pantsfarm

I’m not too pleased with the current state of things. However, not really having much more specific things to say beyond that, I can’t really back that up with anything in particular. I don’t like how I spend my days, I don’t like my current health, I don’t like what I’ve been doing, so I think perhaps I’ll change what I plan to do.

This isn’t to say I’m experiencing some grand change in plans for what I’d like to be doing a few years from now, because I didn’t even have such a plan in the first place. I’m still looking for a job, and beyond that my plans for next year and the future in general are entirely… mutable.

I was watching Layer Cake the other day, and this one voice-over monologue is coming to mind now. The protagonist was saying something about making a plan and sticking to it. I’ve got a bit of a plan, though it’s not quite thought all the way through just yet. I hope to start with it when I get back to the US. It certainly makes makes for an interesting set of resolutions.

I’m told that Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Though admittedly I’m not really planning on changing the world. I mean, I’d like to, but that’s another topic. There’s changes I’d like to make to the world, and then there are changes I’d like to see in myself.

I look at myself now, and I wonder, what kinds of things stop a person from making a big change in their own life? I think an answer that’s pretty generally applicable is that people are afraid of the unknown, worried that whatever they intend to change might end up worse than their current status, and the risk of something worse is enough to dissuade them from trying; like the reward is never great enough to justify the risk.

For example, the whole polyphasic sleep bit would I think constitute a pretty drastic change. It would require some sacrifices and a major adjustment of my activities and how I spend my time. It’d affect my ability to socialize, probably disrupt my circle of friends a bit, preempt going out drinking with people pretty much completely, and certainly not least of all, it’d require me to make some major changes to the way I schedule my days. And if I can’t pull off the switch, well… I don’t want to think that’s an issue. Rather, the act of making the switch would also subject me, and everybody around me, to the entirely not-so-enjoyable situation of me completely sleep deprived for a week, at least.

There might be some health considerations to worry about too. Maybe I really shouldn’t even consider doing this on account of the potential immune system strain, maybe it’d be too much for my heart, to be awake for so much longer. Maybe it’s a stupid thing to try this when still trying to learn things, tucked away in long term memory or whatever.

I think that’s a good start on the possible cost of making the switch. But what is there to be gained? Why would I want to try in the first place? It’s not like I don’t have enough time in a day. I might say I want more time to do things, but a far easier solution would be to simply stop watching so much TV and movies and get the things I want to get done, done. Maybe I just want to see if I can do it, see if I’ve got the self discipline to suffer through potentially weeks of terrible sleep deprivation to emerge bettered at the end. Maybe I want to know if it’s possible, I want to see what it does to me, how I change, how it changes things for me.

I guess that’s sort of part of the motivation for this: it’s a big change. That’s a reward as I see it, in itself. Really the threat of not being able to maintain whatever socializing I had been doing before is hardly a credible threat at all. Lately I’ve been kind of a recluse. I don’t go out, I don’t do anything at all. How’s that saying go, “If you’re bored, you’re boring?” Ok so really changing my sleep schedule doesn’t fix anything, but it is something to do. Or rather, something not to do? I don’t know. I worry that not being able to articulate why I want to do this is evidence that I don’t really want to, but I know that’s not the case. I’m so intensely curious to see what would happen that I’m going to try this at the first chance I get.

Why not today? Why not do this right now? I’m not ready to spend a week being grumpy and unpleasant and possibly miserable in transition while with my family and friends. I was going to start the first week I got back to Chicago, that is, like a New Year resolution in that I’m returning to the US on the 1st of January, but I’ve reconsidered that as well. Pending scheduling an interview for an internship, at least. I basically want to minimize the costs incurred during the transitional period, and completely botching an interview is a pretty large cost to me. It’s kind of pathetic, part of me thinks it’s only an interview for an internship for a quarter or something, while on the other hand, at this rate, if I got it, it might be a great way for me to hopefully and eventually secure fulltime employment with the same company. Thinking about all of this again, there’s no reason I wouldn’t want to give it my best, and I should really do that more often, give my best, that is. That said, my best might not be very good if I’m on 6 hours of sleep over the course of 3 or 4 days.

So with that said, maybe if the interview was late enough in January that I could have a week or two before it happened. The first week or two of the quarter should be as good a time as any, certainly better than during any sort of exams. The homework load tends to be light early as well, I think perhaps on account of the whole add/drop system. That and the courses I’m planning on taking should be more manageable than they have been in the past.

I worry that my diet might, well, not suffer, but change as well. What reading I have done leads me to believe that it might very well be easier generally a good idea to make some significant changes to my eating habits. A drastic reduction in meats and processed foods both is probably a good idea for most anybody, but of particular importance to somebody trying to sleep as little as I’d like to. I don’t have the interest yet to try something so drastic as to switch to a raw-foods diet, but we’ll see how things go when I get started.