I feel like a Life Review is in order. But i'll keep it short. [Edit] no i didn't! It's kinda long!

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I think i had about four sleepwalks last night. Not particularly scary ones; sort of adventurous ones. I kept seeing little letters in envelopes, and when i opened them they contained a little task. Like move something from one side of the room to the other. I dread to think the state i might have left the bedroom in!

There was one where i saw a letter over my partner's side of the bed. So i got up to fetch it and then i couldn't find it. I got my phone because it has a light-up screen, and i was shining it around the bed, looking for this stupid letter. Arrgh. It's so annoying. I think i might have to get some sleeping tablets or something to stop me from doing it. I have suffered from sleepwalks and nightmares my whole life, but it is particularly bad at the moment for some reason.

In other news, somebody from MyChores asked if i want to do a bit of professional programming work for their company. I turned them down. I said i don't have enough time and i just do MyChores for fun, like a hobby. It's a shame though, because i kind of like the idea of going self-employed and doing freelance programming work. But the process of turning that idea into reality is too big for me to contemplate at the moment.

There is something about sleep – i'm never quite satisfied with it. I'm always looking for ways to improve my quality of sleep, because i don't think i've yet found my optimum sleep pattern. So alternative sleep patterns interest me greatly, although many of them seem impractical with my job, travelling, wanting to spend time with my partner, etc.

I came across the 28-hour day yesterday in an amusing comic that i like to read. Like so many sleep patterns, i love the theory! I always think 24 hours in a day seems slightly too short, and sleeping just six times in a week, for 9 hours at a time, sounds a nice idea! But i tried to map it out on a spreadsheet and i just can't make it work, no matter how i fiddle it. I tried four days of 27 hours followed by two days of 30 hours. That didn't work. I hoped only to go to work four times a week, missing out Mondays altogether. That didn't work either. You just end up sleeping all of Sunday, which is less than ideal.

Hmm. If only we could just slow down the Earth's rotation so it takes 28 hours! ;)

I've often flirted with the idea of trying polyphasic sleep. Actually, i could joke that i am already a polyphasic sleeper since i usually get a 20-minute nap on the train to and from work. I like to read for 20 minutes and sleep for 20 minutes. It works really well, very refreshing! I'd really love to try the Uberman schedule of 30 minutes sleep in every four hours … but that is just insanely impractical the way my life is at the moment, and for the foreseeable future!

So, to consider the more feasible sleep patterns …

Last year i tried getting up at 6am every single day, including weekends. The idea was to train my body to know when to get up, therefore it could calculate for me how much sleep i required. All i had to do was listen to my body to know when it's time to go to sleep. Unfortunately i found i am very good at ignoring my body when it's telling me to go to sleep!! So i had to go back to having a set bedtime. In theory it was 10pm, though in practice i often missed it.

Whilst on holiday i had a lot of sleep, but i was surprised to find it didn't really alleviate my tiredness throughout the day. It seemed the more sleep i got the more i felt i needed. Just recently i've heard that the optimum is 7 hours sleep, not 8. So currently i am trying to get exactly 7 hours every night. The plan is to be in bed by 11pm and read or listen to music until 11:30pm. I want to relax myself enough so that when the light goes out i fall straight to sleep. I get up at 6:30am, and will continue to do this at weekends. Getting up early is good for me.