Well, here we are — it’s that time of year when we are back to daylight saving time, a time of year that most kids love and most adults dread. I would have written about this last week but I was so darned sleepy I could hardly see straight.
Daylight saving time (DST) is something that Scott, the hubs, has grumbled about ever since I’ve known him, but I used to like DST because I liked having sunlight later in the evening. When I was a kid, I remember how I loved being able to stay out playing until 8 p.m. On my only trip to Europe, I was delighted that we had sunlight until nearly 11 p.m. so we could see more sights before dark. Jet lag was a concept with which I became familiar after that trip. This. Feels. Like. Jet. Lag.
Obviously, my opinion of the time change has changed, along with my age. But last year it didn’t affect me as much as it did this year. Last week I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck and then run over by an incredibly slow steamroller. One of our friends on Facebook said that there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to get him through the effects of the DST change, but Scott and I aren’t supposed to have caffeine.
The original intent of daylight saving time was to help farmers (I’m not exactly sure how) and to save energy, particularly during times of war (WWI and WWII), although chambers of commerce would probably say that its intention was as much to promote shopping and golfing as anything. China, Japan, and India are the only major, industrialized countries which don’t observe any form of DST. Some countries have tried it but discontinued it, while many countries around the world do something similar to what we do here. But its observation has been spotty everywhere it has been tried and it wasn’t even strictly observed here in the U.S. until the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Ever since, its primary effect seems to be to make a lot of people miserable. The ones I know, anyway.
So what is one to do? Why, of course, search the internet! “Helpful” tips abound on easing oneself into a time change, whether it is springing forward or falling back, although the latter seems much, much easier as we relish that triumphant “gain” of an hour of sleep. Aren’t we just temporarily getting back what we lost? It is literally a vicious circle.
Some of the suggestions for adjusting to DST include getting a head start on the thing by changing one clock in your house several days ahead of the actual change, and to eat, sleep, and do other routine things according to that clock; taking early morning walks and not exercising late in the day (apparently, that interferes with sleep); not taking naps late in the day; not relying on a nightcap to get yourself to sleep; taking a hot bath before bed, and wearing ear plugs and eye masks; and adjusting the lighting in your home according to what you’re used to — e.g. turning on lots of lights in the morning when it’s supposed to be light, and dimming or turning off indoor lights at the time you’re accustomed to dark setting in.
Whether any or all of those suggestions are helpful is beyond me. I’ve read them several times over the years but never found the discipline about me to try them. They seem like good ideas but only for helping with the sleep issue. Beyond that, there is evidence of marked increases in heart attacks, traffic accidents (immediately after the change to DST), and fuel and energy consumption — not the decreases in fuel and energy consumption that were intended. I’d like to see some helpful hints for alleviating those things, too.
My opinion of the time change we go through in this country twice a year is BAH, HUMBUG! I’ve read some arguments for the switch but many more against. Why should we keep this up? Especially when one of its original intents was to help farmers who, by most accounts, hate it just as much or more than the rest of us. Let’s choose what my grandma called “God’s Time” (she refused to reset her clocks ever) or DST and stick with it from then on. Let’s be like Arizona and Hawaii.