I was startled by our new bedroom curtains, not because they made any kind of noise to wake me up but because they are far better at concealing daylight than our old curtains were. Our old curtains were quite hospitable to sunlight, saying “come on in, sunshine, and wake these people up, burning their pale flesh if necessary”. Our new curtains say “thanks, sunshine, but go ahead and cram it.” With this kind of attitude displayed by our interior decorations, its no wonder my Saturday began in panic, since I had no idea what time it was, thanks to a 6:00 kind of darkness at 8:30. It just goes to show how badly our equilibrium is thrown off by even a slight disjunction between the time and the position of the sun.
The best way to solve this would be, I think, to set our clocks ahead by one hour. Ha! Of course, I kid! If anything, this will make things even more confusing when we wake up tomorrow and wonder why 7:00 feels like 6:00, and why I’m so tired doing something I’m usually quite awake for! Since I work as a churchman, let me give you a few examples from my own Sunday morning schedule that illustrates the sudden shift forced by daylight savings time:

Instead of drinking coffee at my kitchen table and watching for deer in my yard, I will be drinking coffee at my desk and wondering if there any deer in my yard.
Instead of showering, I will be doing the complete opposite: dressed, dry and not singing “What’s New Pussycat?”
Instead of eating Honey Bunches of Oats, I will be directing Musicy Bunches of Songs.

And so on.

My plan is to get to sleep as early as possible tonight and act like I want to get up really early tomorrow, hoping that positive thinking and intentional living will somehow snap my circadian rhythm into strict obedience to operation Spring Ahead. But we all know how its going to go, don’t we? It’s a good 24 hours of befuddled imbalance and personal timepiece mistrust, but at least we’ll all be together in our confusion.

Some might say that this is the price we pay for falling back and gaining an hour of sleep in November. That’s all well and good, but I agree with our new curtains and push against the notion that we should be awake before the proper time.