So I have nothing of pressing importance happening this week, and at such times I let my sleep schedule wander. I’ve always been a night person, so staying up until 3 or 4 AM is no big deal. But last night I decided I would see the sun rise. It’s now almost lunch time.
Having done this a few times I know some of the symptoms my body will manifest, telling me enough is enough. But I wonder how far I can push it?
My reason for making this a question thread is to see for how long I can answer intelligibly. If you don’t have a question, then please make a comment to keep me awake and interested.
30 hours and you’re already worried about being unintelligible? Hell, I used to stay up 30 hours straight every day! Stay up for a week, then come back and over the wind tell now world you said.
The first thing that happens is that one of my lower legs gets sore and wants to curl up. I think it might be my body trying to go fetal position. Oddly though, it’s not always the same leg.
That passes after a while. Then I get slightly paranoid, which is accompanied by my peripheral vision becoming overly sensitive to motion. I keep startling myself think I saw something moving just out of my field of vision. What threw me a curve today was that something actually DID dart near the side of my vision. Turned out to be two deer running into the woods outside my window.
My motor skills deteriorate. I’m a good juggler, so I do that periodically. Many more drops than earlier in the day / night.
Between 22-24 seems the worst. Having pushed past that, I now feel fairly awake and alert. But I have no illusions that I’m capable of good performance on any sort of motor skill. I wouldn’t drive.
Seeing the sun rise and the light of a new day gives your body a boost. It tells it “it’s daytime, wake up!” But for me that only lasts until about lunch time of the second day. After that, things start to crash.
Heh, nice. I stayed up for 30 hours not too long ago. I figured it was time to go to bed when I started seeing “things” moving out of the corner of my eye, then turned to look and nothing was there.
Wow, if I posted to the Dope every time I’ve been up all night working into the next day on a report my postcount would be just shy of Dio’s.
No, wait. If I did that, it would take me that much longer to finish, leading to that many more back-to-back all-nighters, leading to more posts, leading to…
How old are you (approximately)? I find that with each passing decade, it’s harder to go without sleep over 24 hours.
Are you doing this because of some work project or personal project that keeps you motivated to stay awake?
Early 40’s. Strangely though, I think I had a harder time with this sort of thing when I was younger. Back then I used to nap a lot normally, now I hardly ever do.
Nothing special brought this on. I was up late working on a project, then I started watching some YouTube videos of TED lectures, and here I am quite a few hours later. I may go for a walk in a little while.