Save Me From Daylight Savings

I am a night owl. I can’t be one right now, but once I am retired and can claim my life 24/7, I’ll be up all night, or most of it, and the clock will cease to matter.

I know, I know. It shouldn’t matter now, but it does—never more than on those notorious weekends known for the infamous “time change”. Like this one. I started winding up a week ago, grumbling and muttering at folks cheerily espousing the extra hour of daylight as if it’s a gift. There is no “extra hour” of daylight, people. There’s just a shift in the distribution.

Being a night owl, I am by default not a morning person. A sun that was up before me last week will rise tomorrow after I get to work ... and that vexes me. Terribly.

I know, I know. If I relax and wait a few weeks, the sun will once more be up before I am. In fact, the birds will be awake before the three-year-old who lives downstairs, and by either means, I will still be dragged from dreamland against my preference to sleep until I can’t sleep anymore. Someone who gets into her jammies as soon as she gets home from work doesn’t need the sun to set after nine o’clock. I need it to set before nine o’clock, when I go to bed!

Some night owl. I can’t stay awake past the three-year-old who lives downstairs. That’s my love/hate relationship with time. I get up at crap o’clock because my job demands it—the best job (if not the best money) I ever had was working the graveyard at the local radio station. I’d get home at 6:30 a.m., go straight to bed, get up at 1:00 p.m. and have a life until I left for work at 11:00 p.m. On days off, I kept the routine and stayed up to write all night. I was never more prolific than I was in those days. If only the salary had been as good as my current day job’s. I guess we all make sacrifices to get ahead.

But the spectre of daylight savings continues to goad me. I’m not wild about the return to standard time, either, except it gives me back the hour I’ve missed since early March. Every spring, I ask the question: Why? Why why why why do we continue with this stupid ritual?

It seems I am not alone. There is finally talk of abandoning the time change. The west coast States are considering it, and if they go ahead, BC will follow because of trade agreements and partnerships that demand we all work within the same time zone. California has already voted overwhelmingly in favour of staying on DST starting in 2022. Whatever, guys, just bring it.

Wait a minute. Staying on DST? That means turning the clocks forward in March and not turning them back in November! WTF?

Remember, Ru, says my inside voice, there is no “extra hour” of daylight. There’s just a shift in the distribution. Eventually, the days shorten on their own and it will be dark well in time for bed. Staying on DST means you’ll be walking home from the bus stop at twilight instead of pitch black in December.

Yeah, but it also means the sun will be coming up at nine in the morning! I’m all for abandoning daylight savings time, but let’s switch back to standard first. I mean—wait a minute. 2022? Oh. Okay. Whatever works.

I’ll be retired and a night owl by then.

Spring Forward 2.0

The universe has a strange way of changing people’s minds. For most of my life, I have hated, loathed and despised turning the clocks forward each spring. I have deeply resented losing that one precious hour of sleep, taking little comfort in the knowledge that it will be reclaimed come the fall. It jars my biological rhythm, plays havoc with my daily routine, and takes me a full week to regain any sort of equilibrium. For decades, poor Ter has endured my crabbing about it, for I often begin said crabbing well in advance of the appointed date.

Not so this year. This year, something bizarre has happened. I’m looking forward to the time change!

How has this unforeseen miracle occurred? What spectral manifestation has redirected my outlook? Well, quite simply, it’s all about the sunrise.

Since moving to the seaside in 2012, I’ve developed a passion for watching the sun come up over the water. Sometimes I sit on the couch and watch through the window; when the weather warms up, I’ll often get dressed and walk across to park on the beach while the light shifts and spreads over the ocean. It’s never the same show twice. Such occasions are restricted to weekends and days off, however; I’m usually dashing to work when the first rays of gold lance the clouds, so I savour those clear weekend mornings when all is quiet both in and out of the house. Trouble is, the sun and I are presently getting up at the same time. As I tend to sleep later on weekends (who doesn’t?), the sun is already up by the time I wake on a day off.

Drat, thinks I; must I choose between a lie in and the sunrise, and why is it even a choice? I don’t recall it being an issue in recent years … and then I remember: the time change. It hasn’t happened yet, and truth be told, without a glimmer of gloating, Victoria jumped from December to March with the merest nod to our customarily grey and soggy winter. It’s been springtime out west for weeks. No wonder I’m confused by the sunlight streaming down the hall of a Monday morning.

This weekend, my schedule realigns with the sun. I can’t promise to be up and across the street on Sunday ’cause I’m fairly sure my compostable container will still be on standard time, but by next weekend, I’ll have adjusted to the switch and be on the beach first thing Saturday morning.

Daylight Savings Time? Bring it!

Hickory Dickory

Time is constantly proving its irrelevance. Our lives are dictated by it, but it is a trickster, an illusionist given license to run the modern world—and aren’t we the fools for giving it such power?

Time is unstable. Unreliable. It makes us chase it, then drags its heels like a petulant toddler. It is easily lost when we’re deep in our bliss and rudely intrusive when a workday dawns. We panic when we’re late and bored when we’re early. We eat “because it’s time”, go to bed “because it’s time”, and if we don’t, if we heed our natural rhythm by eating when we’re hungry and sleeping when we’re tired, we mess up the clock and confuse our own bodies into the bargain.

Even the calendar is evil because a child should be born when it’s ready, not pulled from the womb because it’s “overdue”. “Overdue” simply means that predicting a birth date is like predicting the weather: not an exact science. Pity the babes born by appointment. Their first experience in this life is to be roused before they’re ready.

And daylight savings time? Please. Critters and crops have no idea what time it is, and less reason to care, so the old story about it benefiting the farmers is meaningless. As for saving energy by giving us an extra hour of daylight, hello? Light earlier in the morning means dark earlier in the evening and, seriously, summer days are by nature longer than winter days, so why bother when people are more disoriented and accident-prone in the week following a time change than by the usual mix of sleep deprivation and prescription medication?

If I sound crabby—and I believe I do—DST ended last night and my already hormonally-challenged biochemistry has been knocked further out of whack as a result. It will take a week for my system to adapt. I try to accept change because I can’t, well, change it, but I appreciate it more when the change makes sense.

Daylight savings no longer does.

Fall Back

You can relive the past … by an hour, once a year. I relive that hour by sleeping through it; not exactly a waste, but sure to mess up my body clock the next day.

I woke up at 6:00 a.m., which was really 7:00 a.m, but didn’t stop me from thinking, F***, it’ll still be dark when the alarm goes off tomorrow. I got up at 7:00, which was really 8:00, and Ter was up a half-hour later, which was really a half-hour earlier, since she usually sleeps until 8:30 on a weekend. Yesterday, she did. Today, we’re all screwed up so it doesn’t matter.

At 10:00, my stomach started thinking about elevenses. I made myself wait until 11:00 for tea, which is really noon and almost time for lunch. Now elevenses are done and Ter has gone to get groceries. She’ll be back in a couple of hours. That’ll be 1:30ish, which will really be 2:30ish, so we’ll be eating lunch at 2:00, which is really 3:00. 3:30 tea will happen at what was 4:30 yesterday. Then sun will start setting around then, throwing us further off track. Dinner at 6:00, which is really 7:00, followed by evening tea at 7:30 which is really 8:30, then bed at 9:00 which is really 10:00, and since my body will think it ate late and I never sleep well on a Sunday night because I know I have to wake before I want to in the morning, it’s going to be a lonnnnng night.

Why do we mess with the clocks again? Saskatchewan doesn’t bother. Smart Saskatchewan. We’re not saving anything. It might be lighter in the morning, but that only makes it darker at the other end. Nature doesn’t care what time it is. Critters only know sleeptime, playtime and dinnertime. Same with babies and little kids. They run on their own clocks. Why don’t we? Granted, I could be living in Dickensian times, when the employee paid the employer for the privilege of 8 twelve-hour workdays per week, but are they really getting their money’s worth when I drag my sleepy cranky butt to the office before the sun is up? I don’t know how the Nordic cultures endure it. Mind you, I don’t know if they bother turning the clock forward or back, either. Dark is dark, people. It’s winter – or close enough. Fooling the clock isn’t fooling anyone.

An aimless, somewhat acerbic rant, I know. But I’m already tired and tomorrow is frikking Monday. I have a big-fun periodontal consult at 2:00, which will really be 3:00, so I won’t get home until … dark.

*sigh*