saving my daylight

i did the usual fall back thing this morning and went out with my watch wrong, and got myself confused because the place i went opened at nine and my watch said nine. Though of course here in the real world it was only 8. It’s only an hour, yet a disagreement between internal and […]

i did the usual fall back thing this morning and went out with my watch wrong, and got myself confused because the place i went opened at nine and my watch said nine. Though of course here in the real world it was only 8.

It’s only an hour, yet a disagreement between internal and external clock somehow tilts the axis of the universe just slightly, so that everything looks the same but feels in a fundamental way wrong. Like everything in your house – walls, floors, roof, and everything your house contains – has just been moved an inch to the left. It all looks exactly the same; yet in some fundamental sub-sensory way, we feel it to be wrong.

It isn’t, though, the satisfying temporal displacement of travel and jet lag. Because that means we’re somewhere, somewhen, and have a reason to be out of sync with the air around us. We have the thrill of difference, and a different sun rising and setting at a different time, the fatigue of travel, soon solves the problem for us, for good or ill.

Here, home, we’re simply knocked out of balance, like a tire hitting a pot-hole. We spin a bit off-center for a time until we again find equilibrium.

But you know, at least now the clock in my Jeep – a clock that requires some elaborate vulcan-neck-pinch of buttons to set, and for which I last saw the manual around the turn of the century – is once again correct as it is half the year. So that’s something.

10 thoughts on “saving my daylight”

  1. Creepy. I never have trouble with time changes, and have always found it odd that people have issues with it. It’s an hour. Who notices?

  2. This time change confused me because I was still actually awake when it happened. At a party. I’m not sure exactly when the time shifted or how. Only that at 2pm at some time- they stopped serving alcohol and the party still continued. It was strange.

    Man did I appreciate the extra sleep though before that alarm clock went off this morning.

  3. Given my current work schedule (what time is it?) I feel like springing back. I fall forward way too often.

    At least I have the luxury of not having to change my battery-depleted clocks. Or the ones I don’t really pay attention to anyway.

    I moved to AZ and got two hours added to my life. I always came back, so I’m still ahead (I blew them in a tittie bar tonight).

  4. The clock on my bike computer is like that. It requires a full Vulcan mind-meld to set, so I just leave it on Daylight Savings all year. I figure that makes it correct for seven months and wrong for five.

    And yes, the whole thing is disorienting in a very subtle way. And that’s what makes it so evil.

  5. Beware of who you blow in titty bars. There’s some nasty things you can catch.
    The time change messed with me. There’s something wrong when I get tired at 10 at night because my body thinks it’s 11.

  6. I’m discombobulated from the time change for at least a week, and my kids get cranky too.

    Like I need anything else to confuse me…

  7. Fuck changing…my computer clock is accurate. I don’t have to reset anything. My clocks will be correct the next time a storm knocks them out and I HAVE to set them. Yeah. *calming down*

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