As anyone who talks to me on a regular basis -- in a situation where I'm prone to musing -- can attest to, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about fairly insane things which I would love to do and then write an article about them. Vague? Yeah. I have a big series of long articles which would be physically grueling (and a bit dangerous) that I would love to try to do. I don't want to go into detail on that one because I still do hope, someday, to carry it out. My wife, who is sane and patient and has a more normal view of danger than I do, thinks that it's an awful idea and doesn't want me to do it (which is why I'm not, right now). I am ever hopeful.
Anyway. One idea which has just crossed my mind at the moment, which I could feasibly try without too much difficulty -- because it doesn't involve leaving the house -- would be along article chronicling going several days and nights without any sleep at all.
What I've read on the internet indicates that one can actually go a fair amount of time without sleep (one discussion claims thirteen days to a month). This is lunatic and not at all practical. What I wonder about, though, is three days, four nights. Something like that. And while I'm doing that, I would still go about my day to day stuff, see how that changes as I run down on sleep. I would also keep a running document going on the laptop and I add to it now and then, as things change.
I don't know that it would make a valuable article to anyone (for one thing, I bet it's been done), but it would make an interesting blog article. And it would be interesting to try.
Partly because there are shows like Survivorman as well as Morgan Spurlock's fascinating 30 Days series.
(I think that if I weren't a writer-with-family, I would be some sort of weirdo survivalist)
That's the sort of nutty things I come up with and go "Cool, how can I feasibly do that?"
(I'm not completely nuts: My second thought is always how can I do this safely?)
Things Sane People Don't Do
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Posted by Peter Damien at 12:52 PM
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6 Angst(s):
I think it would be fun to do within the bounds of your own home and reason. Just be careful, cause your post reminded me of this
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/09/18/chinese_man_days_after_3-day_gaming_session/1
and that's not the first news article about someone actually dying from lack of sleep. Don't want you keelin' over on us.
Just sayin'.
That's why I may not do it, and if I did, I certainly wouldn't push it to the limits of what I've read. I always heard that you could go seven days or so without sleep before things got really dangerous. Now I've read much longer. I would never even go the full seven days.
I may not do it at all. :) I have tamer ideas too (e.g.: Why not stay up for forty-eight hours and try to write 2,000 words every hour? Things like that.)
When I don't get a sufficient amount of sleep for a length of time, I end up paranoid. We're talking silly, stupid paranoia. People will tell me, "I'm going to run to the bathroom and refill my drink" and while they're gone, I convince myself that they don't really want to talk to me and have just left while they think of a really good excuse to end the conversation permanently.
*climbs out bathroom window during Lori's post*
Ha! I'm not sleep deprived right now, so ditch me as you will. My imaginary voices will keep me company.
I think that things like this are good ideas until I'm tired, and then I just am tired and couldn't care less and wind up going to sleep.
All this mostly resulted in was me doing something really interesting reading on people who go without sleep and what starts to happen to their brains. Fascinating.
...Oh. Everyone's left while I was talking. Sigh.
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