Daylight "Savings" Time

This past week, I got an email from some business telling me about their Daylight Savings Sale. My first thought was, Oh man, now they're using that as an excuse! Then I thought, Oh no! Where did the month go! Did I Rip Van Winkle? I checked my calendar and sure enough, it's the middle of March. Why is it Daylight Savings Time already? Hawaii doesn't do DST, so I've missed out on whatever the reasoning for most of the rest of the country to enter this exercise in futility three weeks early.
Yes it is an exercise in futility. I remember when I was a wee tiny babe back in the seventies, there was one year that we went to DST during the winter. Even then I couldn't see the logic. I didn't see any "saving" going on. In fact, all it meant was that when my sisters and I got on the school bus at oh-dark-thirty, it was oh-darker-thirty and seemed to be twenty degrees colder! Sure the sun was up longer after I got home from school, but not much longer. I didn't see, have never seen, how DST gave me any benefit at all. In fact, I think a better term for it would be DPT - Daylight Procrastination Time!
We cannot "save" time. We can move our clocks around all we want, but the sun isn't going to be effected by it at all. It's still going to march relentlessly, the days becoming a few minutes longer each day until June 20/21. Then they're going to go right back the other way, gradually becoming shorter and shorter until December 20/21. The cycle continues just as it has for eons, well before the clock was even invented.
All DST gives us is the illusion that we have more time in the day. It encourages us to put off things because we now have "more time." That's procrastination, and it doesn't work. I know because I have a very strong tendency to procrastinate. But since I quit wearing a watch, I'm much better at doing what needs to be done now rather than putting it off for another time.
I originally quit wearing a watch while I was still in the army. There were two reasons for it: I didn't like the white wrist thing, so when I realized how annoying it was to talk to someone who kept looking at their watch, I took mine off. For a while I kept it in my pocket, now I don't even know where it is. Yes, I do have a clock on my cell phone, but since half the time I can't read it because I don't have my reading glasses, it doesn't really help me to be on time.
The interesting thing is that since I quit watching the clock, I am rarely late for things. I'm more likely to be early, but that's okay because knowing I often find myself with spare time, I almost always have something to work on or a book to read. I also have discovered that I get more done, primarily because I listen to my internal "clock" to know when to switch to something else.
You may be utterly fascinated, but right now, my internal clock is telling me I need to take a break from my computer. Hopefully I won't ignore my next Outlook reminder and I'll tell you the rest of the story in the next day or too. Until then, try not to procrastinate too much!