So Much To Do, So Much Time

The sleep cycle has been giving me trouble these last two days: it is difficult to fall asleep for naps during the day and and I stayed up until 6am this morning only to wake up at 11am after the "25 minute" nap. It's also annoying when I'm doing something with friends and realize that I have to go back to the dorm and take a nap. I can already see that while this is a highly efficient sleep cycle, the fact that everyone else is on a monophasic cycle is going to make it troublesome. I have failed twice so far in staying up all 21 hours, but I am determined to adjust and embrace this cycle, even if I switch back soon after.

On a more positive note, I have been making headway on the Intellectual Stoner blog with two articles banked, a thousand ideas and owneership of www.intellectualstoner.com. I am having some trouble transferring the blog over to the domain but I will report when it is up and running. The response from my friends and everyone else in the dorm to this marijuana-blog idea has been tremendous, even beyond my expectations. There are countless smokers in my dormitory and several people have already expressed interest in writing guest articles. I'm hoping that the web-users will have the same response so that I can get enough traffic/ad-clicks to fund the trip, but I'm probably going to set up another business to supplement it.

With respect to the actual trip, I'm looking closely at Spain and Germany as potential locations for my first country. I've read a lot of good things about both which have all been backed up by friends who have been to the countries. However, most of my time recently has been spent on Intellectual Stoner so I don't have any other updates about the trip itself. That's all for now.

First Day of Polyphasic Sleeping

I never knew that my roommate snores very loudly until tonight. All I can say is thank God for headphones! I started the polyphasic sleep cycle earlier today with 25 minute naps at 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, 2am and eventually 6am and 10am. The naps have been pretty difficult as it's hard to fall asleep when I'm not tired, but I'm sure by staying up all night tonight, it will be much easier tomorrow. It's currently around 4:30am and I feel very awake and alert, so I'm optimistic. The increase in the amount of time that I have to do work is amazing and I always have the sunset to look forward too. Yes, it is weird/slightly depressing that no one else in my entire dorm is awake right now, but I also like the idea of being the only one. Of being different. I originally got this idea from Steve Pavlina's blog in which he wrote about his one-year long experimentation with this sleep cycle. Steve reported higher mental clarity and even better mood after he had fully adjusted to the cycle (which only took 1-2 weeks). His accounts are spread among countless blog posts but here is the link to his original post about polyphasic sleep. I took a break during this post so it is now 5:50am and I have to take another nap soon. Good...morning?

Saturday

The last two days have been very productive for me, but with little physical results. I redesigned the header for this blog, but I have really been focused on coming up with a business idea for funding my trip. Little did I know that I had already come up with it a couple months ago when I jotted down some notes on a blog about marijuana. Sorry to those of you who still have a stigma against pot, but regardless of your beliefs, stoners are an undeniable niche market. Fortunately, since most pot-smokers are unproductive, there is no Mecca blog/site for marijuana. Even HighTimes Magazine's website is riddled with annoying ads while most other legitimate sites only sport weed-related news feeds. This topic, I must admit, is one in which I have a lot of experience and expertise (I'll talk more about this later). However, I know NOTHING about web design or html and I know that a simple blog will not do the trick for my vision. What is my vision? Basically a Nytimes.com, but all weed related material instead. Whether it be new marijuana legislation, great things to contemplate when high or the best bongs to buy, I want this site to have it all. The name of the site is "Intellectual Stoner" and it's going to be aimed at showing the more intelligent side of marijuana smoking. Essentially I want to show how weed can be used as an intellectual stimulant instead of depressant as it is commonly accused of being. In order to start this site, I'm going to the book store tomorrow to get a book on website design and am currently illegally downloading Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. Obviously, I'm really excited about getting this project going and I'll post a link to the site when it exists. Sidenote: Ironically I decided to quit smoking so that I could start the polyphasic sleep cycle because THC inhibits R.E.M sleep so this is going to be a challenge... On that note, I am starting that cycle today at 6pm, so my blog entries are definitely going to be more regular as opposed to the 'whenever I feel like it' way I'm doing it now. I can't wait.

My First Free Thursday

Usually on Thursdays I have to attend 5 hours total of class in which I would be "learning" how to write and how to calculate statistics. Despite the great value that I place upon these subjects, I instead went surfing for the first time near Newport, CA in pouring rain. It was not fun...just very cold, but an experience nonetheless. After I got back to USC, I left to go see Dane Cook record his new dvd at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. Needless to say, I got more excitement out of today than I have out of any other Thursday this year. Thursdays at USC are the big party night, so I came back to find most of my friends either passed out or wandering around the dorms looking like idiots. The juxtaposition of my night compared to theirs, I have to say, made me happy. Well it's raining finally, a rarity in SoCal, so I'm going to take advantage of it and read by the open window in my dorm. Hopefully tomorrow can keep up with today...

The Start of a Great Semester

Today I started thinking about all of the things that I want to accomplish this semester with all of the extra time I will have by not attending any classes. Well, at least besides the one taking me to China over spring break for $150. I've been really into a couple of personal-growth blogs, mainly stevepavlina.com, chrisguillebeau.com and litemind.com. All three either directly talk of or reference manifestation and related topics like visualization and dreams. I have also read The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz and am currently reading The Four-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, both of which I'll review later in this blog. Through the research I've done on through these blogs and books, I have determined a pretty extensive list of goals I want to reach before summer begins. They are as follows:

- learn to lucid dream efficiently and possibly move on to astral projection
- switch over to a poly-phasic sleep cycle with 25 minute naps every 4 hours
- improve visualization ability using techniques from litemind.com
- improve memory using techniques from books and litemind.com
- perfect ability to manifest my true desires
- plan out the entire move to Europe or whatever continent I choose to go to
- produce a sustainable source of income to fund my trip
- reduce alcohol and illegal substance intake
- gain 20 lbs in muscle and start eating better to aid the change in sleep cycle
- post something on this blog everyday
- finish reading The Four-Hour Work Week, The Golden Key and 7 books on tape
- master meditation using binaural beats and other audio files focuses on relaxation

I'll be adding to that over the next couple of days as well so it's going to be a hard semester even though I have no classes. These are the tools that I think are necessary for my trip to be a success. People are continually asking me why I am doing this and up until this point I haven't really been able to pinpoint a specific reason. The reason is simple: I want to improve myself by becoming a warrior in order to survive being hurdled into the unknown. Sounds fun right? Yup, that's what I'm thinking, especially compared to my Math 218 Statistics class. I'm very excited.

The Epiphany

It was last Saturday, January 31st, 2009 and I was waking up still tipsy from the fraternity invite the night before. My phone was gone and I had no idea as to where I had left it; it was a morning for pondering. I had been thinking about getting away from Southern California for a very long time since I've lived here all my life and have only gone on one real vacation. For some reason, this ultimate goal of mine came to mind that morning and I realized one thing: I can do that now. Whenever I had thought of leaving the U.S. before, the thought process always ended with the phrase, "After I graduate from college..." But with no occupational intentions beyond entreprenurialism, I feel that a college degree is fairly useless, at least to me. This idea sounds pretty ludicrous coming from anyone, but especially for me. I am a freshman at the USC Marshall Business School with a full-ride and am currently rushing the top fraternity on campus. Things to be worse, to say the least, but that doesn't matter to me. I have been experimenting with manifestation/the law of attraction since the middle of December and now I want to actually put my beliefs to the test in the real world. The very first step in learning to utilize manifestation is figuring out what you want or else you will not know what to manifest in your life. This task took a considerable amount of time for me to figure out, about a month, but I knew it when the idea hit me. I want out, I want to travel, I want to experience new things, America bores the shit out of me. So even though I love my current place at USC and where I am at in my life right now, the positive nature of it all is completely irrelevant in terms of my goal. Yes, I am very happy, probably the most I have ever been, but I'm not excited by what I am doing. So I'm leaving it all behind.. USC, my studies, friends, fraternity pledge brothers and the safety of the U.S. for that excitement that I'm missing. This blog will document everything that happens to me along the way so I hope you enjoy it.