Credit: Yaniv Knobel / Unsplash.com
By now you’ve surely noticed, even if you forgot, that Daylight Saving Time occurred this week. On Sunday, March 9, at 2 a.m. to be exact, we all turned our clocks ahead one hour, making it 3 a.m. The changed time will remain in place until Nov. 2. Unless you live in most of (but not all) Arizona or Hawaii, your state observes DST.
Despite what I thought most of my life to be true, the change in times isn’t just about farming. I swear the rumor had been passed down so long that it had to be true, that gaining an extra hour of light helped farmers complete daily chores.
Instead, DST started in World War I in both Europe and the U.S. as a way to conserve fuel and power. After the war, a vote across the country showed only 17% wanted to keep what was then called “war time.” The concept came back in the 1970s (the winter of ’73 into ’74) again to conserve fuel, but after tragic school student accidents because of heading to school in the dark, Congress swapped back to standard time by October.
Time zones of any kind weren’t really formalized until 1883. Before that, there were more than 144 local times in North America alone! Talk about confusing…
It wasn’t a 1918 federal railroad department, focused on coordination of train arrivals and departures, that the U.S. had time zones. And it wouldn’t be until The Uniform Time Act of 1966, again a push for coordinated transportation, that DST would have a permanent system to standardize DST. In other words, while state governments can decide to participate or not, they must use the standardize (not change the time zone nor length) DST.
We’ve been utilizing the same DST standard since 2007, with a Congressional bill passed in 2022 to make it “permanent.”
History on DST aside, and on a personal note, I can tell you for unexplained reasons it completely wrecks my world. You would really think, logically, that a one-hour time difference is on that big of a deal. Yet somehow, it takes me at least a week to get my brain back on track.
Studies over time have shown that “the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to the Earth’s rotation.” I won’t lie; finding that fact did make me feel a bit justified in my emotions.
But, I’m not the only one that is impacted by the change. Studies have also shown there are more fatal car accidents when people lose an hour of sleep. People even suffer more heart attacks at the start of DST.
Apparently, Mercury is also in retrograde. Anyone who believes in astrology or horoscopes knows this just adds to the drama. On Friday, there will be a full moon. Combine these worldly changes, (and for a minute there I even panicked it was going to be Friday the 13th. It’s thankfully the 14th this week.), and I’m mentally left with a whirlwind of internal chaos.
You take a touch of time change, mix in some astrological disturbance, and stir in a solid dose of hormonal disruption, and … yeah, it’s been a rough week. Even if you don’t believe in such hocus-pocus, my internal mojo sure seems to.
Don’t get me wrong. Once I adjust to the new world order, I do enjoy the extra daylight. I like that it isn’t dark before the end of the workday. I love that the weather is warming, and soon outdoor life will once again be feasible. I’m ready for my long walks in nature.
But for some reason, each and every DST clock-change seems to really rock my world. I’ve visited other countries, some with quite different time zones than our own. I’ve even stayed for extended periods in them. I’ve flown countless times across our own country, altering my internal clock three or four hours of difference. And yet, none of those expected jet-lagged travels have left me as mentally swirling as DST.
I hope your week has been calmer and more in sync with the universe. My heart, soul, mind, and any other parts of my body they’re dragging along, yearn for balance. I hope by next week, things feel smoother, and I melt into a more predictable routine.
Until then, forgive my bizarre week. I promise, I’ll have my world righted in no time.
