semi-lucid
My New Year's Resolution this year was to stop using an alarm clock. My friend Tonya teases me about making New Year's Resolutions every year, not because she thinks New Year's Resolutions are inherently lame or anything, but because I am, in most respects, a pretty unconventional person, and she feels that New Year's Resolutions are clearly the sort of thing that "a person like me" should dismiss as inherently lame. But New Year's Resolutions aren't inherently lame, I try to explain; it's the people who typically make New Year's Resolutions that are inherently lame. It is perfectly acceptable for a non-inherently lame person, such as myself, to make a New Year's Resolution every year and still be the coolest person ever. So, I do.
Last year, I quit Mountain Dew, and I was about 99% successful. I only drank a few cans of Dew in 2005 (definitely less than ten, probably less than five -- damn, I wish I'd kept track: talk about "things a person like me should do..." MAN, I am disappointed in myself right now), and all of these were consumed under special circumstances such as "it was the only thing around and I was wicked thirsty." Why do I consider this to be "99% successful?" I'd say five or ten cans a year is pretty good when, from mid-1998 through 2004, I drank what I once calculated to be an average of 35 ounces of Mountain Dew per day. (SEE, that's the kind of stat you should be keeping more often, dumbass.)
So, like I was saying, no more alarm clock. After keeping track of my sleep patterns for a couple of months, I realized that I was a lot less tired during the mornings after I woke up naturally than during the mornings when I was buzzed or radioed awake. Obviously, dozens of scientific papers have reached the same conclusion over the years, but I really felt the need to see for myself.
While following my sleep patterns, I noticed that I was waking up naturally every morning (including weekends) at "some" point between 5 AM and 7 AM. So, really, all I had to do to make this work was remember to "get" up whenever I "woke" up in the middle of that time frame, instead of rolling over and starting another sleep cycle that was only destined to be uncomfortably interrupted. And, so far, it's worked. I haven't set my alarm clock since January 3rd, and, so far, I have yet to wake up "late" (in other words, after 7 AM). Actually, on all but two mornings, I've been waking up between 6:30 and 7:00 AM, a much narrower window than I anticipated.
And, concerning the *real* goal of this exercise, I really have been a lot less tired and groggy these mornings. I've still experienced a few drowsy mornings, of course, but those instances of fatigue have all been directly related to occasions when I stayed up abnormally late the night before. This sleeping schedule has also allowed me to maintain my usual weekend routine of waking up at the usual time (6:30 -- 7 AM) for breakfast, pill-popping, and Sportscenter, followed by a morning nap -- a habit I started practicing a couple of years ago to induce lucid and/or semi-lucid dreams. This works really well to that end, too, as long as I avoid dreams like the frustrating, semi-lucid nightmare my subconscious came up with on Sunday morning.
For some reason, while napping on Sunday morning, I dreamt that I was driving around Montreal in my old Ford Escort, but I couldn't stop nodding off. That's right, I had a dream about being unable to stay awake. I kept trying all these stupid little things to try to stay awake while driving around, all the while searching for a place where I could pull over and safely pass out. Frustratingly, even though I was completely aware that I was dreaming, it never occurred to me to end the dream by trying to wake up. Maybe that's the ultimate downside to lucid dreaming? You spend so much time training yourself to realize that you are dreaming without waking yourself up that it makes it more difficult to snap yourself out of a dream that's going badly. (And "a dream that's going badly" is a much better way to describe what I probably inappropriately refer to as "nightmares" -- I don't think I've had a "true" nightmare in years.)
Frankly, it's a wonder Freddy Krueger hasn't come to visit me yet.
Last year, I quit Mountain Dew, and I was about 99% successful. I only drank a few cans of Dew in 2005 (definitely less than ten, probably less than five -- damn, I wish I'd kept track: talk about "things a person like me should do..." MAN, I am disappointed in myself right now), and all of these were consumed under special circumstances such as "it was the only thing around and I was wicked thirsty." Why do I consider this to be "99% successful?" I'd say five or ten cans a year is pretty good when, from mid-1998 through 2004, I drank what I once calculated to be an average of 35 ounces of Mountain Dew per day. (SEE, that's the kind of stat you should be keeping more often, dumbass.)
So, like I was saying, no more alarm clock. After keeping track of my sleep patterns for a couple of months, I realized that I was a lot less tired during the mornings after I woke up naturally than during the mornings when I was buzzed or radioed awake. Obviously, dozens of scientific papers have reached the same conclusion over the years, but I really felt the need to see for myself.
While following my sleep patterns, I noticed that I was waking up naturally every morning (including weekends) at "some" point between 5 AM and 7 AM. So, really, all I had to do to make this work was remember to "get" up whenever I "woke" up in the middle of that time frame, instead of rolling over and starting another sleep cycle that was only destined to be uncomfortably interrupted. And, so far, it's worked. I haven't set my alarm clock since January 3rd, and, so far, I have yet to wake up "late" (in other words, after 7 AM). Actually, on all but two mornings, I've been waking up between 6:30 and 7:00 AM, a much narrower window than I anticipated.
And, concerning the *real* goal of this exercise, I really have been a lot less tired and groggy these mornings. I've still experienced a few drowsy mornings, of course, but those instances of fatigue have all been directly related to occasions when I stayed up abnormally late the night before. This sleeping schedule has also allowed me to maintain my usual weekend routine of waking up at the usual time (6:30 -- 7 AM) for breakfast, pill-popping, and Sportscenter, followed by a morning nap -- a habit I started practicing a couple of years ago to induce lucid and/or semi-lucid dreams. This works really well to that end, too, as long as I avoid dreams like the frustrating, semi-lucid nightmare my subconscious came up with on Sunday morning.
For some reason, while napping on Sunday morning, I dreamt that I was driving around Montreal in my old Ford Escort, but I couldn't stop nodding off. That's right, I had a dream about being unable to stay awake. I kept trying all these stupid little things to try to stay awake while driving around, all the while searching for a place where I could pull over and safely pass out. Frustratingly, even though I was completely aware that I was dreaming, it never occurred to me to end the dream by trying to wake up. Maybe that's the ultimate downside to lucid dreaming? You spend so much time training yourself to realize that you are dreaming without waking yourself up that it makes it more difficult to snap yourself out of a dream that's going badly. (And "a dream that's going badly" is a much better way to describe what I probably inappropriately refer to as "nightmares" -- I don't think I've had a "true" nightmare in years.)
Frankly, it's a wonder Freddy Krueger hasn't come to visit me yet.