Time keeps on slippin’…
It’s that time of year again. You know, when you time travel during the night in order to accommodate someone’s idea that time needs to be saved. I have never liked this change. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by it. So what if I get an extra hour of sleep one Sunday in October (now November), I loose it in April (now March).
Plus, who says it’s sleep that I get more of? It really felt like I was in school longer!
Most people I know are annoyed by it and granted they all live on the West Coast or southern reaches of the United States. There is seemingly no benefit for us.
We will get more hours of sunlight as summer approaches. It’s just how the universe works. Moving the clock around isn’t going to give me more daylight. It just shifts it around to which part of the day it shows up.
In California, having an extra hour of sunlight during the afternoon is not going to save us energy. It’s the hottest part of the day. If anything, more energy is going to be consumed because we are cranking up the air conditioning.
Apparently, this annoyance is not shared by everyone in the United States. This baffles me. The majority of my life isn’t really dictated by sunlight hours. Work starts at a set time and ends at a set time, sunshine or not. The rest of my time can be affected by sunlight, but for the most part, it’s not. Sure, I probably won’t go to Target by myself at 6:30 PM in the winter as opposed to 6:30 PM in the summer. But that’s really not worthy of changing the clocks around.
Plus, I don’t go outside. Why should I when inside is so great? Yes, I know there are people who work outside, but again, in California, you would rather be outside in the morning than in the afternoon during the summer, or even in the spring and fall. It’s going to be near 80 next week and it’s not yet officially spring.
My friend, Corinne shared this video which is a great explanation of why changing the clocks is confusing and sort of inefficient. Is a 1% difference really worth the hassle?
If I could see some sort of evidence that moving the clock around made a significant difference economically, then I’d suck it up and deal with the annoyance. No one seems to be able to provide that proof.