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Last night's core sleep was weird! I went to bed at 23:30 and fell asleep straight away. For the first time since I started this experiment, I remember dreaming as it woke me up.
I dreamt that I was walking through a park, when I saw a group of people that I knew. I went up to them and started talking, but they all had a puzzled expression on their face like 'what is he talking about?'. Then all of a sudden all of their faces morphed into complete strangers. I didn't realise that I was dreaming, so I freaked out thinking that my sleeping pattern was making me hallucinate and I was talking to random people. This made me wake from my dream.
I opened my eyes and looked around the room. All of a sudden I started sliding across the bed to my right hand side. I tried to put my hand out to stop myself sliding off and I couldn't move it. I tried to scream but I couldn't scream, until eventually I snapped out of it and let out a very quiet moan. I think I was experiencing sleep paralysis and it was terrifying!
After that I looked at the clock and it said 23:50, which means I was definitely dreaming in the first 20 minutes of my core, which I think is a good sign. It's just a shame it took such a terrifying experience to realise that my REM is moving forward in my sleep cycle!
This morning I was not brilliant, but not as tired as yesterday. I can't remember everything I did in the morning, but I know that I cleaned out the dishwasher and did a very small amount of programming.
My 6:30 nap made me feel quite a lot better, and afterwards I played on the computer for a bit before work. I felt quite alert at first, but I didn't really have anything to do at work apart from stare at my screen all day which made my eyes tired.
About half way through the morning the receptionist brought me up a package which had arrived in the post: It was an eye pillow that I ordered from amazon.
At my lunch time and afternoon naps I tried out the pillow - it is basically a small thin pillow filled with rice and lavender that you place over your eyes instead of a face mask. It does a really good job of blocking out the light, and is generally more comfortable than a face mask, but you really need to have your head pretty close to horizontal for it to work. At lunch time I slept on the sofa so I kept thinking it was falling off, but in the afternoon I slept in my bed which worked better.
This evening we went to Tesco and bought some pizza, and then ate it at home before playing some online games for a few hours. Now it is 21:30 and I am so tired. I am considering taking a 4:30 long core tonight to try and pay off some sleep debt. I'm not sure yet though.
To be honest I am starting to think that in the long run I probably don't want to keep up this schedule as it is really inconvenient to take so many naps. I would probably prefer a biphasic (siesta) schedule as it would still offer me a bit more time than monophasic, but would be a lot easier to fit around my life. I still would like to see if this everyman adaptation works though...