pantsfarm

I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, I think because I somehow got it into my head that if ever there was a time to try and making the switch, this break leading into Winter quarter would be it.

As stated, I did and do think that if I am going to make an attempt at switching my sleep schedule to a polyphasic one, starting up a week or more before next quarter starts, while in China over break, would probably be the most convenient time to do it. I don’t have any real work committments or anything like that for which I might worry about the negative effects of the first week or two of transition.

However, in spite of now, in a larger sense meaning from now through Winter quarter, being as good a time as any, perhaps better, for trying to adopt the schedule, I still don’t think I’m going to do it. As much as I am intensely curious to try it, to see if it can be done by me, to see what it would be like, I am not willing to give up the things I would have to, to make it work. The big issue at present is mostly the social one.

I’m not talking just about how it could be awkward if I was disappearing for 30 minutes in the middle of social occasions to nap, which it would; but rather I am unwilling to part with the opportunity to do things like go out and drink with friends. This would be an impossibility as not only is it likely that doing so would overlap with at least one scheduled sleeping period, but, even if the act itself didn’t, the effects would. Consequently, it would be unsustainable, I expect.

To be honest, in Chicago, I almost never go out, and it’s sort of pathetic. I only go out when I visit other people in other cities, and I’m not really sure why. My suspicion is that the people I spend time with in Chicago, and the people I hang out with when “out of town” (I put that in quotes as to me the phrase might imply some sense of being home in a city, which isn’t really true anywhere for me), are very different groups.

Today, even, I should have gone out, were it not for what I assume is jet lag. I fell asleep for a bit at 7:00 PM, and consequently opted not to go out. I am regretting this decision already. I should have had some caffeine and gone anyway, as in a couple of days, I anticipate a return to my Chicago habits.

I’m not sure what it is exactly, but in Chicago and with the people I know from Chicago, I feel a… not need, but, compulsion perhaps, to act like a different person than I do when with friends from high school or people who are more or less strangers to me (i.e. in China, acquaintences of my parents). It makes me kind of frustrated and angry that I have yet to muster the nerve to simply stop worrying about what other’s reactions might be and try to make consistent what I do with what I want to do.