DST to CST, FYI

Daylight Saving Time mercifully ends this weekend.
Huzzah!

Ever since its earlier-than-usual onset in March, my circadian rhythms have been beating in 5/7 time as I attempted to waltz through my days.

Congress inflicted this longer than normal DST period on us as a nod to conservationists, convinced that flipping clocks forward in the Springtime, thus “lengthening” our daylight hours, would save beaucoup barrels of oil as we waited an hour later to turn on the lights at night.
Silly mirries.

First, this isn’t 1935, and most of us aren’t toiling in the fields from sun-up to sun-down. We’re not waiting an hour later to turn on the lights at night, and in fact, I would submit we all turned on the lights an hour earlier in the morning because we we’ve been getting up before the chickens since March.
It’s a zero-sum proposition.

For guys like me, who always get up before said yard birds are stirring, and who must retire earlier in the evening than most, the extra hour of daylight has been an affliction.

So this weekend, as we turn our clocks, watches, computers, coffeemakers, water sprinkler systems, thermostats, in-dash computers and garden sundials back 60-increments of time, I welcome its return with open arms and steeping eyelids.

We live in a global economy, in a 24-7 society.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the analysis showed that lost productivity, due to sleep deprivation and wasted man-hours managing networks for the augmented hours, actually outweighed any perceptible savings in energy for the time shift.

Maybe I’m getting old and crotchety, but if it were put to a vote tomorrow, I’d cast my ballot to leave alone the time of day. How arrogant of the Government to presume to tell us when to rise and when to go to bed. Flip your clocks back this weekend, and leave 'em alone.