I have started my journey to stay awake for quite some time. Originally, it was going to be 72 hours, but I decided that was unreasonable. I was already so tired, and I didn’t think I could make it 72 hours. I will say the first 24 hours were easy. I got up around 10:30 a.m. yesterday morning because I had Taiji (Zoom) class at noon. Lately, I’m been going to bed anywhere from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. so staying up two more hours past the latter limit wasn’t that big a deal.
Oh, and around five in the morning, I went to shut the curtains, and what did I see outside? A noticeable dusting of snow! In late April! My bestie’s birthday is coming up soon, and her metric for snow is that it has to fall before her birthday to be allowed. I messaged her letting her now that a light dusting just squeaked by her legal limit.
I love joking with her about snow and heat v. cold. She is a hot weather person (though that has changed since she hit menopause), and I am a freezing cold weather person (though that has changed somewhat since I hit menopause). Back when she used to live in Minneapolis, we would go out once a month or so. If it was in the winter, I would be happy as a clam while she was shivering (as we smoked outside. This was after smoking was banned indoors. I do not smoke any longer). She would look at me incredulously and demand to know if my spine was scrunching up.
“Nope!” I would say happily. In my youth, I played the fun (to me) game of seeing how long it would take me in the winter to roll up my window. Usually it was around -5F to 0 degrees. And then another ten degrees lower until I actually turned on the heat. In other words, I really fucking loved the cold.
My bestie, on the other hand, grew up in Miami. She thrived in the heat and humidity, and when we went to the beach in the summer, I would moan and groan like I was being asked to drag myself across the Gobi Desert. My other bestie lived in Raleigh for some years and visiting him in summer was the worst. Even after immediately taking a shower, I would be dripping in sweat once again.Ugh. I’m sweating just thinking of it right now.
How the hell did I–oh yeah. Back to sleep.
I breezed through the first 24 hours and then things started to get a bit dicey. I started to get sleepy and closed my eyes for a few minutes at a time ,three or four times in a row. I did this twice. So in all, I would say I slept for maybe a half hour. I’m still counting it as an ongoing experience as I’m up to 36 hours (minus that half hour). I’m actually more awake now than I was twelve hours ago. Will that last for another twelve hours? I have no idea.
If I can make it to five, then I’ll slam some coffee to tide me over until 5 a.m. I don’t think coffee really helps, but it couldn’t hurt (in wanting to stay awake). I just don’t want to be too twitchy. I will say I’m struggling right now. I want to make it to 10:30 a.m. , but if I don’t, it won’t be the end of the world.
Do I think this is going to work? Not really. Am I hoping it will? Yes. I’m having a hardtime keeping my eyes open, though. I keep closing them for a minute or two at a time. It’s pretty ironic that I’m fighting so hard to stay awake when the ultimate goal is to do the opposite. Then again, I always fight going to sleep. I really hate that about myself, but I’m trying to be gentle with myself. While I do need to fix my sleep issues as much as I can, I don’t need to add to the problems by being hard on myself.
I know that yelling at myself isn’t going to help or make things go more smoothly. If it did, I would have fixed my sleep schedule decades ago. But I can’t help hating myself a bit when I literalaly cannot make myself go to bed. I will be sitting at my computer and chanting in my head, “Go to bed go to bed go to bed” while sitting motionless in my chair. This can go on for hours. I need to find radical ways to get my ass out of my chair and into bed*.
I’m on hour 41 and feeling great. I think I can make it to hour 48 with little problem, but who knows? Maybe I’ll crash in the next hour or two. By the way, it’s 26F, which is really cold for this time of year. It’s supposed to shoot up to the mid-sixties tomorrow. The temp has been all over the place in the last few weeks, which is not helping with my mental state. I love cold, but not when it’s being swapped on the daily with high heat. Then it’s supposed to nearly 90 on Wednesday.
Let’s talk about weapons for a bit. No reason other than I want to and I can. I’m doing what my teacher said and making sure I separate my weapons by discipline. Funnily enough, it’s not a strict divide, meaning I don’t have to keep the Taiji weapons to Taiji. Some of them pair fine with Bagua–I just have to know which is which. Or ask my teacher because she will gladly tell me.
I feel more settled now that I have that sorted in my brain. I like doing both martial arts, obviously (a lot), but I did not like the feeling that they were mushing together or that one was overtaking the other. I know that one of my teacher’s teacher’s teachers likes to say no style, just human style, but I prefer to keep them separated for now. I learn better when I have a clear idea of what I’m doing rather than mixing them up.
I’m really tired, but I’m getting my second or third wind. Time has a weird way of bending and folding in on itself so that it seems to be dragging their heels and then rushing forward with neck-breaking speed. I know that’s the case in general as you get older, but it’s seems to have compressed itself at the moment.
I will have more to say tomorrow.
*Onto the couch where I sleep. That might be part of the problem. I don’t know.