So quarantine life provided for the Teller family a different kind of lifestyle than we've ever had before. Schedules became less important. Bedtimes became less important. And there was a general air of surrealism to the waking. You're in your house and you can walk around and you can eat and you can drink. Movies are still on the table, hanging out with your kids, but there's an odd kind of disregard. You don't have to get up at 7 o'clock in the morning to take your kids to school anymore, so it becomes harder and harder to make yourself go to bed at eleven.
After awhile, things get hazy. Where dishes were important to be cleaned, you can now let it slide. We had no reason to get out of our PJs. During this time of mist and mystery, I gave myself permission to sleep when I wanted to sleep and wake up when I wanted to. Where going around the horn, staying up all night and the next day, used to be a tool, during the quarantine it just became common practice. I was exhausted for large sections of the day. But when I got about 14 of these sleep cycles in, I started to feel better than I had in years, better than I had in recent memory. It became clear to us, my wife and I, that staying up for 34 hours and sleeping for 14 was doing good things for me. I wasn't as exhausted all the time. The insomnia was gone. I wasn't eating as much. Heart palpitations had gone down. It was easier to take deep breaths. When I woke up, I was awake instead of being trapped in a drowsy haze for four hours. Once I got used to 34 hours awake, 14 hours of sleep, my quality of life reached the next level.
So, Age of Information. Natural curiosity of the Tellers. And a general understanding that with my mind, pretty much anything is possible. We Googled a few things, read a couple articles, and we found out what had been wrong with my life. It's common among the blind. For some reason, it's common for nuns. And one of the main causes of this new disorder we found out I suffer from is bipolar, which I am.
It's called Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder. It was discovered in 2004. And a person with this disorder finds their natural circadian rhythm is tuned to a sleep schedule that does not fit within 24 hours. We'd found the missing piece, the thing that had made sense for years but we didn't know was real.
I've lost 15 pounds. My concentration is higher than it's ever been before. My body's working on another level. And my writing schedule has changed. What used to be 3000 words every 24 hours has become 9000 every 48. The reason for this is very simple. My mind is more deft, more agile, and more precise than it's ever been before. I need so much less prep time to get my words in. I have the ability to shift through three different chapters in a single night. My day is broken up like this: I wake up at 2 or 4 in the afternoon just like I always have, and until 2 o'clock in the morning I live a normal life. At 2 in the morning I become a restless wanderer and I walk the paths of Perilisc and the continents beyond and discover more than I ever have before. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon I stop doing everything and just play for the rest of the day.
It's a new lifestyle, but it feels like an old one. It feels like my body is finally doing what my mind and soul have been doing for decades. And I have become more productive than ever before.
