You’ve probably had the same experience I’ve had occasionally where you wake up totally turned around, with no idea where you are or what day it is…and then shortly after that, realizing you’re in your own bed at home.
That’s a bit of how daylight savings felt to me this year.
You’d think I live in a cave to be so surprised by it. Every year, I hear it mentioned on the radio or see mentions of it in articles or posts online. And of course, it’s always right around the same time every year – early November. No big deal.
But this year, DST came at me like a surprise birthday party delivered a month early.
Maybe I’ve just been deeply entrenched in my own life and not paying attention much to the outside world. Or maybe I just haven’t been looking or listening carefully to things going on around me. Either way, this year caught me completely off-guard.
Sure, I’d noticed the darkness creeping in earlier, night after night, and the light being slower to come out in the mornings. The slight chill in the air has been a reminder that we’re truly in the fall season. The slowing down that comes with the onset of winter, even as the holidays seem to speed things up.
My first gut reaction to hearing about daylight savings time was mild panic – how could I not have realized this was upon us and done my usual planning (even if that just means being aware and ready to set clocks back)??
But I had an odd second reaction, a few days later. Where I felt this unusual sense of wonder that I had loosened my usually tight grip on details and order just enough that, even if inadvertently, I had forgotten such a basic and consistent truism of time. The kind of thing I never lose track of. And yet this year, I did.
And that felt rather delightful.
