I fucking hate Daylight Saving Time. I know that it’s just an hour, but it really fucks up my brain. I already have a tough time sleeping, and something about screwing up the time by just a single hour makes my brain get confused and agitated and oh look it’s 1am and I’m wide awake for no good reason.
So I’ve gone from getting to bed between 9 and 10, and waking up between 6 and 8 — which I never thought I would have liked but ended up loving while it lasted — to struggling to fall asleep before 11pm, and sleeping much later than I want to.
First world problems, I know, and I’m lucky to have a flexible (read: no) schedule at the moment, which is allowing me to make it through my days feeling rested, if annoyed, and that’s a luxury most people don’t get.
But, seriously, fuck Daylight Saving Time. What a pointless and stupid thing it is.
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The best part about this is that you know it’s Daylight Saving Time and not SAVINGS. You are the hero we all deserve.
Treat it like you would jetlag? – it’s essentially the same problem.
So, walk around barefoot on the carpet, making fists with your toes?
Totally agree! This year I’ve heard more opposition to DST than I’ve ever heard before. Will the fact that, apparently, a large majority of citizens want to dump DST make any difference? I doubt it. Folks will forget about it in a week… til next year. How can we get this fixed? It would be so easy and maybe, just maybe, Republican and Democrat politicians could agree on the one thing.
Pointless? I find the hour of daylight from 7:00-8:00pm more valuable than I would that daylight while I’m sleeping from 5:00-6:00am.
I agree.
I agree 100% !!! I’m in the office M-F and I enjoy outdoor activities such as cycling, hiking, hitting up the beach, etc. and the extra hour gives me an extra hour to do shit outside. If anything I say permanently implement DST, not get rid of it.
When people say they want to get rid of Daylight Saving Time all they mean is that they want to stop doing the twice yearly time change. Permanent DST would be totally acceptable to most people. Let’s just stop changing the clock so often. That’s all.
I’m fine with implementing Daylight Saving Time year round, but I suspect many people wouldn’t like the sun not rising until after 8am, and having people commute in the dark would cause more accidents.
So very much this. I love DST as much as some hate it, I think. I could write the exact opposite blog to Wil’s. Love, love, love DST.
Agreed.
We can only hope that between now and late October than the politicians can come together and solve this unfortunate problem.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I’m so silly.
I agree. It serves no purpose at all and I absolutely detest changing my clocks twice a year.
i know How you Feel Wil we just Have To Deal with it.
Agreed. I vote we abolish it.
It really is an easy solution: in Autumn, we don’t set our clocks back and never change them again.
Lemmings!!! All of you are just blindly following what the man tells you to do. It’s a plot to keep everyone that much more off balance so that you can’t see the machinations of the Illuminati!! This is exactly why I moved to AZ, and haven’t lost sight of whats really going on in the world around me!!
Disclaimer: DST is not an Illuminati plot, there is no Illuminati, and most definitely isn’t the reason I moved here. (that’s what the radio signals they beamed into my head told me to say)
I’m with Wil. DST always messes me up. Here’s just one recent article about it: http://www.cbsnews.com/media/daylight-saving-time-affects-your-health/
The Daylight savings time shift from your standard time is like having two property taxes on one home.
A county tax and a city tax, both assessed at different tax rates, distinctly different municipalities, but combined to fleece homeowners nonetheless.
Makes me think of this: http://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-saving-time-and-where-to-love-it/
I agree. More daylight in the summer just means it’s hot as f#ck out for longer.
Seriously?? Without DST, there would be a equal number of hours before and after 12 noon. That would mean summer would have a 4 am sunrise and dark at 8 PM. Look at the bright side, please.
I think that the venomous hatred of DST must come from the southern part of the country. Up here in the northeast.. I LIVE for daylight savings. I like being able to use my gas grill by daylight instead of security light. My mother just came home from visiting my brother in the Triangle Area (NC). She said that even in February they had light a full hour longer than we do up here. And I hate to say it but we do have to switch back in the fall.. at least up here. Otherwise in January we wouldn’t see daylight until Lunch Break. I already go to work and go home from work in the dark. Without switching back all the kids would be going to school in the dark. Not cool. Anyway.. the point of the ramble is that I think the level of DST hatred has alot to do with where you live. If you already have some sunlight at dinner time it seems pointless. But we don’t here in Maine and I’m happy to see it each spring.
I live in Washington state. I think the twice yearly time change is the stupidest shit ever. It fucks up the sleep for many and increases the odds of getting into an auto accident the following week from the change.
As much as I love DST and would support it year round, yep. Agreed. I remember going to school in the dark in September when I lived way up north. Change the clocks and boom. Light when you wait for the bus. It’s a necessary evil. And frankly, the spring forward day is so great for me that year-round DST would take away that yearly realization that the wonderful is happening, so I’m a leave it alone type. 😉
Though I do understand the health risks involved in the DST change. Perhaps doing it on a Friday night, so the bulk of the population would have another day to get used to it? I’ve always been a bit mystified how one hour can change so much, but I know it does for many.
I completely agree. If we didn’t have DST the sun would rise here at 4:30 a.m. in June. That is just too dang early. Maine is a bit lower than we are (Central Europe) but I imagine your experience is close to mine. Long live DST (and switching back to regular time in the fall).
I went to Tasmania for a month. Its 22 hours of flying not including layovers and plane changes. It is now coming up to fall in that hemisphere. Lovely and warm. Came home to a snowstorm on March 2. Jetlag IS Daylight savings time? hahahahah!
Suck it up Wil, and take some Melatonin for a while. 🙂
I guess I’m in the minority but I LOVE the switch to DST. We do a lot of outdoors activities in Utah in the summer – hiking and mountainbiking every weekend, plus road cycling after work midweek – and having it be light later gives us a lot more time to play. It’s light until nearly 10 p.m. around the solstice – so awesome! We set our clocks ahead Friday evening (so I really don’t know what time it is all weekend) but by the time we’re ready to go back to work on Monday, we’re acclimated. I also used to live in Maine and the winters are so grim with the darkness (see above re what Betsy Lewis Bowie said) – the sun sets at 4:30 and it sucks. I know the switch in the spring is tough for people but I’M ALL FOR IT!
You know if your home state of California abolished Daylight savings time like most of Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands…..Then about 1/6 of the US population would be on regular old Standard time. That might push the rest of the states start killing it. I live just above you in Oregon. Maybe I can assist getting signatures for a statewide ballot measure to kill this horrible thing too.
Take two of these…
And call me November 6.
Or yet another approach…
“What time is it?”
“It’s Rammstein o’clock.”
Either one works.
Come to Saskatchewan, Wil! We refuse to buy into the DST monster.
I’m with you. I will gladly vote for whatever candidate runs on the platform of abolishing daylight saving time! It’s time we focus on the issues we can actually change.
I like that we don’t do this silly daylight savings time in Arizona. That said, it messes with me when I have to deal with people in other states (or try to watch the east coast feed of tv shows).
I agree. Being self employed I as well have no fixed schedule so for me I subtract an hour and pretend it is still that time. Then I add 5 minutes to every day until eventually I catch up to the actual time.
For those of us who do have to work in offices, it’s really really nice that now it’s not dark when we finally leave work at 6 or 6:30pm. First Monday after the change in spring is always my favorite day of the year. Maximizing the amount of daylight after work hours that can be spent outside is a huge help for my mood (and many of my friends feel the same). Guess everyone is different, but I’d be really sad if we got rid of DST.
Retire to Arizona, Wil! No Daylight Savings! Grew up there and then moved elsewhere…. seriously, fuck DST. We got along just fine without it in AZ, what’s the rest of the US’s problem???
I wholeheartedly concur. I just wish they would put it on DLST and leave it there, which is precisely the topic of a discussion I had today.
You gotta move up here to Saskatchewan, Canada. Sure our province is hard to spell and it can get really freakn’ cold in the winter – but we don’t do the DST thing. We are quite happy not fucking with our clocks thank-you-very-much.
Hard to spell… easy to draw. http://41.media.tumblr.com/2b7d3750ff6531d0025b473fae90dff7/tumblr_n6ngp9jokI1r6al4ho1_1280.jpg
I’m with the lovers of DST, Wil. Part of that is because I work nights, and I sleep during the day. Having some light in the evening means I get to see the sun sometimes. Being an overnighter is hard, period. But add to that the biochemical changes that occur from never seeing the sun, and yeah…doubly hard. So DST is a huge help – especially for those of us who work the change night! I only had a 14 hour shift on Saturday night! Woo-hoo! (Yes, the fall night is the worst, but it’s worth it for the summer change.) And I loved DST long before I did ER work. I love to walk and ride my bike and play with my dogs, and I love having the daylight to do it. I’m a veterinarian. Even when I worked a day job, I didn’t get home until seven or so. That’s just the job. So some daylight to throw a ball with the kids? YES, PLEASE.
Sorry, mate, but you’ll never hear a word against DST from me. Lived from Maine to Texas, and no matter what/where, I’m in all the way.
You just have to give it a positive twist.
Here in the UK, we move from Greenwich MEANtime to British SUMMERTIME! (As if we get a decent summer.)
It’s pointless when you live quite far south and the daylight hours are consistent but when you live somewhere northerly and daylight starts at 9am in winter without it, it becomes quite pointless. Even with it, sunrise where I’m from is after 8am and school starts at 8.45, and sunset is around 3.30 being dark by 4pm and schools finish at 3.30 – I remember getting home from school (walking 2 miles) at age 10 and it was barely twilight by the time I got in at the height of winter. That’d be roughly the same latitude as Anchorage, AK. Of course they could leave the times like that as in summer the daylight was more like 18 hours.
It’s really outlived its purpose. I wish we could get rid of it. #downwithdst
You know, if you did have a regular schedule, DST probably wouldn’t bother you as much.
EXACTLY! I’ve said it for years…since elementary school. We, in the US are just getting used to Standard time when Saving just slapped the shit out of us for no good reason. You have my sympathies and condolences…and my vote should you want to run for office and outlaw this nonsense.
I would totally watch this movie:
I’m completely against keeping the outdated DST. If you want to spend more time in the sun in the summer, go to bed earlier and get up earlier. The dangers of changing the clock back and forth have been made pretty clear by the increase in accidents and such for the week or so after the change.
It wouldn’t take much to just modify a regular schedule to take better advantage of daylight when it naturally occurs, of course work hours won’t change…or maybe they would, maybe instead of changing the clocks workplaces would have summer hours….oh wait, lots do have those….or I dunno….winter hours? holiday hours? I mean businesses will do what it takes to make money and if the clocks don’t change the humans will…and for the most part I’m sure we’d be healthier for it. As much as I love that “extra” hour in the fall, the weeks it takes to work into the new timezone with my sleep issues is not worth it.
I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s a special kind of torture for night owl parents with night owl kids to get up an hour earlier FOR NO GOOD REASON. So much cranky in our house this week.
My sister lives in Argentina and they don’t have DST, so there is one option… Alternatively a couple in the UK went on holiday to Tenerife this year and loved being an hour ahead so much they created their own time zone…. Wheaton time has a great ring to it, I think.
I read a quote somewhere that went along the lines of “If you cut off a foot from the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom and think you have a longer blanket, you’re deluding yourself.”
Dear Wil.
I’d like to thank you for a brilliant word in my dictionary.
A new word #1 is the gorgeous Mindfuck. Thank you.
The second, thanks to some explanation article is To shit the bricks. Presumably, these two are twin brothers.
Move to Saskatchewan, Canada. We don’t adhere to daylight savings time. Sure we only have summer four 3 months of the year and spring and fall make up 4 months, leaving you with 5 months of winter. But you get used to it.
i hate it too. speaking of time did you hear that new wngland my leave the eastern time zone & joing the alantic time zone?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/11/will-new-england-secede-from-eastern-standard-time/4T9tNuLYXX3rz3SKWMpkZI/story.html
And in the UK, where it’s not till the last Sunday of the month, it coincides with Easter Sunday this year. So that’s one less hour of Easter with family/eggs/etc (YMMV) but at least we have a Bank Holiday Monday after that…
I think with heating and lighting and TV scheduling (lessened a bit now because of time-shifting) we have so much of an artificial day it screws with everyone’s sleep on a spectrum; some people are more affected than others.
Have you tried blackout blinds and one of those alarm clocks with a gradually increasing light?
Yes! Changing time is so pointless! You know, I think I am going to skip the time change this fall. I bet I can convince my boss to let me work 7 – 4 in the winter. I don’t have kids and I don’t watch real TV anymore so I don’t have to live by anyone’s schedule and one hour difference in my work schedule shouldn’t impact anyone in a major way. Changing time is hooey. I will try something new.
HAWAII is the place to be!! We never change the time and just go with the flow while the world revolves around us either an hour later or an hour earlier 🙂
Wil, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE seriously consider attending the HawaiiCon this September for the Star Trek anniversary! Your friend Aaron will be there and we would LOVE to have you!!!!!!!!!
I’m with you on this one. I agree its an absolute “waste of time”. The general population is so focused on having 24 access to everything it can get its hands on. So, do we really need to worry about the time change?
Um wow…celebrities have the same problems as the faceless, nameless rabble which includes folks like me. Well yes. FDLST. F it hard. And try the trick that many of us have adopted (particularly in the spring time with that whole stupid “SPRING FORWARD” bullshit…of going to bed just 15 minutes earlier every night for eight days (use the same time two consecutive nights in a row). You end up going to bed an hour earlier at the close of the thing, but it helps because your brain is tricked into thinking your sleep schedule isn’t f*cked up. It didn’t help ME, but it might help YOU. Who knows.