Screw Daylight Savings Time
I don’t know what it is about me, but I suffer jet lag badly. It doesn’t matter if I switch one time zone, three, or 14, it wrecks me for a while. Once I return home from a three hour time change, it usually takes me a week to feel right again. After I returned from China in 2005, it easily took me two weeks to feel totally right again.
Funny thing is, the switch to/from Daylight Savings Time does the same thing to me. For two or three days following the switch I find myself completely exhausted. I don’t get restful sleep. I’m pretty much a grumpy monkey for three days because we have this odd need to switch time in the spring and fall.
I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable answer, and I know more than just I have asked this question before, but why do we need this change at all? Why not always operate on Daylight Savings Time if the energy saving benefits truly are that great? I’m rather skeptical of the energy saving benefits considering these days we use more electricity demanding electronics than ever before. So we turn off a few lights during the day, I have a cordless phone charging, rechargeable batteries charging, three computers and two TiVos running constantly picking up the energy saving slack for me. In fact, this Wikipedia article mentions “sometimes [DST] can increase energy costs.” Lame.
But seriously, why not just use DST year round? It would avoid this awful exhaustion I know a lot of people are experiencing right now. We’re a nation lagged, and that can’t be good for productivity.
Plus, I don’t like changing the time on my clocks. It physically pains me.
