On Easter Sunday I awoke to a light and bright morning. My clock said it was a little after 5:30 am. Something was off. For the last four months the only light that existed at 5:30 am was the one coming from the fridge that I was trying to commit suicide by freezing myself in. I have no faith in the supposed restorative and resurrective powers of Easters. I stepped out onto the balcony. What is happening?
Then it dawned on me – the daylight savings fairy had come. The cat came out, unimpressed but with a certain wariness that shows the sun had clearly had an effect on her. The dog takes the opportunity to look under the balcony wall at the park below. Nevertheless, nobody feels comfortable.
Daylight savings is a northern locale is an odd thing. One day you’re eking through days that start at 8ish and that end at 5 or 6ish and the next you have the midnight sky. Everyone gets confused – the dog, the cat, my emotions. In Prague, it’s almost as if one minute it’s dark mornings and the next day we are closing our blinds at 6 pm. Eating dinner at 7 feels like you’re having an early lunch. Day drinking takes on an element of guilt that I hate to admit actually adds to the fun.
Here are my tips for dealing with daylight savings.
- Inform your pets about the time change with a stern lecture on punctuality. They’ll still stare at you blankly, but at least you’ll feel like you’re making a difference in their understanding of temporal mechanics.
- Use daylight saving time as an excuse to start happy hour seven hours early. After all, if time can play tricks on us, why can’t we return the favor? Tonight’s (read today’s) trick – waking up hungover at midnight. Tada!
- Treat bedtime like you’re 97 years old and just had a glorious dinner at Denny’s. It’s 4:30 pm. Time for some Wheel of Fortune and then a nine-hour nap.
- Embrace the chaos and declare daylight saving time the official “free pass” for all your time-related mishaps. Missed a meeting? Time change. Forgot your anniversary? Time change. Shoot the neighbor’s alpaca again? Two words: Time. Change.
- If you’re the artsy type, use daylight saving as inspiration. After all, postmodern literature was meant to be read in times of abject confusion and hallucination, such as daylight savings or when you’re jetlagged, or you’ve been a prisoner of war blinking messages in Morse code to your roommate to discard the porno under your bed, for example. Have you ever seen a Dali painting? What about the clocks? Coincidence? Blink-blink-long blink-long blink-blink.
- Finally, dealing with the existential dread. Don’t. It may be an hour later, but your life is still spiralling into a bottomless pit of bills, mortgages, short vacations, and your neighbor’s alpaca.
