Daylight Savings This!

I’m irked that Daylight Saving Time starts tonight. The spring forward thing always vexes me a bit, but it especially gets me that it’s starting so early this year.

I suppose I should be pleased; often, it happens the last weekend of March, acing me out of an hour of my birthday should the 27th fall on a Saturday. But frankly, I’m not ready yet for the changeover. It’s just started being light about the time I’m out the door; now, I’m going to be another month in the dark—literally as well as figuratively.

The other thing that sticks in my craw is that, as I understand it, this is a mandate from the President supporting the cause of saving energy. Besides the fact that it’s pretty pathetic that this is all he can come up with, everyone knows that what Americans do with an extra hour after work is to drive their cars around, thus eating up in gasoline any energy saving that might take place in nighttime lighting.

I like the fall back thing; it’s great to wake up at nine in the morning and have it only be eight; I find it terribly depressing to rise at a relatively early hour, though, and discover it’s already almost eleven.

For a number of years in my 20s, it always seemed like I had some early morning appointment—often a theater rehearsal—that first Sunday of the change. No matter how much extra time I gave myself, I’d always end up cutting it right to the edge, and then, to make it worse, there’d always be someone more important that me—the lead or my boss or whomever—who’d wander in an hour late anyway.

I’m resolved to getting up early tomorrow, even though it’s won’t really be according to the clock. The good news is I don’t have to be anywhere in particular; the only person who I’ll disappoint if I’m late is myself.