Ugh. I’m still groggy.

Judy Grestel, who is a Health reporter at the Toronto Star recently wrote an article regarding the effects of Daylight Saving Time on the North American public. We are already terribly sleep deprived. There’s a the constant complaint that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything that needs to be accomplished. This is a fact of our culture, where there’s this urge to use every single waking minute doing something productive. Not doing so will get people to confer titles like “lazy bum” and “couch potato” on your sorry ass.

I feel guilty. My conscience bothers me. There’s so much to be done around the house. Our basement needs to be cleared out. My room needs to be cleaned and vacuumed. I’ve got a work term report, a fourth year design project component, and a follow up report to complete. It makes me want to scream. Still, obvious to the many people in a similar position as I am, if I were to somehow magically receive a few extra hours every day, I would simply use a good chunk of that time catching up on rest.

Call me a lazy bum. Fine. If you do though, you have to also call me practical. I’m fine with you calling me a practical lazy bum (if you must). My time is already filled with activity stretching well after the sun has gone down. I’m certainly not the most active person though. I know people who are simply workaholics. I can use my father as an example. He works the night shift at the post office. He gets home at about 9 am, that is, unless he works overtime. If he does, he returns a few hours later. As soon as he gets home, there errands to run, people to meet, and things to fix around the home. It’s not uncommon for me to see him working without sleep, only catching short naps in between activities. It worries me when he gets only 3 hours of sleep. After that, he’s off to work to do it all again. I worry. I tell him to sleep, but he will often reply with “but there are things that need to be done”.

Grestel points out in her article that getting this little sleep may be considered by some as “the badge of an overachiever”. I personally don’t see my father as thinking of himself as an overachiever. However, I do think that there is this underlying belief that letting things go may mean falling behind in life’s race. Whether or not that’s true really is just a matter of perspective. Which brings me back to my point of me catching extra rest if I had extra hours in the day. I don’t want to be zombie-like in my activities, doing things half-assed because I’m simply to tired to do any better. Rest is good. With rest, you’ll accomplish tasks with greater efficiency, meaning that you’ll suddenly have more time to accomplish other tasks. It almost seems counterintuitive, but I believe this to be totally true.

I do believe, however, that the key is really identifying the difference between prioritizing and procrastination. I mean, I may put off vacuuming my carpet, but only because there’s something higher up on my list of priorities that can be accompished during my awake time. If I put of cleaning just because I can put do it tomorrow instead, well, that’s procrastinating. I’ve just been finding it a bit tougher to prioritize since this past weekend.

It may only be an hour difference, but that hour means a lower probability that I’m going to be a cranky wretch. I still haven’t caught up because I need to arrive at the office on time. I can’t sleep earlier because my body rebels when I do. I end up lying awake complaining that my body just doesn’t feel like sleeping yet. I guess I’m going to end up using this weekend to get fully rested and back into the proper rhythm of things. When I do though, I’m going to end up having to put up with being labelled a lazy bum (who’s just not practical).

There’s just no winning. In the end, the only thing I can do is to complain until the last week of October.

Give my my hour of daylight back! Stop fucking with my life!