Is anyone else having as much issue as me in dealing with the time change? Fall Back is supposed to give you more daylight, but all it’s doing is giving me lack-of-sleep headaches. I’m like a small child – I get cranky when my schedule is changed, or when I stay up past my bedtime.
The time change does not actually produce extra time in the day. The only thing that could give you more time in a day is developing a time-freeze-ray or time travel machine. What it does do is make it a bit lighter out (for now… until it’s just as dark out as it was before) in the morning. What it also does is make it much darker earlier in the evening.
I’d rather have a bit of extra light in the evening, when I’m going on a much longer walk with my dog. In the morning, 99% of the people I run into are a) runners, b) walking their dogs, c) walking to work, or d) delivering newspapers. The sketchy people are sleeping, because it’s 6am, and that’s what I’d be doing if I didn’t have to get the dog out for his morning perambulation and head to work. To be frank, I don’t care if it’s pitch-black on my morning walk or if it’s kind-of-sort-of-light-out. Because I’m not so concerned that the runners, dog walkers, people-heading-to-work, or people-delivering-newspapers might suddenly mug me.
In the evening, however, when I’d really like to go for a walk in the park, or go to the dog off-leash area, and plan to spend an hour or more outside, light would be nice. Because sometimes that shadowy figure in the gloom is a fellow dog-walker, or a jogger… and sometimes it’s a kind of ominous looking guy (and yes, if you’re that guy who lurks in dark parks with no exercise or dog related purpose, hood up and baggy coat that could be hiding dangerous things…I judge you based on your appearance) who doesn’t seem to have a valid rason for being in the dark dark park. I know, I know – judging people is bad. But why is that guy walking through a park, why did he slow down when he saw me, and why did he veer off the path and into the shrubbery? Well?! Why??? If the park led somewhere apart from ‘out onto a spit of land where no-one can hear you scream’, it might be a different story.
It would be so much easier to be in the park in the evening without the time-change taking away what little daylight I had just a few short days ago. It’s pretty much dusk by the time I get home from work, and it’s black by the time Gwynn and I walk to anywhere.
My final complaint about the time change is this: I adjust poorly to changing time-zones. On sunday night, I was in bed by 9pm(new time)… because my brain knew that it was actually 10pm. And last night, both Gwynn and I were suffering through the last half of our dog class. I want to pay attention, I tried to pay attention, I feel terrible that I spent that last half of the class yawning my brains out. But, when the class runs from 9 to 10 pm… right after the time change, my brain was telling me It’s actually 10:30pm now! Go to bed!
By the time we left the class a bit after 10pm (ELEVEN!), I had a killer sleep-deprivation headache, which, as of noon (ONE PM!) today, hasn’t left me.
Please, can’t we just leave the time alone except when crossing time-zones?
Gone for a Walk 