Every spring it’s the same thing. DST arrives and it messes with me. It sounds like a disease. Yes, I am experiencing Daylight Savings Time even as you read this.

To be fair, switching back to standard time also messes with me. I am easily messed with, just ask my children. Every time after the time change, it takes me a few days to get in the swing of things like a weird, non-travel jet lag.

Which leads me to a question – Why? It’s only one little hour! Why does it get my sleep patterns so out of kilter? Why do I wake up an extra hour earlier and have trouble going back to sleep? I could understand if I woke up later, but this makes no sense.

So, I pulled my engineer into the discussion. He helps me to look logically at things, but even he has trouble with this one, at least the part of it that has to do with the excessive effect it has on me. Here’s a little of our conversation:

Me: Daylight savings time is a stupid name.

Bob looking up from his book: Uh, huh.

Me: I mean, what am I saving it for? How can anyone actually save daylight? Where is kept? It’s ridiculous. You use it. It’s not like you can save it for later.

Bob: It’s exactly like that. You take it from the morning and you save it for later in the day.

Me as all of my mental light bulbs started going on, and I didn’t even need them because it was still light outside: I guess that does make sense, but it’s still a stupid name. They should call it daylight shifting time. And, don’t even get me started on how standard time is the standard when it’s only used for a third of the year. They must think we’re idiots.

Bob: no comment

Night – daylight is being saved for later

Daylight in its usual place