The Perfect Crime

From a conversation of mine:
"What you do is get a tattoo that says,
'I will never approve of you because of my own short-comings -Mr. Her Dad'
and then show it to her dad. He won't be able to figure out if he's angrier about the implications of the tattoo or the fact that you got such a mean thing permanently on your body so his brain will fry and he'll be a vegetable. No one expects to be assassinated with emotions."

Did this for a photocomic and now it's on my arm for a while. Fuck.

Day 8: Can't Stay Up Late

  This isn't really a journal so much as just documented follow-up. I think I'm still working out the end of this experiment. As some of you dear readers might have read, it did not go so well when I tried to stay up late enough to get on the track I wanted. You'll notice I skipped day seven and that's because nothing important happened yesterday. I'm sort of where I want to be at this point, I just have to get my habits accustom to this new schedule. Normally I'd leave all the stuff I want to do until later that day because I know I have the time, now I do whatever it is, like checking comics and blogs and what-have-you in the morning before class.

  Last night I went to bed at 10 pm because I just could not stay awake. I think I'm very slowly moving up to where I'd like to be, as I said, but I think it will take the rest of this week to really get settled. Hopefully tonight I'll make it til 11 pm, or even midnight. The reason I need to get my habits lined up with my schedule is because tomorrow I don't have class so I could sleep all day and stay up all night but not only can I not do that physically, I don't really want to. I have to be up by 8:45 more or less on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the back and forth of sleeping in is what caused this realignment in the first place. It's a bit of a shame because my roommate can stay up for the most part and it's nice to hang out with him but I think in the long run going to bed at midnight every day, even when I don't have class the next day, is a good practice. I don't know what's going to happen come weekends because I do not look forward to getting up at 8 am on a Saturday (I woke up at 5 am today feeling okay but managed to fall back asleep for two hours). The trouble with getting up early on weekends is the opposite reason for resetting myself; everyone is sleeping in!

Day 6: Pick Up Sticks

5:37 pm
  Well this day has certainly gone better than I expected! I spent quite a lot of this morning playing Skyrim. Before that I watched Nemesis Game, which wasn't very good, but kind of scary because they kept me thinking something was going to pop out and be scary but instead it was just disappointed. It had some good riddles though, so that was cool. It was a bad idea to watch it before the sun came up though, for obvious reasons so like an idiot I walked through my house turning on all the lights as I went.

  It's almost six and I feel pretty good, so hopefully I can make it another six before I crash. The stretch it going to be the next four because I'm not going back to school until 10 pm. That means I probably won't pack until 8:30, or let's be realistic, 9:15. I have to fill these hours or get tired. Maybe I'll fight crime.

11:53 am
  Pick up sticks? Ugh, fuckin' more like picking up the tattered remains of my life. Just kidding mostly. As I said yesterday, I'm bulldozing the end of this project by going to bed within the next half hour. I have been up for 20 hours and I can definitely feel it. I started to fall asleep around 8 pm tonight so I made dinner and started to rewatch About Schmidt. It's a really great movie but really depressing because of how real-to-life it is. I love slice of life movies, but they are not movies that will keep you awake. Eating helped and then I rushed around the house packing. The fact that I had to be ready to leave and move back in to school around 9 pm helped keep me up a bit but at this point I'm comfy in my bed and really tired. I don't have to be up until 11 am tomorrow so I'm hoping that I'll sleep for 11 hours or so and balance shit out.

  I feel like a time traveler. My body doesn't know when day and night is at this point. Last night when I got tired at 6 pm and fell asleep, it could have been any time of the night because it was dark and I was tired. I had to keep telling myself that it was the beginning of the evening and not the middle of the night because judging by my body's state, it could have been 5 am.

  If there was a font for how I was feeling right now, it would be face down on the floor not moving.
I chose the worst time to back up my computer. Only 170 GB left! I could leave my computer on and let it finish but I don't want to leave it on the rest of the night for half an hour's worth of backup.

12:12 am
  This is awesome I hope I don't die.

12:15 am
  That'd be terrible if I died and they found my computer laying next to me with that on it. That would put the fear of Gd into people! Pew pew!

12:17 am
  Okay, I feel less... manic now. Reading through Day Four's journal, I think I need to edit this stuff a lot because I explained some things in the wrong way and just for general errors. Maybe tomorrow after my only class I will start editing this week's work.

12:33 am
  I feel like if I were to ever become a serial killer it would be when I was sleep deprived. That's more of a projected guess than a warning because I'd instantly apologize like everything else right now.

12:35 am
  I'd feel devastated if my penis just broke off one day. Something that has devastated me, however, is that someone took the strawberry poptart out of the condom jar in the hall way.
 
  I have to go to bed. This is hopefully the end of the sleep experiment please I hope it's over. I'll do a follow-up tomorrow sometime but in terms of getting on track this is more or less it.

Day 5: Over The Hill

1:55 am
  Well I was right, I don't like waking up this late. Sometimes if I'm really tired I'll take a nap around 11 pm and then wake up between 1 am and 4 am, at which point my sleep schedule is all wonky. This is not the case this time at least, since I got my 9 hours and was supposed to be asleep, not crashing in the middle of the evening. One thing I've noticed though is that when I wake up midway through the "night" and check my clock to see how much longer I have to sleep, I get annoyed. I woke up in the dark, looked at the clock to see it said 10:20 pm and said, "Oh fuck me" and went back to sleep. For some reason this past week my instant reaction to seeing that I have to keep sleeping has been a source of annoyance.

  I realized what I need to do is instead of just taking 12 hours away to see what time it is normally (as I did yesterday), I have to map it against a regular day by itself. For instance, I woke up at 1 am today, that's really 9 am according to the schedule I'm working toward.

  One point of interest I've noticed is how my lifestyle permeates what time I want it to be. For instance, it's technically 10 am for me, I should get some breakfast. At the same time, however, I know it's 2 am and because of my regular hours I would think nothing of grabbing dinner at this hour. That's not helping me transition very well though, because I certainly would not want to eat a whole chicken for breakfast. On the other hand I've noticed that I'm more awake when I've woken up lately. Maybe, again, it's the whole, "I'm awake in the middle of the day, I should jump up and get my day started!" thing. Even if I'm a little tired lately, I have a lot of energy when I first wake up compared to waking up in the mornings. I know for a fact that I'm not a morning person because if I get 9-10 hours of sleep and wake up at noon versus 9 in the morning, I have much more energy when I wake up in the former. That's partially what's attributed to me staying up so late in the first place; I just naturally gravitate towards the later hours. I'm hoping that if I have breakfast I can fool myself into thinking that it's really the morning. Real morning, not 2 in the morning. One thing I can say is nice about this schedule right now is that I get the sunrise and sunset without waking up at 6 am every day, my earliest classes don't start until 9:30 am.

12:37 pm
  I'm thinking about cutting this experiment down a couple of days. I'm not giving up by any means, but it goes into Monday and I don't want to be messing around the first day of the semester. Instead, I might try and stay up "later" tonight by a couple of hours. The general schedule has been "sleep 9, awake 15", but I might bump up the hours awake. I can't do too many more because otherwise I'll have to sleep in and this will all be for naught. I'm supposed to go to bed at 7 pm tonight, but if possible I'm going to try and ride it out until 10, jumping to tomorrow's schedule a day early. It's only three hours more, but it's also six more than yesterday. We'll see what happens. Maybe the madness will return and I'll just blow up.

3:41 am
  Well this was a terrible idea. I couldn't keep my eyes open around 6 pm (was scheduled for 7) so I decided to go to sleep. My first plan was to go to bed at 7 and sleep until 5, making it 10 hours but bringing me closer to waking up at 9 am, the purpose to this whole thing.

  Where am I now? I fell asleep an hour early and am now awake half an hour too early. I'm not quite fucked yet because I still have a day or two to fix this, but tomorrow I'm going to really have to stay up if this is going to work. Half an hour obviously isn't too bad, but I was hoping to sleep until 5, not 3:30. I'm hoping the stuff I have to do today, clean my room and pack to go back to school, will keep me awake until midnight tonight. I know that six hours in one day is going to be reeeally difficult, but I'm seeing some friends tonight and hopefully that will keep me awake. I might nap later today, but even when I'm on a regular schedule I hate naps. I might have to, on the other hand, purely because otherwise I'm going to be going to bed at 9 pm or something and I'm moving back to school at 10 pm. Yes, you probably see the problem here.

7:35 am
Oh well, I guess I'm up for the day. I'll just have to stay busy and see if I can't make the jump to sleeping around midnight tonight. This ought to be an interesting day!

Day Four: In Which I Begin My Madness

 11:50 pm
  So I decided to try something new today: I want to match my current schedule with a schedule I'd prefer to be on. Right now, as mentioned last night, I'm about 12 hours away from where I want to be. I woke up at 10 pm instead of 9 pm so I technically "slept in" an hour. Meals are all messed up because I'm awake at 10 pm, my body wants dinner and to jump-start my day because I know that the rest of the world has started its day. And the evening. And the night. I find it interesting that even though I've changed my cycle to where I am now, I still subconsciously know that it's night time. Obviously the sun is set and everything, but my body's cycle isn't different, I'm just awake and asleep at a different time.

  I think that if I were to do this clock change again (maybe over the summer if necessary) I would do each change longer and probably with less jump. For this schedule I've been adding three hours every night, which is more than I add when I stay up more and more each night. The days that I could go from going to bed at 7 am and then going to bed at 1 pm, I was doing something that kept me awake. Last winter break I was making things out of Sculpy the whole night while watching about 8 Simon Pegg movies back to back. This time I'm attempting to run my normal schedule and adding hours willy-nilly. I believe this was a bit of a mistake. It's working out, mind you, but tomorrow I'm going to bed at 4 pm and I don't know how that is going to effect me. I'm interested to see the turning point though. Rather, when does it become late enough to go to bed? 4 pm is late in the afternoon, then 7 pm is too early in the evening. Maybe 10 pm or 11 pm is the turning point, because going to bed at 9 pm making me feel like a child. Anyway, as I said, I would probably do each shift longer, so instead of three hours added every day, add three hours and then do that for two or three days before adding more to let my body get used to it.

1:42 am
  It's technically almost 2 in the afternoon for me and I don't know where my "morning" went. I woke up at 10, showered, tried to fix my dad's headphones (while cutting weeds I snipped through my dad's Bose headphones I was wearing. You read that right), made...breakfast? Lunch? It was "noon" but I'd only been up for two hours. I don't know if I should just let my mind slip into the illusion of the 12 hours change or continue to compare the two. It's kind of like when daylight savings ends or begins and everyone keeps saying that it's technically "whatever" time of day it is, forward or back. Either way it's quarter to two and I need food. I've technically been up for four hours and I haven't done much but little management things, which I suppose is what I'd do if up at 10 am anyway.

  The part that really causes this separation for me is that while at home on the computer, I am able to slip into the illusion that I'm on the other side of the clock. Unfortunately I have things to do that cause me to interact with the outside world while still on this schedule. Today is the best (and really the only) example I have of this. At noon tomorrow I'm going to UIC to return some books from last semester and I have to be home by 4 pm to get to bed. Considering this from the flip side, that's like saying I'm going to UIC at midnight to return some books and I have to be home by 4 am. This is where it gets tricky. Looking at my schedule from the flip side, it makes no sense because it's crossing the Thursday/Friday threshold. Here's how I just explained it to a friend:

  As of right now I'm technically 12 hours away from where I want to be in terms of awake/sleep, but it's not that I'm behind, I'm ahead. It's 2 am, but to me it's really like 2 pm if I were normal. Because I cross from Thursday to Friday but will be awake in a 12 hours difference and it's still Friday when I go to bed, it means my body thinks it's 2 pm *Thursday* afternoon, not Friday because in real-people time it's Thursday night, not Friday morning right now.

  It's 2 am Friday the 6th, but according to my sleep schedule and my mindset, it's 2 pm Thursday afternoon, not Friday afternoon. I was under the impression that I was jumping 12 hours into Friday because Friday, but I realize now that I went forward, not back. This is particularly frightening because while I could just pretend it was Friday and not Thursday and go live somewhere in India (more or less), there is nowhere in the world that it is currently 2 pm Thursday. It doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but to me it's 2 pm Thursday afternoon and the sun is down. If I don't think about it too hard it's not that bad, but when I do put it all in perspective, I feel like I'm lost in time. I could laugh and say that I could call someone in Asia and they'd be awake, but let's say that I decided to shift my whole life to exist at 2 pm Thursday the 5th, no where else in the world is like that ( I don't think, I'm pretty sure). While it's not really 2 pm Thursday the 5th and I'm in the middle of the night transitioning to sleeping at midnight like a normal person, that means my body is technically a day behind, and I feel like I've lost something...somewhere. This doesn't matter too much because there's no real "end", but I feel like if say the world was going to end the 10th, I would have only gotten to the 9th and I feel I've lost something there.

Honestly if I think about all this too hard, it's pretty fucked up.

4:07 am
I always like to make a note of my 12-hour mark. I have 12 hours until I go to bed. I always like to try an project my mind out into the next stretch to imagine the amount of information, important or otherwise, that I'll be taking in. For instance in 4 hours once the city starts to wake up and start its day, there's a guy coming to check the oven because it hasn't been working correctly. Then at noon I'm heading over to UIC to return some books, as I've mentioned. That requires a walk, a bus ride, a train ride, seeing people around the campus, and then doing it all backwards and coming home, then sleeping. 12 hours until sleep!

6:00 am
  I'm not sure where I stand at this point. The reason I started all this was because I can't turn my clock back comfortably enough so I decided to stay up later and later until I've gone all the way around. Instead, I've put myself 12 hours off from where I want to be and started moving back.

  I've convinced myself that it's 6 pm Thursday evening and I'll be going to bed 4 am Friday morning (instead of 6 am and going to bed at 4 pm). The reason I don't know where I'm going is because after today that all gets messed up. Today is the only day that thinking in terms of a 12-hour clock works. Tomorrow if I try that I'd be thinking I was going to bed at 7 am and waking up at 4 pm. That's the opposite of what I want to do. After that I would think I was going to bed at 10 am and sleeping until 7 pm. By the time I get to the end I would think that I was going to bed at noon and sleeping until 9 pm. The trouble is that I've already done that; that's how I got here. The point I suppose I'm trying to make is that if I don't get out of this "just switch it 12 hours back!" mindset I don't know what will happen. Obviously it won't kill me, but I feel like I will be very confused until I got used to the new schedule. It's not a huge deal, but I thought that I had it all figured out for the rest of the week, instead it turns out pretending is only giving me the illusion of being back on the schedule I'm trying to escape.

1:20 pm
Man, if I thought being awake at "noon" with the sun down was weird, it's technically the middle of the night for me with the sun up! I like it though. I've spent a lot of this break awake at night and while I like it, it's almost like a whole change of scenery. It's so much more alive. The light's coming in through the windows, which makes me feel less secluded. Maybe it's because I can see the outside world and not just across the street. There are more people awake, which is nice too. I only have a couple more hours to go. I find it easier to stay up through the day and then sleep in the afternoon than stay up through the night when I don't really want to. I know sunlight helps you wake up, UV light tells your brain to rock out with its cock out. It's strange to think that this is the middle of my night and that I'll be going to bed in a few hours. With winter and all the sun will be going down as I go to bed, which means I got a sunrise and a sunset and a good 12 hours of sunlight to my brain. Even if I'm not outside taking it in, psychologically it feels good to see the day.

3:36 pm
Well I'm wrapping everything up. I'm going to just hang out for half an hour watching stuff on Youtube and then I'll head to bed. I've been finding that when I've been going to bed during the day I'm perfectly willing to just hang out until bedtime compared to the night or early morning when the last hour or two is a real stretch and a fight to stay awake. I could probably stay up a couple hours, akin to staying up to 3 in the morning on a regular schedule, but then I just have to make up for it tomorrow and I don't really want to deviate from my current plan. Plus, the later I go to bed in the afternoon, the later I wake up later tonight. I'm not too keen on waking up at 1 am, since I've spent all day awake, waking up in the middle of the night as everyone's going to bed sounds depressing. Is that how people see my habits?

Day 3: Party Like A Rockstar

7:09 pm
  I'm pretty sure I've weeded out my body's true cycle. I woke up at 4 pm feeling pretty good, so I have a feeling that 7am-4pm is when my body thinks it should be sleeping. Well body, I'm afraid I'm here to change that!
  I hate waking up in the dark. If anything is going to screw me up, it's that. Last winter break I completely messed myself up by going to bed around around 9 or 10 and waking up between 6 and 7. Obviously that's what I'm doing now, but I'm only passing through. Last winter I got stuck in this schedule and I always woke up so tired. I don't know that much about it, but spending a whole winter break getting 5 minutes of sunlight a day did not make my body nor my brain very pleased. At least I'm only doing this for a day. Tomorrow is going to have some interesting effects because I'm awake from 7 pm to 1 pm tomorrow. I don't really look forward to that, nor do I look forward to sleeping until 10 pm. I am however completely fine with being up from 10 pm until 4 pm the next day. I have some stuff to get done and that's when I'm going to do it, but I think the prospect of being up for practically a whole day, until 4 pm! Gosh!
  Looking at this schedule reminds me of taking the train system around Chicago. You might pass stations you don't need to get off at or go farther than you'd like because you have to transfer to another train to go back the way you came but then it curves and goes where you need. Honestly I still don't know why this schedule works, but I know it does and so I trust myself from the past to have done everything correctly. I think today or tomorrow is the peak of messing myself up. This schedule is definitely an example of things having to get worse before they get better. Looking at my calendar I don't consciously understand why I'm going to bed at 4 pm, but then I remind myself that I'm going around the 24-hour clock to get back to normal. On paper this all seems normal but now that I'm here it seems pretty goofy. But if it works I'll be happy!
  I believe the reason I'm confused is because I'm thinking, why does going to bed at 7 pm help me at all? That's staying up pretty late the next day, which is what I'm trying to stop. Then I have to remind myself I've gone forward into the next day on purpose and that everything's alright. This is what I was worried about when I started this. I'm hoping once I'm going to bed at midnight or 1 am like a regular person I'll adapt and understand. If not, I'm going to be constantly thinking that I've stayed up too late and will never know what day it is. Well, we'll see what happens, I still have...ohfuckme...five days left. Party like a rockstar I suppose.

7:33 pm (It's really weird to be labeling this "pm" after last night's journal.)
Just thought I'd share this comic with you all, I found it amusing:
http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2012/01/decaf/

11:03 pm
So I'm watching videos of pranks on youtube and as most of you know, at the end it gives you related videos.

Uuuuuh....

  I decided to click on it and it's a clip from what looks like a Spanish soap opera. I don't know what it's doing there, but it was weird.

7:40 am
  I find it interesting that instead of seeing the effects this schedule is having on me, I'm just hanging out like always. I guess at the end it might be interesting to map out my days and compare the hours to see what time of the day is most like others. The only trouble with that is because it's winter break, waking up at 7 pm is about the same as waking up at 7 am. Oh well.
  Anyway, I've written about goofy Craigslist adventures before but after a couple weeks the links became defunct so I won't bother linking to it. I will, however like to this Cracked article! At least now I don't seem like a crazy person for looking at Craigslist (#1 in the article). I always find Craigslist interesting just to see the type of people on there, what they're looking for, and how they ask for it, as well as which taglines catch my attention enough to click on them. Like this woman! Obviously that woman is older, but I always feel kind of sad when I see people in my age group (between 20 and 24) on Craigslist, especially when they're looking for long-term relationships or their "soul mate" (a surprising number are). I'm 20. I can't imagine looking for a real relationship on something as sketchy as this, or even online. But if it works I suppose more power to them.
  Oh man, this girl too, goofy.
Alright, it looks like I'm going to be on here a while:
-- This girl isn't too strange, but I have to be completely honest here, I clicked on her ad because I thought it said, "What to live in a Sub?" I suppose that tells you something about me?
A couple of months ago someone posted this to Twitter from Reddit and I found it really interesting, check it out.
-- Not going to lie, this is pretty amusing.
--It's not because of your weight, but yes. You are wrong because you are looking on Craigslist.
-- People who don't own levels need not apply.
--I've been on here for 15 minutes, I really should go be more productive with my life. But at least it's not like last time where I had a paper due the next day.

8:36 am
  Well I've moved on to Cracked, which is definitely more intellectually stimulating. While you're here, check out John Cheese, my favorite writer for Cracked.
So I was thinking a bit more about my schedule and while it's not perfect, I think today is definitely the peak of my schedule, it's about 12 hours off from where I want to be. That's pretty cool to me for some reason.

11:41 am
  One interesting thing I've noticed about this experiment or what-have-you is that I'm always really tired the last two or so hours of every day. I think it's because of the 3 hour push-jump, but I can't be sure. All I know is that the past couple of nights it's been a bit of a struggle to stay awake. It hasn't been as bad as times I've woken up with too little sleep and had to fight for consciousness, but I'm still pretty tired. I must say, I'm enjoying the amount of sunlight I'm seeing... There's so much light blue, I haven't see it in a while! It's strange, on one hand I want to go to bed, but on the other I actually feel like I'm going to miss the sunlight. I don't think my body knows what to do at this point. Probably should just go out and have copious amounts of sex.

Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

For an explanation see here.

5:24 pm
Oof, I did not sleep well. I woke up at 1:30ish and didn't feel like going back to sleep, but I told myself I had to. Sometimes my body doesn't mind 6 or so hours of sleep, but I forced myself to get 9. Luckily I ended up waking up at 3:55 was able to just wake up naturally rather than be woken up by an alarm, which just makes the whole situation worse.
I had a crazy dream crossing Skyrim and Interview With the Vampire. There were a bunch of vampires and they were arguing about whether to turn a group of soldiers into vampires and side with the Empire to fight the other vampires or to fight against them. Basically, those who wanted to join the Empire would be fighting those who didn't want to. The war was going to exist because the war existed. It felt pretty recursive (I hope I'm using that right). Anyway, I got up and started my day doing nothing. I'll have to find something to do tonight because I have to be awake until 10 am Wednesday. Wheee!


7:44 pm
This is the part of my day that feels like a normal person's afternoon. It's practically 8, but it it feels like my day is winding down in terms of activity and less energetic activities begin, like video games or reading for a few hours. Maybe that's because when I actually get out of bed, it's the peak (more or less) of the afternoon before everyone finishes their day off.

4:00 am
Welp, I still have 6 hours until bedtime, soo.... that's going to be fun. I've been playing Skyrim for the past couple of hours, so I'll probably do that then maybe write some more. I'll probably wind down with a movie or two.


6:26 am
Whoop, it is only 6:30 in the morning and I still have 3 and a half hours to go. I've just been playing Skyrim all night, which is fun. I suppose that 10 am bedtime is not the most ridiculous thing (I've gone to bed at 1 in the afternoon the next day before) but telling myself, "No, you have to stay up" is strange.


7:43 am
Oh, that's nice. Only two hours left. I decided to watch "She's Out of My League", starring Jay Baruchel. I think he's a really good actor, I'm glad he's in this. Honestly I think if he wasn't this movie would be pretty awful, because it kind of is. It's predictable and cheesy, but he's quirky and that's nice.


8:16 am
Whoo, there is sun! I am seeing the sun for more than the beginning of a sunrise! WHOOOOO! I'm not going to lie, it is inconveniently bouncing off my neighbors' roof and hitting me in the eye, but whatever I guess! I'm surprised that my body seems to be coping well enough with this weird schedule, while it is only two days in, but that might be because I just ate. At some point I will finish writing Nathan's Sexy Guide to Staying Up Late. Maybe I will do that this week.


9:50 am
Well it's almost time for bed, which I look forward to. Around 9:30 I realized I was actually pretty tired, which was not pleasant. I started watching Transformers. I've seen it before, but for some reason I felt my life needed some kickass robots. Anyway, it looks like I get to sleep until 7 pm tonight, whiiiich will be quite disorienting. Tomorrow's going to be the best though, since that puts me right in the middle of the day. My roommate warned me that adding 3 hours every day was not the best idea, but I don't really have time for anything else so I'll just deal with it. Party like a rockstar!

Day 1: Starting Out

For an explanation see here.

4:34 am
  Realized I must be up for another 2 and a half hours. This is not too bad but I'm kind of tired and don't have much I specifically want to do. I just finished watching Interview With The Vampire. It was pretty good, though I felt it was lacking because each scene felt like it was supposed to hit on a certain subject or idea and then it would not present it, or at least not clearly enough for me to notice. Most of the language was slow and "proper", which always puts me in a weird, old-fashion mood. I suppose I'll work on photocomics or write now, as I usually do in this kind of mood.
  7 am is not weird at this point, since I've been going to bed around 7 am the past couple of nights. We'll see if I descend into madness or anything interesting like this as the night moves on.

5:42 am
  Well, I got some writing done, which always nice. I haven't felt like writing in few weeks so it feels good to get back into it. The trouble is that I'm getting hungry and always want to watch Minority Report, but I'm scheduled for sleep in an hour and fifteen minutes. The movie is almost two and a half hours long, and it's probably not the best idea to go downstairs, get set up, and eat that close to bed. I also want to keep writing while the mood strikes me but at the same time I don't feel like writing. I suppose I'll try and promise myself fifteen more minutes and then I'll move downstairs for an hour.

6:08 am
Coooooool, guess I'll head downstairs now. If anything, this journal will at least get me back to blogging since I have had very little to say since the summer ended.

6:55 am
Well I've started Minority Report and am really enjoying it, though I wish Colin Ferrell had kept the accent.
One thing I will say about this schedule is that it's a schedule regardless of its purpose. I usually just go to bed when I feel tired, but deciding to go to sleep and wake up at a certain time without any purpose other than to just be on a schedule is new for me. That is, being on a schedule just for the sake of a schedule does not fit my regular "go with the flow" sort of attitude towards self-planning. This will indeed be a challenge!

Becoming Human

  As some of you who look at the time stamps on this blog know, I'm a night person. I like to go to bed at 7 am, or if I have somewhere to be the next day, 3 am. This is a huge problem for me because I happen to be a college student and as such, I have classes that tend to be scheduled in the morning. As you all finish scratching your heads and stroking your beards (or inappropriately scratching your beard while stroking your head) you might come to realize that going to bed at 3 am for a class at 9 am is not the healthiest thing.

  I'm sure all of you are saying, "Just set your clock back! Go to bed at 3 am, then 2 am, then 1 am!" Yeah, that doesn't work for me. See, my body builds up endurance to the schedule I have built for myself. When I say that 3 am is a normal person's midnight, I'm not joking. When I go to bed at 5 am, that's like you going to bed at 2 am. Interestingly enough, by going to bed at 7 am, I'm going to bed at 4 am my time, which means I'm a night person within a night person. It all gets very confusing, which I attribute to spending the afternoon watching Charlie Kaufman films. Anyway, my body has shifted its internal clock to match the hours I keep. That's not a problem during the summer when I'm not in school (though it does wreak havoc in the winter because I get about 10 minutes of light a day), but not so great when in school, as I previously stated.

  I've realized that I can't fight the shift in my internal clock. Every night that I stay up late means that the next night my body wants to stay up a couple hours extra. I go to bed at 3 am, the next night I can stay up until 5 am. This is my body trying to get more than 12 hours of a day in, and it all just becomes a giant mess. When I don't have anything planned during the week, I don't know what day it is because each day blends into the next as the sun rises and I realize it's 9 am the next day.

  So in light of not putting up a fight (except for my right to party), I'm going to use my body's own method against it, I'm going to stay up each night later and later until I'm going to bed at midnight. Suck my dick, body! The reason that this works is that due to the shift in my clock, I don't live on a normal midnight to midnight 24-hour cycle. I've never actually mapped it out before now, but now that I have, it's really confusing even to me. When left to my own devices, my days are technically based on a 29-hour cycle if put next to a 00:00-00:00 clock.

  This new schedule is hopefully going to fix that. If not, I'm going to get trapped in an infinite time loop and explode, pulling the universe with me. Sorry everyone. Really.

  Anyway, this is what this coming week looks like:

Click to Enlarge is the name of my next rap album in which I degrade women by looking at pornographic photographs.

  It took me about 30 minutes to get this down because I kept trying to organize this better and eventually gave up. This is the result. I decided to just plan the schedule and see where it got me. I had to sit there and point to each day and say, this is this day to this day, as the numbered lines suggest. I kept getting distracted and because this was so strangely set up I had to start over, eventually just ignoring everything around me until I was done writing. I sort of screwed myself because Monday my only class doesn't start until noon. I would try to modify it to work around that, but I know that until I've committed to this schedule for at least a week, it won't stick and my clock will be back to where it is now. I'm interested to see what happens once I've adjusted to this new schedule; if I am one of those people who has to be in bed by 2 am or else fall asleep wherever I am, or if my body will start to slip back into my current schedule like a relationship that you can't remember why it ended in the first place only to wake up the next day after raucous bouts of sex and think, "Oh. Right. Because I was up until 5 am like I used to be" (Boom! Full circle). I'm sure I'll end up staying up until 2 or 3 am on the weekends like I used to, but hopefully maintain them to the real 2 or 3 am, and not 5 or 6 am.

  Either way, as you can see I'm going to be keeping some very strange hours this week. As such, I'll be keeping a journal (because a diary is not manly) this week describing what it's like to be so helter skelter (but not in a Charles Manson way, I promise), so keep your eyes peeled like a carrot (I'm sorry)!