Daylight Savings Time

It is Sunday morning. A gentle rain makes a tinny sound on the corrugated metal awning of the carport. I’m comfortably sipping my morning coffee and enjoying the early hours before my neighbors step out to start their day.

Last night marked the beginning of daylight savings time. We were instructed to “spring forward” obliterating an hour to stay in sync with the mandated change.

I despise daylight savings time. I hate that I am required to make this change. I pay my taxes. I obey traffic laws. I endure long lines at airport security checks. I drink fluoridated water. I understand that these things are often necessary for public welfare and safety and in some cases even logical (well fluoridation may be questionable), but do “they” really have to mess with time?

I am excessively time oriented. In most cases I know approximately what time it is without looking at a clock. Because I am so obsessive about time and being on time, I have given up wearing a watch and I have to control my need to constantly look at my cell phone to check the time. I can actually look up at the sun and get a reasonable approximation of the hour. But daylight savings time really throws me off my game.

Is daylight savings time really necessary?

DST is supposed to “save energy and make better use of daylight hours” and has been used at various times throughout history according to timeanddate.com. In my lifetime, because the states had the choice of whether or not to adopt the policy, creating much confusion for the transportation industry, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act of 1966 mandating that DST would begin the last Sunday in April and end the last Sunday in October. States still had the authority to refuse compliance.

In 1974-75 DST was extended to save energy because of the 1973 oil embargo, but there were still complaints largely pertaining to public safety.

Now more than 70 countries use DST. In the United States, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 amended the schedule to begin the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November, approximately seven months. Within the 50 states, only Hawaii and parts of Arizona do not observe the time change.

And so it is. For the next few months, until my body and senses acclimate to the forced time change, instead of arriving at my destination an hour early, I will likely find myself flitting away two hours when I should be doing something more productive. The upside is an extra hour to take a deep breath or get lost in the prose of a good novel and maybe just stop worrying about what’s going to happen in the next minute or hour or day and just live in the moment.