I have changed my mind.
Awhile back I wrote about the benefits of Daylight Savings Time.
How is it a good thing.
Allowing longer, languid summer evenings.
However, now that November 2020 has arrived, I have had a total eclipse of the heart, as Bonnie Tyler once sang.
We set our clocks back one hour last night, and now here we are.
A dreary Sunday morning, November 1st.
We are expecting snow flurries later in the day.
The clocks say 8 a.m.
But it is really 9 a.m.
We have a whole extra hour today.
But who wants an extra hour of anything in November.
It is a month that deserves to be dispatched with as soon as possible.
That should be glossed over as a mere blip in the 12 month cycle of our calendar.
I suppose it is a win that the powers that be managed to push back the end of Daylight Savings Time to November.
It used to happen in October, not too long ago.
There are many movements afoot to have the entire thing demolished.
A decades old tradition of moving our clocks forward in the Spring and back in the Fall discarded.
And so it should be.
It was not Mother Nature’s intent to have our internal body clocks messed with.
Our circadian rhythms circling the wagons.
Science has shown that our bodies do not do well with the minor adjustment.
There are more car accidents.
More lost time at work.
More health issues.
There is a reason jet lag is called jet lag.
It is not good for anything.
Not to mention the annual progression of shorter, darker days is given one more hour to do its dirty work.
Yes, I am talking about S.A.D.
Seasonal Affective Disorder.
With the arrival of November, many people are affected by this affliction, which is a type of depression.
Now we have an extra hour to be depressed.
Yay!
And this year especially, as we face the possibility of more weeks of so called “lockdown” and self quarantine and isolation, to do so in near darkness may be the final straw for many.
Or at the very least, an unhelpful straw.
Yes, Daylight Savings Time in the summer is perhaps beneficial.
The dawn would otherwise break around 4 a.m., instead of 5 a.m.
But that is when it has broken since the dawn of time.
And yes, those lovely humid summer evenings in June, July and August, would end around 8:30 instead of the current 9:30.
But that is the way nature intended it.
And now, as we approach the throes of the winter, the long dark nights, we get to have an “extra” hour thrown in for good measure.
Super yay.
The only bright spot to the most depressing month of the year is that we are just a few weeks away now from the “Shortest Day Of The Year!”
Yes – December 21st – the “Winter Solstice!”
And from then on, it is only upwards and longwards!
And the minutes do add up very quickly.
Before we know it – it is January.
Then the very short month of February.
Then March, when Spring officially begins.
Then April, when we see the first hints of green.
Then May – and so forth.
But I am on the side of dispatching this whole Daylight Savings Time business wholly.
It is not saving electricity or money any more, if it ever did.
It is only messing with our minds and our bodies.
And we need all the help with those that we can get right now, this year.