Sorry about the month.5 wait. I lost all sense of self-discipline as midterms piled upon homework and I just gave in instead of holding strong through it. My laundry piled up, my room became a mess, projects went on hold, everything became either study, eat, sleep or waste time. Now though, I've hit my reset button and I'm back. I stayed up a whole night with nothing to do to check my system and it went great. Actually, two nights in a row with sleep during the day.

The first thing I will be doing is restarting daily prayer. I am Muslim after all and that should (and is) my first priority. Also, it will give me a chance to find either a way to get home or find a place on campus to pray and then nap. Once I am praying 3/5 times a day (sorta complicated, I pray 5 times in 3 sets), I will be taking 3 naps after each "set" and going into Everyman will be a breeze.

And when I'm napping, I will start to decrease my nightly "core" sleep until its down to two cycles. My plan is to drop a sleep cycle at a time until I'm sleeping three less each night. Of course, I'm guessing I sleep 5 cycles, so I might do more or less and I'll accommodate that. The way I intend to "drop a cycle" is by decreasing my sleep time by a half hour at a time until I notice a significant increase in sleepiness. This increase would be due to waking up in the end of a cycle. Of course, since I'll be napping, the significant increase won't cause me to be much less productive, but I should be able to feel the difference if I'm paying attention.

So, to recap for just the Everyman info:

• Start napping at regular intervals during the day.
• Sleep 8 hours at first and starting on Fridays drop a half hour until an increase in drowsiness is felt.
• Sleep an extra half hour than before and wait until the next Friday to start dropping again.
• Once I'm down 3 cycles, my sleep schedule should now have 3 cycles throughout my day and a few at night.

The point of this, to me, is not only to increase the amount of useful time in the day, but to also increase my own self-discipline. If two midterms and laundry can overwhelm me in freshman year, I'm doomed. I can't let so little stress get to me, so hopefully the Everyman will give me another hint that "I can do it" when I'm thinking I'm not good enough for college.

See ya all in a few weeks! Happy We Haven't Spread Smallpox Enough Yet Day!