Don’t touch that clock.
A terrible doom is upon us, a most frightful time of year. Not last week’s skull-faced Dia de los Muertos processions nor the mad-cap, mid-pandemic Halloween gangs of roving children. This weekend will make us all face our mortality much more directly — by messing with the clocks we run our lives by.
The time will change.
According to my personal 49-year study of the effects of biannual time change, the practice SUCKS. Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. For example, traffic and workplace accidents go up after we lose an hour of sleep when we “spring forward.” A 2017 study showed an “eleven-percent increase in depressive episodes during the switch from daylight saving to standard time” every fall.
I, for one, am bummed when all my clocks are one hour off for four months and one week. How can we endure this any longer?
You may recall that these complaints led to some actual legislation, most notably in Florida and California, but also elsewhere throughout the country. In fact, in 2018 California voters passed a ballot proposition to end time changes in our state.
Why didn’t that happen again?
Oh yes, the ‘60s era federal law establishing daylight saving time allows states to opt out, but only to standard time. Sunshine states CA and FL are stuck waiting for Congress to take up the issue and adjust the law to allow states to permanently use DT rather than ST.
Here we are again, trapped between congressional inaction and a ticking clock. Even now a bill sits waiting to be taken up by committee.
Enough! Ya basta! We need to take this into our own hands.
When the “time changes” this weekend, revolt! Don’t change your clocks, change your phone’s settings to not update with daylight saving time! Mark all your meetings with the new time designation, “RT” or “Real Time” and don’t feel bad about the confusion caused.
Then when your manager — or editor — says I need that by 5 p.m., you can ask if that is “real time” or “bullshit time”? ¡Viva la Revolución!
