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?
