now. I'll have to update this later once I can track it down, because it's about as powerful as the song above for me. But, until then, I need to get back to my comfy chair. I've been hunched over this keyboard for too long and my back is starting to stiffen up. Till next time, dear audience.

The Fantastic Fox, and Why I Love It.

Hello again, audience! Time for a less depressing, less obligated post, and a more fun, witty, topical post about something I happen to love. The fox. :D

For those of you who have been lurking around my blog for more than the last few weeks, you know that it used to be called "Shells From The Peanut Gallery". I chose that title because it described what I figured my blog posts would be, just a place for me to toss around the ideas and opinions floating around in my head. I decided to change it a few weeks ago because I like to revolve around the idea of the fox and what it has come to stand for in several cultures around the world. So! This blog will be dedicated to talking about foxes and what many cultures think of them.

That's right. A blog all about these guys.

The fox, or 'vulpes vulpes', is an omnivore who both hunts and eats plants. They are adapted toward making quick kills, both physiologically and instinctively. They aren't usually pack animals, but live in small family groups that hunt as individuals. Foxes have developed in various species and many locations all around the world.

Now, the general consensus about foxes is that they represent trickery and cunning. Some cultures portray them as evil, others as just mischievous, and a few that are reverent of them with an almost worshipful attitude. Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, foxes were burned in effigy, as they were tied to Satan due to their tendency to be wily and generally untruthful. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tales turn the fox into a spirit who becomes a woman in order to seduce men. They lean toward the mischievous angle over the morally higher cunning angle, giving a slightly dubious temperament to the fox.

Finnish mythology places the fox as cunning and tricky, seen as superior to the brutish bear and vicious wolf due to its use of intelligence rather than force or sheer malevolence. The ancient Moche people of Peru were known to worship animals, and featured foxes in their art alongside many others. Greatly in contrast to the Asian take, they viewed the fox as a mental warrior, who would use its mind to fight rather than a weapon. Western culture has come up with 'foxy', which is used to describe an attractive woman who may or may not be mischievous. We have much less history and deep-rooted culture, so the best we could come up with is a highly shallow term related to the animal

Though, if there was any animal that could make a flattering term for a woman...

 My very favorite of the cultural references to the fox is the possible origin of the word 'shenanigan'. It is believed to have come from the Irish phrase "sionnachiughim," meaning "I play the fox," which may or may not be loosely pronounced as shenanigan. I personally like the word shenanigan a lot, so its relation to the fox is quite amusing and it makes me happy.

Now that you have had a full helping of knowledge, let me explain why I love foxes and how that pertains to their reputation as an animal and a cultural symbol. First off, have you ever looked at a fox? They are freaking gorgeous animals to say the very least, although some species look kind of odd.

We're all looking at you, Tibetan Fox.

 Foxes stand as the symbol of wit and cunning in most cultures around the world, and I admire that. Society today undervalues intelligence in popular culture, as some of the most idiotic and absurd people become popular and famous. Jersey Shore is evidence of that. Did you know that 'Snooki' has 'authored' *coughghostwritercough* more than one book? It hurts me too, audience. Actual intelligence is on the downslope, and it looks like Idiocracy might be more than just a fun look at a possible future.

Next to that is the warrior who uses intelligence rather than force, which goes along with a lot of Eastern philosophy, as in Sun Tzu's Art of War. He emphasizes that the greatest warrior is the one who never has to engage the enemy, or, barring that, the one who dispatches his enemy through cunning and skill. Foxes excel at using their smarts and making the quick kill, making them a great model of that perfect warrior. It's actually a bit strange that the Chinese weren't the ones to call the fox a mental warrior.

I'm always a fan of wit and good humor, and foxes tend to have a good helping of both anywhere they show up in pop culture. Honest John from Disney's Pinocchio is one of my favorites, though the ultimate fox in my mind is the one and only Mr. Fox. Roald Dahl's interpretation of the wild and cunning fox has always and will always be my favorite, and this love affair is made even better by the film rendition of the child's book. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, I highly recommend both.

Seriously. Stop reading this blog right now and go watch it.

So, after all is said and done, the fox is a beautiful creature, and a symbol of the power of intelligence, cunning, and wit over force or strength, not to forget the mischief and shenanigans often attributed to them. As such, I like to think of my blog as a place to house, encourage, and cultivate intelligence and wit, a figurative fox den for the modern mind. Not to mention, I just love the freaking things, and I'd be one if I could. Three year expected lifespan thrown to the side, life as a fox would certainly be an interesting experience.

That will be all for now, audience. Go with the example of the fox in mind. And, do me a favor. Give me some feedback on the blog. You have been suspiciously silent since my first real post, and I'd like to hear from you. Tell me what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see more of, and maybe some tips on how I could keep you awake through a whole post. I'd even like to hear some ideas of things you'd like to hear my take on in future blogs. So throw me an email at cm.ludeman@gmail.com. Thanks a bunch, audience.

Seriously. I'm all ears, audience.

The Future, And How Terrifying It Is.

Hello, audience. It actually took me fifteen minutes staring at the screen after typing that to decide whether or not I actually wanted to type this blog. And then another ten after that to actually finish typing these two sentences. That should be a good clue as to just how terrifying this subject really is for me. I keep getting apprehensive and wanting to just drop it and find something else to type about. But then I stop and think, "Hey, what are you getting so worked up about? It's just the ominous, faceless, immense, inevitable, ever moving, ever changing rest of your life! :D" and then I set the laptop down, go into the fetal position, and I shudder until I don't feel like I'm going to throw up all of my organs anymore.

This fits the feeling perfectly.

I'm an 18 year old, almost 19, who graduated two years ago, bottom of my class, I have no job, no car, no plans for college, no real plans for the rest of my life. And I'm really not doing anything to change that. Why? Because the future terrifies me. The idea that I honestly don't know what's going to happen between now and the time I die haunts me pretty seriously. I know it's typical for a young person in my place to be scared of the future, and I know that it's going to happen every single time I have a major turning point in my life. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I think a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean almost constantly. Behind whatever blank look is on my face at any given time, the gears are turning. I'm constantly analyzing everything all the time, and at points, it leads me down to some very nihilistic lows. In the midst of wallowing in those mudholes, I sometimes think about the future. I think about where I want to be in life, what I want to do with myself, and where I'll be in twenty years. And I know that I'm going to be 38, almost 39, and that I'll probably be alive. Sounds like a plan, right? I'll probably still be alive? That's the best I've got?

For those of you who don't know me, I am the most rigid planner you will probably ever meet. I will spend hours for multiple days in advance planning out a perfect schedule in order to make sure everything goes exactly right, and I will stress myself out over things unnecessarily because of it. I've gotten to the point where I muscle my way into a leadership position in groups because I have to be part of the decision making process, or I will pretty much refuse to be part of the group and stand at a distance, making snide remarks about how I could have done things better. I absolutely must be in control. I'm a master of puppets if there has ever been one, and if I don't get to be, I get mad.

So, taking that into account, how can I not already have a plan for every single day of my life between now and 38-39 and beyond? How come I don't already have a job, a car, $1000 in the bank, a plan for what school I'm going to, where all my school money is coming from, where I'm going to live, when I'm going to graduate, what career I'm going to have, who I'm going to marry, how I'm going to support my family, how I'm going to retire, and where my family is going to be buried? How come I don't even know if I want to get married and have a family, or whether or not I want to go to college, whether or not I want to retire, whether or not I want to live to be old? How come I, Mister Ludeman, planner and overthinker extraordinaire, doesn't have a plan for his life?

Too good of a joke to pass up.

Honestly, because I don't want to live a planned life. I want to roll with the punches, go with the flow, make decisions as they come to me. I don't want to spend my entire life planning my next move. I just want to live. And it's hard for me to do that, because then I fall into a self-destructive period of doing absolutely nothing to compensate for all the stress I put myself through thinking and worrying. I just shut down, stop planning, stop trying to go anywhere or be anything other than what I want to be in the moment right then and there, and then I get stuck. Like I am now. And all of this is because:

The Future Is Terrifying. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month or year or ever. I don't know what the future holds, and that terrifies me. I can't say for sure that I'll have the same friends or that I'll get a good job or that my car won't break down or that I'll never have to worry where money is coming from or that I'll be happy where I am and with the choices I've made and the person I have become. And that unknowing, that inability to know for sure where my choices will lead me and who they will make me, is probably the most terrifying part. 

How do I know I'm making the choices now that will lead me to the happy future I want? How do you even define a happy future? One where you reach your goals, become everything you wanted to be and have everything you wanted to have, but that was hard work to get to, and you lost a lot along the way? Or one that was okay, decent job, you still dream of things you've always wanted but now know for sure that they're out of your grasp, but you had some good times, some happy times? If I were to end up with some terminal disease, would I be able to say I'd enjoyed the first life more or the second? The life where I was everything I wanted to be and I ended up happy, or the one where I was happy the whole way and ended up far from my dreams?

That's the most terrifying part. Forget all the rest. The most terrifying part is having to live, not knowing what is coming, and discover it one small step at a time. The most terrifying thing about the future, is that you can't stop it, and you can't skip it. You can't speed up or slow down. You can't skip to the end and read the last page when you get bored, you can't stop and read that paragraph over and over because it's the part you love most, you can't turn back the page when things are their very worst to a time when things were amazing and you were the happiest you had ever been and just live in that moment again. The future is intangible, that past is gone, and the present is all you have to work with. There's no second chances, no do-overs, no starting back at the beginning when you get to the end. You only live every second once, and the clock is always ticking. And that's what I really hate. The clock never stops moving, never for a single second. It just keeps ticking and ticking and ticking the hours away until your inevitable but unknown death, before which, you have to make something of  your life.

Can you hear it?

All the while, you sit and watch people around you make choices, make decisions, seemingly undisturbed by that annoying, torturous ticking, hiding in the back of your mind, always just below the surface, but never quiet enough for you to forget about it. That ticking that says, "They just got a second job; why don't you have one yet? They have a nice car and pay for all their own gas; where's yours? They got an amazing scholarship that means they don't have to worry about anything for the duration of their college life; what are you going to do about college? They're married and happy and have children who are all growing up to be fantastic people; what have your choices made you?"

And then you're there, at the bottom of that thinking hole that I get myself down to, and you curl up in bed and you want to give up on everything because nothing matters anyway. We're all just microscopic specks on the pale blue dot in this gigantic universe, and there's nothing we can do to escape the future.

So what do we do? How do we stop feeling like little specks? How do we shut up that ticking in the back of our heads? How do we stop comparing our success to every other person on the planet? How do we stop feeling like the expectations of everyone around us are weighing down on our shoulders? How do we stop worrying that we don't already have a plan?

How do we stop being afraid of the future?

Do you know, audience?

Or is it just me?

Polyphasic Sleep: The End and The Why

Hello, audience. Last time we spoke, I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about this whole experiment and its potential for success. And a few days ago, that was the case. But in the last two days, a few things have come up that have changed my decision to remain on polyphasic sleep.


Thursday went pretty well, and Friday was okay too, until I left my phone at my Raven's house. She lost her keys a few weeks ago, and she didn't have the house key that day because her roommate was coming home late, while Raven was going to be at work the whole night and therefore didn't need the keys. This meant that my phone was going to be stuck at her house till at least the next day and maybe longer. I can live without my phone, something I've done for months at a time before. I'm not addicted to the social interaction. The problem was, without my phone, I had no alarm system to make sure I woke up on time, in case my brain failed to wake me before the alarm like it has been doing of late.


I ended up staying over at Poncho's boyfriend's house so that I could have someone around to wake me up if I accidentally overslept. The midnight nap was perfect, and I actually woke up exactly 25 minutes after I laid down to sleep, no alarm needed. For the 6am nap, I set an alarm on the computer that would ring loudly to wake me up if I overslept. Unfortunately, it didn't repeat, and I didn't hear it when it did go off, and my brain didn't wake me up either. So I ended up sleeping for about an hour before waking. It continued downhill from there, as I overslept at noon and 6 as well. After the 6 nap, I had become incredibly drowsy, completely unable to keep my eyes open for most of an hour, and then lacking the energy to want to move for the time after that.


The drowsiness was rooted in sleep inertia, which is the feeling of wanting to go back to sleep if woken mid-cycle. You feel tired and grumpy and generally irritable about everything, something scientists have actually proven during lab testing. Subjects woken during REM felt refreshed and optimistic, while subjects woken during other phases woke feeling irritable, and reflected that with generally negative responses when faced with a fill-in-the-blank word exercise immediately after waking. The only way to avoid this is to wake up during the REM cycle itself or the natural waking state at the end of an REM cycle.

Me, perpetually, when I don't have enough sleep.

First in my decision to end the experiment here was the fact that I would have to be slave to some safety net, else I oversleep and set myself into a self-destructive pattern thereafter because of drowsiness and irritability. I was without my phone for 24 hours and the entire set of progress I made thus far fell apart in no time. But, as I said, this was not the only deciding factor.


My appetite has continued to be completely insatiable, and I am never in a place where I can eat to fullness at every meal. This results in either constant or near constant hunger, and then feelings of being light-headed and weak due to lack of nutrition and proper sustenance. A major problem, because it means that I must always have a full, healthy meal at hand, which is not always going to be possible. And, in the future, it would mean my budget for food would have to be massive in order to accommodate my food intake, which is a very undesirable end.


Third, and the most selfish of the reasons to call this experiment done, was the major changes to diet I've been having to make. Not only do I have to eat more food at strictly regular intervals, I had to eat healthier at every meal to maintain good nutrition. Lots of fruits and veggies constantly, less greasy or fatty foods, and more fresh prepared meals. All of which are not easy to keep at hand all the time unless you have a majorly inflated food budget, mentioned before. Alongside that is the necessity to drop caffeine or high sugar intake in all forms. No soda, no energy drinks, no coffee, not even most teas. I was limited to water, juice, and milk, or nothing at all. This limitation was the one that really caught me, as I really enjoy drinking coffee, teas, energy drinks, and sodas, and I was not about to convert to diet soda to compromise.


I will die before I drink diet soda instead of regular soda or coffee. 


I want you to hear that sentence in your head in the most serious tone of voice you can imagine coming from my mouth. Or, those of you who haven't met me in person, them most serious tone of voice you can attribute to the voice you have given me in your imaginations. I love coffee more than almost anything else I ingest. I love Mountain Dew in all of its flavors, and as proof, I actually co-founded a cult formed around the worship of its holy citrus-based deliciousness. And Red Bull flows in my veins, not blood.


So, at the end of everything, I really did enjoy the extra hours I gained during polyphasic sleep. I was achieving success in the adaptation, and at the end of only five days I was starting to wake naturally at the end of my cycles. I was not drowsy except for the occasions on which I slept too long or had to push a nap back so I could fall asleep properly. Polyphasic sleep worked for me, and my experiment was successful overall. But at a high cost to my personal choices. One of the blogs I read, and probably the greatest source of hope for polyphasic sleepers, was actually written by a person who had been a practicing vegan for many years before he began the Uberman sleep cycle, so his diet was already perfect for the kind of restrictions polyphasic sleep demands. I, however, am not a vegan and wouldn't ever consider the change.


I'm an egoist at heart, and my decisions are always dictated by what I want in the end. In this case, I want to drink soda, coffee, and energy drinks, and want to keep my diet the way it is, more than I want to pursue the extra hours of sleep everyday. And that's all that really matters. As happy as I was with all that time on my hands, I wouldn't really be happy if I had to give up some of the things I enjoy most in life. Call me hedonistic, but  I have chosen personal pleasures over discipline and a more effective method of time management. I could swear by Ayn Rand's Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, and I've just decided that I'm going to blog about how much I love those works and her egoist philosophy very soon, as they form a large portion of my own core philosophy and worldview.

Somewhere deep down inside, I am Hedonism Bot.

There you have it, audience. Polyphasic sleep does indeed have its benefits, but only if you are willing to discipline yourself so far as to make it work. And I know that there are many out there dedicated enough to make it work. As disciplined as I would like to live, I really enjoy being chaotic neutral more. I could never be a lawful alignment, as all of the restrictions and guidelines I would be submitting myself to would kill the essence of what I really was. At the end of the day, I'm a lazy, selfish, egotistic, and arrogant soul, and you can be damn sure I'm happy that way. I wasn't going to be myself if I sacrificed my favorite things to get some extra time to do things I wanted, and therefore, I chose to stop trying.


So, till next time my dear audience, don't settle for what you've got if you think there's something better waiting for you, and don't compromise what makes you truly happy for something you think will make your life better. Stay true to yourself and who it is you really want to be, not who you think you should be. End of story.

"...What else am I supposed to stand on?"

Polyphasic Sleep: Days 3-4

Hello again, audience! This is a groundbreaking week for me in the realm of blogging, as I have now posted three blogs within three days. I forgot my early amusement with blogging and how much fun it was to just rant on and on at people I couldn't see and would probably never meet. But here I am again, with more things to say concerning my experiment with polyphasic sleep.

The last two days have gone by pretty uneventfully, as the experiment is going as planned, meaning one step at a time and with very little frustration. Wednesday, I had trouble napping at noon due to a lot of light in the room, and I ended up just drowsing for the planned half hour, then slipping into accidental sleep for around 30 minutes after staring at the ceiling for a while. I chalked it up as success, as it basically counted as a nap taken later than I planned. The same thing happened later at my 6pm nap, as I was not properly tired when I tried to sleep because my nap was coming early. I ended up taking that nap closer to 7:40pm, and still slept for only half an hour or so before awaking naturally.

My midnight nap went off as planned, and I fell asleep smoothly after reading for the hour or so beforehand. After that, I had a long night of struggling to want to do anything. Thus far, I had spent every night of the experiment with other people around or a preplanned period of things to do. Last night, my plan was to begin writing a short story Poncho and I came up with earlier this week. The plot basically consists of a fumbling young necromancer in modern times who breaks into a morgue and resurrects a body as a thrall, only to find that the guy is completely aware of what is going on and is confused. Hilarity ensues. I eventually got around to starting, and I ended up the proud author of five handwritten pages before my 6am nap. Unfortunately, all of those pages were written in the last hour of the awake cycle, as I spent most of the cycle half conscious and drowsing on and off.

After my 6am nap, which also went off without a hitch, I took my lesson in motivation and turned into a productive human being! I showered, ate breakfast, did laundry, listened to August Burns Red for a good long while and practiced screaming to myself in the bathroom, and planned out my next cycle, all before noon. My noon and 6pm naps also went wonderfully, and now I'm closing in on my midnight nap.

Observations:
As each day passes and my body becomes more accustomed to very little sleep, I have noticed that my grogginess has lessened with just about every cycle since the end of the second day. After waking, I feel refreshed but still a bit fuzzy for ten or fifteen minutes, and then I feel awake and aware like I do after a normal night of sleep. This short waking up period is a wonderful change as opposed to how I feel after monophasic cycles, as I usually spend the next hour or so fighting to find motivation to move or speak so I can shuffle off to the kitchen and eat.

Another notable event is my return to sleepiness in the last hour or two before my next nap. My body becomes tired much like it does after staying up for very long hours, but I've only really been awake for four or five. This leads me to believe that my body is indeed adapting to the cycle and is starting to work on 6 hour cycles rather than 14-20. And, as I mentioned before, the sleepiness only lasts until my nap and for the first ten or so minutes after, and then I feel at about maximum, considering how early into the experiment I am and the fact that I have only had a maximum of 12 hours of sleep in the last four days.

The last thing to note at this point is how hungry I am. All the time. I read about this occurrence in blogs of other sleepers, and it makes sense. My body is now conscious and at full metabolism for around 22 hours of every day. This means that I am consuming and digesting food and then using the energy at a more rapid pace than normal. Following that, I've been waking up hungry and eating a full meal just about every cycle so far, and still feeling hungry after. I have a naturally high metabolism, being that I am 18, stand 5'11", weigh 125lbs. average, and have a BMI of 12 at last calculation. I can eat anything and everything I want to and not worry that it is affecting my weight or my ability to engage in activities throughout the day. So an increase in hunger and need for food is shocking, and it makes me worry that I am not going to be able to keep up with my body's increasing need for nutrition all the time. Good healthy meals are not always available to me, so it's going to be difficult to keep myself nourished if this continues. I'll have to come up with a meal plan as to how I'm going to get my Daily Values each day, spread between the four cycles.

I'm really happy with my results thus far, and I'm excited for the days to come. I believe I have conquered the problems I've had in the last few days with just a few simple resolutions to keep in mind every time a problem arises. Getting out of bed immediately; planning out activities for my next cycle before I nap; not worrying about being unable to fall asleep in some locations or situations; and, following that, taking naps up to an hour later than scheduled to accommodate the situation; all of these have made today the most successful day of my experiment yet. And it will only continue to get better. :D

Stay tuned, my beloved audience. There is more to come in the days ahead, and my time dedicated to polyphasic sleep updates will dwindle as interesting news becomes less and less of a happenstance. But, be assured: I will continue to maintain my blog more fervently than before. I really do enjoy writing here, as much as I thought I wouldn't in the first place. Look forward to hearing from me more often and about a greater variety of subjects in the coming days and weeks. And thank you for allowing me a small portion of your lives to entertain you, if even for a moment.

Polyphasic Sleep: Interlude of interest...

Gasp! Two blogs in one day? Unheard of. But, dear audience, I felt like some words needed to be said.

I've been reading around the web for more studies into polyphasic sleep cycles, and I came across someone who decided to take it upon themselves to debunk the myths and present sheer facts as to how it works, and whether or not it can in the long run. The only problem was, the page was so full of bias and skepticism, I could hardly find a straightforward sentence in the entire thing. He spent his time talking at large about how the polyphasic sleep cycle is popularized by young, optimistic, testosterone charged males with ambitions to take the world by storm and show that they were masters of their own bodies. While I don't dispute the truth of that, he dedicated an entire section to mocking their efforts, and pointed out that the most common words in their blogs about their personal experiments were "I", "nap", and "tired".

Coming from an objective standpoint as to whether or not the sleep works, I find it hard to believe that this page was written without blatant bias against the sleepers. Though I don't know everything about sleep cycles or how the body determines its circadian rhythms, I must also point out that scientists don't either. Studies into sleep have been ongoing for decades and longer as scientists try to determine why we sleep, why there are different phases, what happens in each phase, and whether or not these phases are absolutely necessary to proper growth or not. A lot of the studies I have read about determined that sleep is still mysterious, but that the phases do seem to have some specific purpose, though humans can live without them in large amounts as long as they get some form of regular sleep. Sleep deprivation is dangerous and is not to be toyed with in the long term.

It seems my biggest problem with the webpage is that the author seemed set to prove that a bunch of stupid teenagers on the internet didn't know what they were talking about, and that no scientist in their right mind would put test subjects through the kind of torment that polyphasic sleep supposedly inflicts upon the body. My response to this: OF COURSE A BUNCH OF TEENAGERS ON THE INTERNET DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. They're teenagers, none of which have a doctorate of any kind, nor have they done mass research on sleep. They heard that they could get more out of their days with less sleep and wanted to put it to the test. And in my opinion, that makes them more a scientist than the guy who said that it would be unethical to try. In line with that, of course a JOURNAL about the experiment from the test subject's perspective is going to have the words "I" and "nap" show up a lot. The entire experiment revolves around naps. Don't attribute it to their egocentrism and their longing for more sleep on a constant basis.

The point of science is to put things to the test, to experiment, and to reveal unknown things through the pursuit of knowledge. For hundreds of years, the higher intelligence of the human race has been dedicated to discovering new things through the field of science, and we've come an incredible distance. Scientists have had thousands of experiments of all different kinds in order to find answers to their questions. Deciding that one specific subject is unethical because it results in someone being drowsy and having a clouded mind for portions of the day is ridiculous and idiotic.

Here's some honesty for you: On the large scale, individual polyphasic sleep experiments end in failure. The test subjects end up oversleeping and taking extra naps, or compromising their schedules because it gets in the way of their social life. I read one blog about a group who embarked on the experiment together, and the poster had a very passive attitude about the whole thing. He claimed dedication to the experiment, but passed it off when he overslept his alarm by four hours multiple times throughout the first two weeks. Success won't come if you let your mistakes lie and hope for better results in the future. He eventually gave up and went to a biphasic schedule of sleeping through the night and taking a single afternoon nap, which is not polyphasic by any means. That's called taking a siesta, a practice that's been around for quite a long time.

At the end of this whole rant, it really comes down to one simple thing for me: Don't knock it till you've tried it. Honestly, if the idea of being a bit foggy at points throughout the day offends you that badly, then by all means, sleep your little heart out, Rip Van Winkle. But if you don't care that you might be tired sometimes and that it gets a little rough in places, and still decide that the extra time everyday is worth it, then give it a shot. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. My personal goal is to remain polyphasic as long as I feasibly can, because I'm tired of sleeping my days away when I could be using the time to do so much more.

I intend to be serious about this and make it work, regardless of being a little drowsy in the opening stages. That's called a side effect, and considering the side effects of some drugs these days, a little drowsiness could be considered an extremely low cost for the benefit. For the benefit of 5-6 more hours available to me every single day, and the calculated 11 extra years added to the total conscious period of the average expected western lifespan, a little drowsiness is nothing to be worried about.

So sweet dreams, audience. Enjoy your long stretches of beautiful, restful sleep. I'll be taking the shortcut, and at the cost of sleeping in on weekends or curling up for 12 to 14 hours of sleep when you have a day off, I'll be reading and writing and playing guitar and thinking and enjoying life for a few extra hours each day. To each his (or her) own.

Polyphasic Sleep: Reboot and Days 1-2

Hello again, audience! You may or may not have noticed the sudden disappearance of my last blog on polyphasic sleep. This is because, in an attempt to edit it, I accidentally deleted it from the site. Go figure. But! A lot has changed since that first post, so this is my reboot of the experiment, starting from scratch.

First off, a recap on what polyphasic sleep actually is. Monophasic sleep is the traditional pattern of sleeping, where you lay down at night for eight hours of sleep and wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and recharged. Polyphasic sleep is a modified sleep cycle designed to obtain the maximum amount of conscious hours and still get enough sleep by taking short 'naps' at various intervals throughout the day. The idea is that you train your body to slip straight into REM sleep, which is the deep restful sleep during which you dream. In a monophasic cycle, you progress from Stage 1 light sleep into Stage 2 sleep, then Stage 3 'slow-wave sleep', then Stage 2 again, then finally REM. Stage 2 sleep makes up 45 to 50 percent of your overall time sleeping, whereas REM sleep is usually only 20 to 25 percent. So in a polyphasic sleep cycle, you obtain the same amount of REM with one quarter of the amount of sleep.

Now, in all the studies and blogs I have been able to google up, I have not found any serious negative side effects as a result of polyphasic sleep. The most stressing part is the adaptation period, where you train your brain to slip directly into REM. You basically take the naps as you plan to and, over the course of about a week or so, your brain learns to skip the other phases of sleep and put you directly into REM sleep. During this period, you feel all the side effects of your lack of sleep leading up to the point at which your brain starts clicking into gear and immediate REM sleep becomes natural.

With all that nasty technical business out of the way, I can quickly recount the events of my last attempt at polyphasic adaptation:

 It didn't work.

I believe it had a lot to do with how I prefaced the week of adaptation with a weekend of very little sleep and sporadic cycles. As a result, I was already sleepy a lot of the time, and I ended up oversleeping or taking involuntary naps out of sheer exhaustion. On one occasion, I recall waking up, turning off my alarm, and then blacking out until almost three hours later. My body just didn't have it in it to make the transition because it was so sleep deprived to begin with. So, my blogs never got posted, and the experiment was abandoned for a while.

As of Sunday this week, I decided to try again. The decision was made in part as a longing to complete my original experiment and see how polyphasic sleep worked in the long run, and part because I've decided that I really hate sleeping monophasically. I tend to either not sleep enough and feel tired all the time, or oversleep and end up wasting most of a day. It started to really aggravate me last week when I slept for 12 hours straight on three different days, mostly because I just couldn't make myself stay awake when my REM cycles ended and I became conscious. And it really pissed me off. I wasted most of three days because I was sleeping.

Back in high school, 12 hours of sleep was the most beautiful gift that anyone could ever give me. I believe this is because most of my waking hours were spent at school, and the energy drain from that left me begging for sleep. Now, sleeping for more than 5 or 6 hours makes me feel like a bum who could be spending his time doing more worthwhile things. So polyphasic sleep has become my solution to that problem. I get the sleep I need and still have plenty of time to do anything I want with my days.

Last but not least, update as to how i'm doing now: Much better than my previous attempt. Getting proper sleep the weekend before I started really made a difference in my ability to stay awake between cycles. It's still difficult to adapt, as purposeful sleep deprivation is really hard on your body. I've had a couple slips in the last two days, but overall, my naps are restful, and my waking periods are spent keeping myself busy so as not to fall asleep accidentally. I'm following the Buckminster Cycle of taking one half hour nap every six hours, on the sixes and twelves. This seemed to be the best arrangement of naps for my current schedule, and it's easily adaptable to accommodate any changes that may need to be made later on.

So there you have it: The beginning of my polyphasic sleep reboot. From here on out, I will be posting regularly like I originally planned to so as to chronicle my time spent as a polyphasic sleeper. As things are, I intend to remain a polyphasic sleeper for the indefinite future, as I see no real reason to maintain monophasic sleep since I hate it so much. It's stupid and takes up all my time and that's dumb and makes me angry. To put it simply, anyway. Goodbye for now, audience. I have Farscape Season 1 to get moving on. :D

Oh! Almost forgot. My beloved Poncho now has a blog of her own! :D Check it out: thebullwell.blogspot.com

Books books books books books...

Hello again, audience! How are you today? I'm pretty swell myself. I've still been feeling useless lately, but I've also had this mysterious streak of thoughtfulness. Twice in the last three days, I've had spontaneous conversations about philosophy and human nature with my soultwin Poncho, and it has been really exciting. That added to being pushed to write another blog has led me to the keyboard where I am now typing this.

I've decided that this blog, as indicated by the title, is going to be about books. I've read two in the last five days or so, which is actually a slow pace for me, but still carnivorous nonetheless. I love to read, and I can usually pick apart books in a single afternoon, as I have done with a couple books I'm about to mention. So, this time around I'm going to talk about some of my favorite books and the authors who made them a reality. First though, I'm going to talk about the books I have been reading lately.

I'm a Star Wars fan, and more specifically a fan of Old Republic events, way before the movies happened. The good old days when the Sith were running rampant trying to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic and rule the galaxy through the Dark Side of the Force. So when Poncho's boyfriend handed me a book titled Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, I couldn't help but be excited. It's about a miner named Des who, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, ends up on the run from Republic soldiers and joins the Sith army as a last resort. Through further circumstances, he ends up being chosen to be a Sith Apprentice at the Academy on Korriban. Now, I don't want to spoil the plot, because my hope is that you will go pick up this book and devour it like I did. But, I want to get this across: Darth Bane is unlike any Sith that has ever existed. He not only tracks down three Sith holocrons from planets across the galaxy and learns ancient secrets forgotten for generations. It was his idea to narrow the Sith order down to only two members at any time; one master and one apprentice. That way, the order couldn't be undermined and weakened by ambitious apprentices teaming up to kill their master. He also does mind blowing things through the Dark Side. Absolutely mind blowing. I read the entire trilogy over the course of two weeks, I think, and it only took that long because I had to wait to get the next book from Poncho's boyfriend. I love those books.

Next up is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I have been told repeatedly by various people to read this book, and I got my hands on a copy earlier this year, but I didn't read it till the other day. And I must say, I'm disappointed in myself for not reading it sooner. It's about the third child Andrew, a rare event in this future, in a family of apparent genius children. Andrew and his older siblings are intelligent in a way that people now only see in movies and tv shows. Andrew gets picked to go to Battle School at age 6, younger than anyone before him, to train to be a fleet commander. The humans were attacked by Buggers, an alien species, twice in the past and survived thanks to Mazer Rackham, a genius strategist. Now the humans are preparing for a Third Invasion, and it's up to Ender to be trained and prepared to lead the fleet. Except that he doesn't know he's being conditioned. Everything is done in secret, so that he is not given the opportunity to refuse the plans they have set out for him. Now, i'm a fan of science fiction and space battles and the like, but a book about school has never really appealed to me. It even took me till I was 15 or so to touch Harry Potter because it never really sounded that good. But this is more than just a book about starfleet academy or whatever. It's a story about a boy being shaped and molded by events, a boy who is a better strategist and commander at age 8 than most adults are, a boy who is destined to save the world from an insurmountable enemy fleet and become a legend. It's fantastic beyond anything I can describe.

Now, onto my favorites. First off is Stephen King, and just about anything he has ever written. I was introduced to him when I borrowed The Gunslinger off my dad's bookshelf. It's the first in Stephen King's longest and biggest project, The Dark Tower series. It's a 7 book series, but unlike Harry Potter, this one is targeted to a more mature audience. It's a dark fantasy fairy tale about a man named Roland Deschain, the last Gunslinger, in search of his nemesis, the ever mysterious Man in Black. This is one of the books I read in a single evening. From the first sentence, Stephen King kidnaps you to a world that has 'moved on', decaying from old age and the efforts of someone trying to bring about the end of the universe as we know it by destroying the fabled Dark Tower that lies at the center of everything. Over thirty years and seven books, King defies all storytelling that has come before him and completely blows away every other fantasy series I have ever read. And the end of the seventh book, The Dark Tower, will FOREVER be my favorite ending to a book or series, though The Dream of Perpetual Motion comes very close.

Now, The Dark Tower series is not the only King i'm a fan of. One of the conversations with Poncho was about Needful Things, another book by King that explores humanity and the idea that everyone will sell their soul if given the right price. I've also read The Eyes of the Dragon, 'Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, Dreamcatcher, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Skeleton Crew, and i'm currently working on Everything's Eventual. The thing I love about King is his mastery of his genre. He knows what scares people, what's creepy, what haunts your dreams and nightmares, and he knows how to bring those things to life with words. Not only do you fall in love with his writing, you eventually grow to love the man himself, through the little bits of himself he leaves in introductions and afterwords. And the short story collections are even better, because he often tells where he got the idea for each of his stories and the strange or weird tales behind their publishing. I've barely scratched the surface of his 40+ novels, but I intend to continue reading until I catch up.

This is the part where I go into obsessive fan mode and talk about my very favorite book, The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer. I mentioned it before, but now I get to really talk about it and how much I love it, rather than just praising it and giving you a link to buy it. Harold Winslow is locked aboard the good ship chrysalis, powered by a perpetual motion machine built by Prospero Taligent, the mechanical wizard and father of Miranda Taligent, the girl whose face has haunted Harold's dreams for most of his life and whose voice now haunts the metal halls of the Chrysalis. Harold recounts the tale of how he came to be trapped aboard the zeppelin and his tragic history with Miranda and Prospero.

The book is set in a steampunk world where Prospero has invented all sorts of wonders and the sound of machines is never far off. It's heavily based on the plot of Shakespeare's Tempest, and I highly recommend it to anyone who liked the original, but it's not just a cheap copy. Palmer reinvents the story and brings it to a whole new universe, while adding his own underlying themes. There's something haunting about the parallels we can draw between Harold's strange world and our own, and the slow decay of everything that once meant something to people. Not only does reading this book have the side effect of understanding better the depression of old people when confronted with this newfangled technology and the changing of times, but the ending literally makes me giggle with excitement every single time. I highly recommend reading and re-reading this book until you can't help but bring it up every single time someone is talking about books or Shakespeare or steampunk or anything at all. You just have to talk about this book once you've read it. I made Poncho read it so that I could rant about how much I loved it to her.

That's all for now, but I'll surely have more installments about books in the future, because I love them way too much to not rant about them every once in a while. In review, Poncho is my soultwin, she is a female, and she has a boyfriend; my girlfriend made me write this blog and now i'm kind of happy because I have a lighter topic to return to and be excited about on occasion; Darth Bane is the greatest Sith ever and his books ruined the rest of the Star Wars books about normal characters or Jedi for me; Ender is a super genius destined to save the human race and his book made me double take at the climax; Stephen King's Dark Tower series makes me an inordinately happy person, and is soooo worth reading despite being impossibly long; and Dexter Palmer's very first novel made a lifetime fan out of me at the drop of a hat. I think that I may have gotten something done today.

So! Until next time, ambiguous audience, I order you to run down to your local bookstore and buy a hard copy of one of these books and read it and then tell me what you think. I'll have to rant about hard copy versus eBook another day...

Corruption vs Discipline; A Personal Aim

Hello again, ever-listening audience. I'm actually going to talk about things this blog! Doesn't that make you excited? It probably shouldn't, though. Because then if it's not that awesome, you'll be let down. I think it was a wise bird with an old soul who once told me that she was a cynic "because, if you expect everything to suck, you won't be disappointed when it does, and it'll be a pleasant surprise when it doesn't." I'd like you all to adapt that attitude about my blogs, at least to just humor me. That way, if I'm terrible, you can say you saw it coming, and if i'm not, you can be surprised and pleased that I exceeded expectations. Win-win.

Anyhow, I've been doing some thinking about myself and where I am in life and I realize that I have become mind numbingly lazy. I graduated from high school in May of 2010 and have done a whole lot of nothing since. I've been half-attempting to get a job, but not putting in near as much effort as I probably should, because let's be honest. As much as people say they want a job, no one really does. Everyone wants to live for free. I'm one of a very strange breed who needs to be busy to feel important. But even in that, it sucks that  my ability to eat and have a roof over my head depends on my continuing to be subservient to a capitalist society. So I've been doing the bare minimum so I can say that I've been trying without feeling guilty, all the while blaming the bad economy and job market for my inability to get a job.

So here I am, at the start of the second school year since my graduation, still living in my parent's basement and applying for jobs on the occasions where my parents and friends pester me to the point that I want them to leave me alone and stop making me feel guilty about not trying harder. It's hard to ignore the fact that i'm mad at myself for being lazy when everyone keeps bringing it up ALL THE TIME. And lately, I have been really angry at myself because i'm letting people down by not doing what I know I should be doing and acting like a grown-up.

It comes down to something I decided a few years ago, an axiom that held at the center of my life for a while, but that I kind of let go once I graduated. It's the relation between corruption and discipline. Now, that may seem like an arbitrary pair of words to throw together, and it kind of is, but they portray the meaning I want AND have the exact same number of letters at the same time. I was trying to create an ambigram, that thing where a picture says one word when you look at it right side up and something different when viewed upside down. And I'm not very skilled in art, so I needed a pair of words with the same number of letters to make it easy on me. I also wanted this ambigram to be something meaningful so I would be able to have it as a tattoo someday. So I picked Corruption and Discipline. Now let me explain what I mean.

Dictionary.com defines discipline as:


noun

1.

training to act in accordance with rules; drill: military discipline.

2.

activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training: A daily stint at the typewriter is excellent discipline for a writer.

3.

punishment inflicted by way of correction and training.

4.

the rigor or training effect of experience, adversity, etc.: the harsh discipline of poverty.

5.

behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and ordermaintained by training and control: good discipline in an army.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discipline)

I'm looking at the first, second, and fifth definitions here. Those definitions lend themselves to the idea of acting in a structured manner and sticking to rules to govern one's lifestyle, as in the military. The military has a reputation of having a very strict set of rules in order to teach the troops to live to a higher standard and to maintain a specific lifestyle. Now, corruption:

noun

1.

the act of corrupting  or state of being corrupt.

2.

moral perversion; depravity.

3.

perversion of integrity.

4.

corrupt  or dishonest proceedings.

5.

bribery.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/corruption)

There's only one definition here that applies, and that's the third one, "perversion of integrity". Integrity is defined by the very same website as:

 "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty."

So corruption refers to warping or compromising one's integrity, or their soundness of character and their moral principles.

The point i'm aiming for here is that discipline is a force that builds you up, that strengthens your character and makes you stronger, and that corruption is a force that tears down that character and strength that discipline builds. How does this apply to me?

I've gotten lazy. I've been being stupid and ignoring my feelings of guilt about not taking action, and pretty much shirking the responsibility that belongs to me. I've allowed myself to become corrupted, and it has made me lazy and angry, and I've been lashing out at people that matter to me. I've become the kind of person I was becoming when I first came up with the idea of corruption vs discipline. I'm a hypocrite, and, much like Alice, I give myself and others good advice, but rarely ever follow it.

So I have decided to add some discipline back into my life. I'm going to start going to sleep and waking on a regular schedule. I'm going to start eating regularly and with some sort of healthy diet. I'm going to start working out and get back in shape. I'm going to start living a structured life again, so I can get a handle on the ridiculous and emotional person I have become. When you get lazy and stop taking charge, you become wild and out of control and do ridiculous things. But if you stay disciplined, you can control yourself and your emotions and focus your energy. And when you are a focused person, you can do incredible things.

That's all from the Peanut Gallery for now, but I'll be sure to post something less dense and weighty soon. Thanks again for listening, audience, and I hope that you find some discipline and order to help purge the corruption out of your life.