Failure

Went out for a couple of hours last night with the G-Man and the SO. Naturally I didn’t drink, just had a few alco free largers, with black currant squash to swap one bad taste for an slightly less offensive one. Left those two to go home and have my nap, with the intention to meet them at the next venue, should they decide to go on. Despite walking home in the rain, being damp and a tad on the cold side, I dropped off to sleep immediately and woke up 20 minutes later, feeling fine. Met the other 2 at the Jazz bar. The Jazz bar is our local venue in Dalston and is tiny. Think of a sardine can with music playing and you’ve got a reasonable image. We had a drink, went out for a smoke and then they wouldn’t let us back in because it was full. We eventually managed to persuade them to let us get our coats and came home.
This is fast becoming a trend. It’s just not socially practical to be a smoker any more. The Jazz bar has always been a packed out pain in the neck, but with it not possible to have a smoke anymore, it’s a non starter.
So, last night I failed miserably. Had my 3 am nap and woke up OK, had my 7 am nap and woke up to. The problem is, the bits in between could not be described as awake. I’m clearly not adapting at all. Discussing it with the G-Man last night I decided to give it a total of one week, to see signs of improvement, then switch to the everyman schedule if it wasn’t working and introduce a core sleep. Clearly being zombie for 5 hours tells me it’s not working and I’m not surprisingly not one of the very small percentage of people for whom this works. Bugger. So, rather than give up completely, I’m going to switch now and give the everyman a few days. I’m clearly a lot less confident now, but am determined to do due diligence and give it a proper chance. The reality is that I’m not naturally a monophasic sleeper. I’m always useless in the mid to late afternoon period and always want to have a nap, even if I’ve slept 8 hours the night before. So maybe getting some actual sleep as well may work for me. Starting tonight, I’m going to introduce a 3 hour core sleep. I’ll have it between 4 and 7am. Then I’ll have 3 30 minute naps at 12, 5 and 11. That way I could continue to do this when I go back to work as this pattern is more forgiving and you can move the naps around.
I know I’m going back on what I said, but I was trying to force myself into the uberman patter and it hasn’t worked. Rather than abandon it entirely, I’m going to try this way. The goals of this have not changed. I still want to find a way of sleeping that makes me feel generally more awake, fitter and healthier.

Bugger...