Questions not to ask someone with DSPS

I have a condition called Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, which causes me to fall asleep and wake at much later times then normal people.


I want to preface this by saying that I'm always happy to discuss my sleep disorder, and happy to answer (almost) any question. In fact, I sometimes feel it is my duty to raise awareness about it, not only so that people with normal sleep can be more aware, but also so that those with sleep disorders might get help. However, in discussions, a few questions come up very often. Almost always, these questions (aggravating as they may be) are aksed in earnest from well meaning and kind people,.


7. "You get to sleep in every morning? That sounds great!"

Actually, I don't. I wake up as early as I can make myself. For me, waking up at 11 am doesn't feel like when you wake up at 11 am. I don't feel the carefree warmth that you get from sleeping in. I usually feel quite hectic, because I usually don't have much time to get ready for class. For me, sleeping in means sleeping until 1-2 pm.



6. "Maybe you drink too much caffeine/you should drink coffee in the morning"

On a normal day, I rarely have any caffeine at all, and certainly not late enough at night to keep me up. On the other hand, coffee in the morning wouldn't help. My condition is not being groggy in the morning, it's being asleep in the morning.



5. "You know, I used to stay up really late too..."

I don't stay up late. I fall asleep when I become tired. And I don't become tired until usually 4-5 in the morning. For me, staying up late would mean seeing the sunrise.



4. "Couldn't you just take sleeping pills?"

Oh, thanks, I'm cured now :P But joking aside, pills are at best a temporary aid, and one that I prefer to avoid altogether. I used to take Ambien daily. I eventually became addicted. After two years of acting like an imbecile, not remembering huge chunks of my day, and really not falling asleep that much earlier, I decided to call it quits. The withdrawal was mild, and lasted about two months. My other option is diphenhydramine, an anti-allergy pill which happens to cause drowsiness (usually sold as tylenol PM) which makes me grouchy and gives me headaches, and to which you can quickly develop a tolerance.



3. "Have you tried [insert home remedy/exercise regimen]"

When people ask me this question, it makes me realize that I've not been explaining myself properly. If they're telling me about folk remedies which are meant to cure normal sleeplessness, (warm milk, tea with honey, exercising to the point of exhaustion) then it means that I've not conveyed to them that I have a neurological difference. I may have forgotten to mention how people like me often have more blue light receptors in our retinas, and how we have greater melatonin re-uptake at lower light levels. I may not have mentioned that I've had this since I was about 14, and that if folk remedies had worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation.



2. "So, if you move to a different time zone, will you just be normal?"

I actually like this one. It usually makes for a good laugh. But that answer is, of course, no. Much like anyone else, once I get over jet lag, I will adjust to my normal sleep schedule relative to local time.



1. "Have you ever just forced yourself to get up early? Then you be tired later, right?/Have you tried to sleep normally?"

This is the mac daddy of all exasperating questions. I know that the asker doesn't intend it, but I feel like I'm being asked, "Have you ever tried not having your disability?" Every single day from the 8th grade all the way to the day I graduated high school, my parents graciously and patiently got me to school the morning. Waking up at 6:30 am when you've only slept for 2-3 hours day after day is a unique kind of pain which is difficult to describe. Imagine having the worst headache of your life, as well as a few bruises and a really bad attitude. Imagine that you are confused, you're not sure where you are, and the words that people are saying to you don't make much sense. Now imagine that putting your head back on the pillow makes all this go away, while wrapping you in a blanket made of pure contentment.



At school, I'd sleep through a couple classes. I'd probably sleep through the car ride home as well, only to find then when I got home and 10 pm rolled around, I was as awake as I would ever be. I would stare at the ceiling until I was finally tired enough to sleep sometime after 3:30. Every semester, making my schedule is nerve wracking, because if one of my required courses is before noon, I'm hosed. Thankfully, I've gotten lucky so far.



The entire world operates from 9 am to 5 pm. You're just about useless if you can't conform to that schedule, not to mention it can be a huge blow to your self esteem. Not only can you feel like an outcast, separated from society in a fundamental way, look at how people who sleep differently are portrayed in media; people who sleep in are often dull lazy loser oafs. People who stay up late are either reckless partiers, or nefarious low-lifes who spend the wee hours hatching the downfall of civilization.



One in three people with DSPS also have depression. Thankfully, I no longer do because I've been allowed to sleep on my schedule for nearly 3 years now.



So of course I've tried! I've had every incentive in the world to try.



So, that's the list. I'm not trying to be a whiner. I'm really a very lucky person. I don't have insomnia, so when I do sleep I get very good sleep. Right now, I'm pretty much allowed to live on the schedule that works for me, which not all people can say. My college, family, and friends are all very caring and understanding. Most of all, I'm just lucky to know what I have. Many people out there are suffering because they have DSPS and don't know it.

Becoming a Gamer

Maybe I'm already a gamer. But I don't think so. My friends can name 20 of the most popular games in existence today, and I'll only recognize 5 of them. I have gotten many hours of enjoyment from video games, but most of those games are between 10 and 40 years old.



I was born in Germany in the year 1991. Video games had been in households for at least 12 years, but I was in a family of government nomads. I didn't play my first game until I was nearly five years old, while living in Nigeria. I picked up a controller for the first time and played Tetris. My dad had played somewhere, and somehow got hold of an Nintendo entertainment system console, despite the fact that we were in Africa. Our copy of Mario bros and Mario 3 were picked up as an afterthought. We also had Duck Hunt. It was a modest collection. Not bad for the third world. But not great for the year 1996. But I had no idea what was out there. As far as I knew, there was Nintendo, and there was the VCR. That was media.



Little did I know that the Super Nintendo had come out the year I was born. And that Playstation and the N64 were locked in battle for supremacy of the game market.



Eventually I moved to Minnesota. Our PlayStation was a gift from relatives. They also bought us a copy of Crash Bandicoot 2. The first 3D game I ever played, and possibly the first game I ever played that was made after I was born. I could write pages about how I've been influenced by the Crash series, not to mention Spyro. So I won't do it here. But I will say that between Crash, Spyro, and Gran Turismo, I knew what gaming was. First person shooter games confused and frustrated me. I found the melodrama of role playing games disturbing. I had everything I needed.

And this is how it's stayed.



My experience with gaming is comparable to that of a man who's only seen about ten movies all the way through.



But I'm trying. I want to write music for video games very badly. Games are a new and exciting art form that I want to understand. My friends are especially supportive in my efforts. It's almost like they're imparting their knowledge upon me. Thankfully they've chosen positive reinforcement as their teaching method. At the end of a round of Star Wars Battlefront II, they'll say, kindly, "Hey, three kills! That's not bad!" and "This time you actually killed more of the enemy then your own teammates." They express pride when I begin to curse aloud at the game.



It's nice to have friends who are willing to walk you through this world. No matter how many times I ask my gamer friends, "What does Ubisoft make again?", they always answer patiently. "Right. What does RTS stand for again?" is met with equal understanding. It's hardly the geeky judgment one's conditioned to expect.They know that I'm learning, and they really want to help.



So to everyone who's helping me to become a gamer, thank you.

New Tom Waits Album

1. Place Name Noun

2. Bittersweet Drinking Song

3. Visions of the Apocalypse According to Insane Man from 1930's

4. Financial Hardship

5. Various Disturbing Anecdotes

6. Suicide Note that Rhymes

7. Impenetrable Metaphors

8. Song of Death and Abandonment

9. A Complication of Phrases from the Depression Era

10. Blues Standard Played on Human Skeletons

Why I still use a PC in a Mac trending world.

I've used mac's at least every single day for the last three years, because I'm an art student, and Macs simply manifest out of thin air wherever art students happen to be. I spend hours at a time using them for the purposes of graphic design, photo editing, and sound design on a regular basis.

However, my own computer is a PC running 7. Why? I just hate using Mac OS. That simple. I can't stand it, it drives me insane, every minute using it is another ten hairs I pull out of my head. I don't want an interface which is constantly trying to guess what I want. I like things to close when I close them. Using the finder rewards me with nothing but pain.

I keep using Windows because I like the start menu, right and center clicks, explorer (not Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer), control panel, etc. Part of it may be that I simply know these things very well. I practically grew up with them. Some of these functions, on a Mac, seem tucked away.

Some believe that easy access to certain functions is not necessary for all users. To that I say this: Computer functions are like words; the vast majority of words in English are highly specified and seldom used. In daily conversation, we use about 10% of our total vocabulary. However, we need these words. Communication would be almost impossible without them, (words like aquatic, grain, obstruct) so everyone needs to know what they mean. The same is true for, say, showing hidden files, changing your clock to 24 hour time, changing the region of your DVD player, monitoring tasks, etc.

They may not be needed daily, but they will be needed. So I think an OS should make these functions reasonably accessible.

The lack of viruses is a compelling argument. On the other hand, give it a minute. If Mac computers continue to grow in popularity, the viruses will come.

Windows on a Mac runs at a glacial pace. On my own machine, (which cost $800 USD) Firefox installed and opened in 5 seconds. I'm not exaggerating. If anything, 5 seconds is a conservative estimate. Frankly, telling me that Macs run Windows doesn't sell me. I already have a computer that runs Windows, but I didn't have to pay for OSX and bootcamp, as well as the Apple logo.

As far as the community, there is no comparison. It comes down to sheer numbers. The PC community is vast, intrepid, and skilled. Because older computers do tend to be cheaper, and slightly obsolete parts abound, PC power-users can afford to be experimental and adventurous. I'm sure it's possible to cobble together a Mac computer from spare parts, but it's definitely much easier to do the same with a PC. C++ is widely understood. My college teaches a class specifically on programming in C++. I have a free C++ compiler on my machine right now.

Finally, I simply don't care for Apple's apparent policy against user serviceability. When I found an old PC in a dumpster, I was able to yank the wireless card out of it and install it in my own PC without any trouble. Why? Because my computer opens. An iMac on the other hand is very pleasing to look at, and is very compact, and in some cases, a very capable machine, but unfortunately is a solid glowing obelisk.

Making a computer non-user serviceable does absolutely nothing for the user. It just means they can't fix it themselves. Once I've paid upwards of 1,000 dollars for something, it should be my right to repair/modify it myself.

Mac does this most of their products. iPods don't even let you replace your own battery. My Walkman does. It coincides with the strategy of planned-obsolescence. The sad part is that Mac used to have a reputation for just the opposite policy; they were once known for making computers which were highly serviceable by the user. I once dismantled an old Mac (with some pleasure, I should mention) as it needed to be disposed of. Opening and removing the parts of this computer was an absolute breeze. Could not have been easier. A far cry from the impenetrable fortresses Mac makes today (with the exception of the G series)

So that's why I'm writing this on a 7 year old keyboard which is not wafer thin.

My Encounter with Sharkula.

I was sitting outside The Stupid Building meditating when a man walked past me laughing. “Look at this dude meditating.” His laughter is benevolent, so I laugh too. He looks at me and asks the question, “Hey, do you like underground hip-hop?” I tell him that I do. He pulls some CD’s out of his Jacket. I tell him I have no money on me. He is obviously disappointed but he says, “Here, go to my website.” He reaches in his pocket, and begins to pull pieces of paper out of it, inspect them and put them back in.
We begin to engage in small talk. At some point he says “My family gets pissed off whenever I get any success.” “Yeah?” I ask. “Yeah, man,” he continues, “They just get pissed off whenever I get a new show.” I respond, “I’m lucky, my family’s cool.”
I don’t remember what I said next. He responds, “That’s the problem with Chicago, man. Don’t nobody love themselves around here.” “Yeah?”, I ask. “Yeah, man,” he continues, “people round here think they gotta vote for somebody to change the world. The problem isn’t politics, the problem is families.” He is still fishing for one particular slip of paper but can’t seem to find it. “They think all this stuff is wrong in politics, but I tell ‘em, it starts in the home.” “Yeah?”, I ask. “Yeah, man,” he responds. I tell him I plan on visiting his website. He thanks me, and leaves, immediately engaging another person three yards away from me.
Later I actually do visit the website. A bizarre almost atonal beat begins to play. The rhymes are bizarre, and sound more like rhyming free association than rap. It’s interjected with crazed yelps and growls. Certain rhymes that stick in my mind are “I’m gonna crush you with my Knuckle, boo, hoo, Papa Smurf on the turf.” It automatically switches to another track where he repeates, “you got too many tv’s in your car, too many tv’s in your car” for about two minutes. Best of all is, “Oh my god, it’s Empire Strikes Back and I’m Boba? I’m never Sober?”
Some of the beats in later tracks are some of the best examples of experimental turntablist music I’ve ever heard. It’s on par with Amon Tobin, except that it is topped with rap telling the story of an alternate dimension.
I conclude that this is the most amazing music I’ve ever heard and I plan to attend this MC’s next show.

Professional Student of the World

There’s a new commercial for a car which shows two women in their early 30’s rescuing another from a restaurant. She says, “He said he was a professional student.” There’s a beat as they laugh, then she continues; “Of the world!” Now we have the whole picture. She was on a date with a deadbeat, and her girlfriends drove up in their shiny, champagne-colored sedan to extract her from the situation.
I tried to imagine the inverse to this situation. A man in his 30’s with short hair is in the bathroom of a Thai restaurant. He presses a single button on his phone (on television, people don’t dial.) He perks up as the party on the other end answers. We hear a crackly “Hello?”
“Bro, I’m on this date, you gotta get me outta here.”
His friend responds, “No problem, man. You and me, we’re like family. I’m on my way, you just sit tight.”
“Thanks man, I owe you big time.”
The friend asks, “So how bad is it?”
“Man, this girl doesn’t even got a job.”
“Oh, man you serious, dog?”
“Yeah, she keeps going on about how she’s gonna be a model someday, but she’s waiting to get ‘discovered’.“
“You know what? Screw the speed limit, bro; I gotta get you outta there.
Why does this scenario seem less plausible? Perhaps it is because men are seldom portrayed as anything other than dogs, blinded by their own sex drive. Perhaps it is because it is socially acceptable for a man to be the sole provider for a family. But a woman in the same position is supporting a parasitic slacker. But most likely, it is because nobody wants to imagine a girl sitting in a restaurant waiting for her date to return from the bathroom, only to realize that once again, she’d been sitting across from a judgmental prick, who wasn’t even willing to sit through a whole dinner with her.

First Week in Lincoln Park

In the city of Chicago, it is extremely difficult to tell the difference between an insane homeless man, limping to a subway station in order to get his 8 hours, (with hourly interruptions to switch trains, and avoid being noticed at the end of the line) and a man, with a liberal concept of personal grooming, who sprained his ankle during his morning jog. They both have generally the same attire, mannerisms, and smell. They also have the same look in their eyes. They both look desperate, and exhausted. They both have a goal to achieve, but something insurmountable is standing in their way.
The look on both of their faces is nearly identical, but the very slight difference accounts for very different meanings. The limping jogger's face says, "Why does home have to be so far away, I'm beginning to feel like I'll never get there. I wish I could just lay down and rest my ankle for a minute. In fact, I wish I could just forgo the whole the indignity of hobbling around in the rain altogether, and just fall asleep right here, and forget it all. The Homeless man's face says that he will probably be sleeping in that very spot, and is not contemplating the matter with the same enthusiasm as the jogger.
The same is true for those who are highly enthusiastic about music, but are woefully incapable of expressing it without seeming like they are shouting at invisible snakes crawling up their legs. I saw one such man beneath the rails at the Fullerton red line stop. He was sitting at a circular cement disk which served both as a bench, and as a pedestal for a sculpture. The sculpture resembles a spaceship from science fiction TV series. Not the protagonist's ship, but perhaps that of a species with whom the protagonist has a "Stay the Fuck Away from Me" treaty. It resembles an flattish egg with creases, and sits atop three pillars. I hate it. The sight of it makes me feel like the world is turning upside down. It's something about the pillars. It doesn't look like they should hold the egg up. But then again, there's no gravity in space.
The man sitting near the sculpture was bopping his head up and down in an alarming manner. The rest of his body was at its mercy. He was also reciting some kind of lyrical work, but it was too aggressive to be rap. The words were very staccato, and resembled the barks of a German Shepard. And the tone suggested the preface to a Hollywood gang rumble. It was as though he were rehearsing a scene in which he carried on a heated argument in a hip-hop themed musical. I may never know if the jogger or the bopper were anything other than perfectly normal, but I have a pretty good idea about the teenagers in the McDonalds two doors down from my apartment. They were drunk as fuck.
For the entire 15 minutes I spent in that McDonalds, an athletic, well dressed Asian teen with spiky hair was clearly applying all his powers of mind, and all his ability to command the attention of another individual, but still only managed to repeat the first half of a sentence about 15 times. "But you know that Kaylie—hey—hey guys—hey guys—you know that Kaylie—hey guys…" After a while, I began to consider whether or not there was any possibility at all I knew the Kaylie in question, simply because I was desperate to give the poor kid a chance to have his moment, and was going to find it difficult to order over that noise, combined with the stunted ear piercing laughter of the individual behind me.
His laughter was so loud, and so obviously fake, it was clear he was performing for someone. Under my breath I mutter, "I'll have what he's having." The two middle eastern men in front of me turn around and agree. "I know right?" One of them, much more talkative than the other, goes on to say "Tourists, these guys." He points in the direction of the laughter, though we can't see the individual from whom the audible bilge is emitting from where we are, making its sheer volume all the more remarkable. "Tourists." He smiles, I agree, and feel much better about hating someone I don't know.
I live on my own now, and this has had unexpected effects on my behavior. For instance, I now only get dressed if I know for certain I'm going to see another human being. It started as simply not wanting my hair to make my shirts wet after showers, and decayed fairly quickly into "Fuck it. I'll just put a towel on the floor and play video games until I dry off. Another thing is that I've devoted a lot more time to the study of foreign languages. I didn't realize until writing this just how ironic that is; I have absolutely no one to talk to. I'm lucky to catch someone on the phone long enough to be told "I'm sorry, I have a lot to get done, maybe later", so it goes without saying that I've yet to find someone with whom to practice the Ghanaian dialect of Twi.
Nearly eight hours after leaving the McDonalds, I still haven't slept. I decide that it might be a good idea to go grocery shopping, and part of me knows that I will probably come home with cookies and carbonated water. I had the willpower to quit many things. I got over my Ambien addiction, cut down my caffeine to one drink a week, and canceled my membership on Wikipedia. But Oreos and Carbonated water will probably be with me to my dying day.
When I walk up to the door, feelings of irrational paranoia start to take over. It's been a long time since I've seen the world at 8 a.m., and because I'm severely sleep deprived, my inner monologue gets replaced with the voice of David Sedaris, and I begin to feel antagonized by everything I can see. It takes me about a minute to realize how to open the front door of the building. I would push it weakly, and it would push back. I did this about three times, and then my mind drifted to the Animated Film Watership Down. I think, "Why does anyone watch that fucking movie? It's depressing as shit. I know why I haven't seen it; because the plot synopsis on Wikipedia (I'd caved that night and spellchecked the article) made me want to fucking kill myself." I realize that I'm still pushing the door back and forth like the billows of a pipe organ, and remember that if I push slightly harder, it will, in fact, open.
The next door goes faster, but is just as terrifying. "I wonder if this one is going to explode. It's probably a bomb. Everything's a fucking bomb." My hair is frizzy as a stagger to the Dominick's beyond the 'L' station. I wear my normal clothes, but the zombie-like expression on my face and the fact that I'm muttering this essay to myself out loud seem to recontextualize it. People I pass look at my socks and my sandals, and then look back up at me as if beneath my feet are two giant hairy tarantulas who carry me around like living roller-skates. There's an expectation that looking straight into my eyes will yield some kind of explanation. Perhaps they're expecting that right as they look at me, I'll laugh sheepishly and explain "Oh, yeah, I was at a costume party dressed as a German beachgoer." But this is simply how I've dressed for the last four years. I've never apologized for it, and I'm not going to start now. Just like the individual with the limp made no efforts to conceal his pain, and the person near the sculpture had no reservations about enjoying his song, or whatever it was, to the absolute fullest. I come to realize that at this moment, mumbling, gazing to and fro crazily, my stigmatizing fashion accessories occasionally causing me to trip, nearly dropping my peanut butter cream Oreos and 12 pack of carbonated water, that I'm the jogger. I'm the bopper. And I'm definitely, looking for home.