CX PPS Log (August 14, 2023 →?)

the Stuff Dreams are made of...
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CX PPS Log

2023-08-15T05:00:00Z → 2023-10-09T05:00:00Z

I’m baaaaaack! It’s time for another attempt at PPS! And for similar reasons… :stuck_out_tongue: Feeling a bit overwhelmed and whatnot and needing a few extra hours in the day… so why not do that thing that always sounds good until I have to deal with the initial sleep deprivation? Worse case scenario I have to call it off again… Anywho, here’s the plan!
Schedule Hours Sunday Only
Core 2300→0330
Nap 1 0800→0820
Nap 2 1400→1420 1300→1320

An almost bog-standard Everyman-2 schedule. Unfortunately, I’m a bit concerned about that “Sunday Only” block… I was unable to rejigger my schedule entirely to allow a consistent nap time throughout the week… still, I managed to move most everything about… hopefully one day a week of a slightly off Nap 2 won’t screw me over. :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t think I’ll be doing daily logs like in my previous PPS Log, that’s a bit much. :stuck_out_tongue: I will, however, log something at least once or a week or if something notable happened that day…

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2023-08-15T05:00:00Z → 2023-08-18T05:00:00Z

General

So… unlike last time, I just jumped straight in to the full E2 layout. No slowly adapting, nothing like that. Just… start doing it. (This seems to be the recommended approach for E2 online.) On the 15th, though, I had woken up from a regular sleep… but I did take a nap in the afternoon to kick things off… though things really didn’t start until the 4.5 hour core that night.

The week has been… interesting! Naps have been incredibly vivid, I’ve dealt with a smidge of brain fog and whatnot… though that has been building over the week. Surprisingly, I had a lucid yesterday during one of my naps!

Unfortunately, waking from the Core has become harder. I snoozed, like, 10 minutes on my core yesterday… but today I was up on time… just… very much out of it. :stuck_out_tongue: It took about an hour and a half before my brain could function a little bit. I’ve mostly been doing chores around the house to keep busy before doing more “intellectual” things… mostly in front of a computer. it’s been 3 hours since my core at the time of typing this and I still have residual fog… but I can mostly function.

Naps have been pretty rejuvenating, despite not conking out completely… We’ll see how that progresses as I definitely feel like I’ve entered a “different stage” of adaptation. So I’m making progress… but from what I read there, if it’s to be believed… the worse is yet to come!

My goal as of now is to try and make it to “Stage 5” / “Level 1 Adaptation”… so I’m aiming for about a month to a month and a half of this, though any extra time right now to help me catch up on my backlog of TODO’s will be very appreciated. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve also decided that if I have to give up Everyman-2, I might drop down to Everyman-1. I have consistently felt like an afternoon nap would be helpful, and I definitely feel like that after this week… And, besides, prior to doing this I was basically doing a 6 hour core monophasic sleep all the time… It varied… but I was hitting only 6 hours (or less!) a couple of nights a week… so it might be more doable for me to do that and have a short afternoon nap to recharge the batteries.

The HI-Dreams

So… the most surprising thing of this all is just how vivid the “HI-Dreams” I’ve been having are… I don’t know if they’ll continue, but I’ve basically I’ve been having such intense HI that it feels like I’m both lying in bed while also being / experiencing a dream. Most of the time, my consciousness has been attached to my bed self… but a few points in the early days and definitely yesterday I had my self fully slip into a dream and disconnect from my waking life body.

I’ve jokingly called this HI Hell or DEILD Hell. :stuck_out_tongue:

To The Future!

So… yea… I’ve got plans! And have been doing “a thing.” :stuck_out_tongue: Will be back with another update when something notable happens or just to log that I have not broken down. :stuck_out_tongue:

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2023-08-19T05:00:00Z → 2023-08-20T05:00:00Z

A quick little update! First of all, I was kinda worried with the drop of dreams on Saturday that a crash might be imminent… but today was actually pretty detailed! (Though I have been having less dreams during core…) So that’s pretty good!

Overall, I’m feeling pretty okay most of the time… I mix up “tired” and “hungry” a bit… and being hungry ultimately makes me feel very lethargic… I probably should keep better track of my caloric intake in case I need to eat a bit more. Food and water are really important for not feeling foggy and dead tired.

Finally, my slight rescheduling for Sunday doesn’t seem to have had any negative side effects. I take my nap an hour earlier on Sundays just because I was unable to work around everything in my schedule and shifting it back to accommodate an activity I do every Sunday at 1400 seemed to be better than trying to restructure the entire schedule. The jury is still out on how I can handle physical exercise right now… though I should be wary because I am still adapting.

Anywho, I’ll write another one of these if something interesting happens or further in the week just to log something.

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2023-08-21T05:00:00Z → 2023-08-25T05:00:00Z

So… for a while there, my dreams just sorta dropped off… I was worried that might indicate a crash was coming my way… but it seemed to be just temporary, especially once I noticed that I was forgetting dreams a lot in the first few seconds of being awake… Trying to work on that.

In addition to that, I’ve had several times occur where I woke up right before my alarm was going to go off. It’s not reliable… and I have no plans to ditch my alarm clock anytime soon… but I am surprised!

Finally, I’ve kept my exercise and physical activity levels, and even did some (probably too) intense exercise yesterday. I slept pretty easily last night… and though I struggled a smidge to get out of bed, I did wake up at my first alarm. I was in no shape to focus on things, though, so I played video games all morning. :stuck_out_tongue: I felt more awake after an hour or so of that and probably could have done other things… but I was invested in games at that point so… :stuck_out_tongue:

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2023-08-26T05:00:00Z → 2023-08-31T05:00:00Z

So… it’s been a week. And it’s been quite a bit painful. :stuck_out_tongue: Mainly between my core and my first nap. Brain is still in the “you should be sleeping now” mode… so I’ve been having to fight a lot of sleepy to try and stay awake.

The good news? I’ve been having an absurd amount of lucids and near lucids. At this rate, I’m gonna have several more over the coming weeks (if I can keep things going).

Also, supposedly, I’m in the hardest phase right now, but I’d plus or minus (emphasis on the minus) a week or so as to how far in I am. I microsleeped a smidge on Monday which probably didn’t do me any favors… luckily, I found a game I can play that generally eliminates or masks the sleepy and once it gets to around 6-8, I start to feel a bit more awake. Probably because that’s near my normal wake up time.

So… yea… This is officially my longest polyphasic attempt without a crash. Here’s hoping I get far enough for it to be worth it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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2023-09-01T00:00:00Z → 2023-09-05T05:00:00Z

Welp… that’s unfortunate. I have some dreams I need to type, but I’m going to ahead and make this post because, well, I crashed.

So… a bit of a catch up. Things have been going pretty alright of late… until Saturday the second. I ended up missing my afternoon nap by an hour do to some issues with being out at that time. I took it around 1450 instead of 1400, and it seemed like things would be okay. I then rounded out the weekend pretty normally with nothing major occurring…

Until this morning. I woke up, laid there a bit, prepared to maybe get comfy and nap again when I thought to check what time it was… I looked… and it was around 0509. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and checked again. Still 0509. So… yea… Overslept my core by about an hour and a half. I don’t remember hitting the alarm, but I doubt the memories would have formed if i did just smack it and fall back asleep.

So now what? I was doing pretty good… Nearly three weeks without any issues other than some occasional strong tired sensations. I had considered switching to E1 which would basically do what happened today – lengthen the core to 6 hours, cut out the 0800 nap – but I’m not sure I wanna bail on E2 just yet. I still have quite a while before I hit my end-of-September evaluation goal… so… yea… I think I try at least one more time. Hopefully, I haven’t lost too much progress because of this. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anywho, just a quick update. Time to go recover my day.

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2023-09-06T05:00:00Z → 2023-09-29T05:00:00Z

So… I crashed… again… but this time by more than an hour and a half. :stuck_out_tongue:

Things were actually pretty great for a while. It wasn’t until near the 20th or after that things started to go downhill… I suppose there might have been some signs… My dreams started to become harder to recall… which I thought was just getting more used to sleeping at those times. There was also an issue where I think I started lazing a bit and not doing anything productive… Finally, I started trying to cut out caffeine… Yea… I would recommend doing that BEFORE trying PPS. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anywho, around the 20th to the 23rd, something happened. I started to get more tired… and that would build progressively until on the morning of the 27th I was incapable of keeping myself awake. All that morning, after my core and before my nap, I felt tired and groggy. Normally, it went away about an hour and a half to two hours after I woke and I felt fine… but it wasn’t budging this time… and then after I took my nap, I was still exhausted… I had to just take three hours of sleep right then and there. RIP Everyman 2 attempt.

Well… I skipped my afternoon nap that day as I basically didn’t get up until then. I then decided to go with my plan of falling back and trying Everyman 1. I did intend on switching at the end of September if I didn’t stop feeling quite so groggy every morning. So here’s the new schedule as of the 28th:
Schedule Hours Sunday Only
Core 2300→0500
Nap 1400→1420 1300→1320

I’ve only been doing it for a few days now… and I’m coming off a very sleep-deprived state as something killed my adaptation… so it might take a week before I start to feel a bit more normal again… but I don’t have very many doubts that I can make this one work… For a while, I was doing this one, minus the nap, and crashing every weekend just due to having a bit too much on my plate. :stuck_out_tongue: So I’ll keep updating things here as I work on this schedule.

Why not stop? Well… I kinda liked having 3+ extra hours every day… and while 1.5 extra isn’t as much… it’s still enough to make a difference… Also… I don’t want to give up the afternoon nap. That thing is so nice. On the off-chance that I do bail out of this one… I might switch to a non-reducing schedule and sleep 7.5 hours every night with a 30 minute nap in the afternoon… but I’d like to try and keep some extra time gained… that stuff was really useful!

All-in-all, this was my best attempt yet… maybe next time I try for E2 I’ll do even better… I would definitely cut out caffeine first, though. :stuck_out_tongue:

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2023-09-30T05:00:00Z → 2023-10-09T05:00:00Z

So… that’s a wrap… Things sort of devolved over that week, I had some company in town, and, ultimately, I just broke the habit. So… yea… I’m back to mostly normal sleep… albeit I did keep the afternoon nap because an afternoon nap is so nice.

Overall, I did better than any previous attempts… and maybe with some preparation my next attempt will last longer than two months… but I don’t plan on trying anything else this year except for my afternoon nap thing… which I guess is technically PPS… but just “non-reducing”.

Still… this was fun… though I will miss all the extra time I had. Plenty of time to do chores and whatnot while also getting in some gaming… Unfortunately… there was some “bloat” as the time for things expanded a bit to fill the new space so I had less free time near the end… but… still… It was really nice that first month or so.

All-in-all… a good run for my every-couple-of-years PPS attempt. :slightly_smiling_face: