less than zero

[zerozero]

I love it when the clocks go back or forward, the way people just do it without a second thought despite it being a slightly surreal act. Time is perceived as such a rigid part of most lives and yet twice a year the lie becomes transparent and as a group we diligently change the clocks as if part of some grand conspiracy. In the middle of the night

Comments

[androktone]

Thats such a good idea :)

Time seems very ingrained to me. Every day I have to get up at 6:30 to walk to the bus stop. If my watch doesn't work for some reason, I bolt awake at 6:35 with this frantic "I'm late" feeling sand even before I've checked the time I'm fully awake. I do resent this. Especially on the days I don't have to get up. My attention span when at work is either 30 mins/1 hr (interestingly the length of lessons at secondary school, conditioning? I wonder..) unless I'm doing something I personally have an affinity with, like some interesting design, in which case i will work through lunch without noticing.

It does seem silly that for such an artificial concept, many of us have mental clocks ticking in the background. Suffering from jetlag, for instance. How can such a recent construct affect us so strongly?

(actually jetlag wasn't a good example - i'm convinced the suffering caused by that is due to us being confused by moving too fast physically -the way pigeons can sense their position via the earths' magnetic field - I suspect we can too albeit more clumsily and moving between continents in a matter of hours is bound to leave us feeling sick and disoriented)

Sorry, I'm blathering.

Put it down to disorientation caused by having my mental clock screwed with biannually ;)

Jetlag

[tvor]

Your body adjusts to your sleep pattern of day/night whichever and whenever you sleep. Changing time zones enough to throw that off does take a bit of adjustment mainly because your sleep patterns are off for a day or two and you get a bit sleep deprived. You've changed time zones so quickly, see. If you were sailing to China, for instance, you would be adjusting so slowly that you wouldn't have the problem. The other major contributor to jetlag is dehydration from the plane itself. I've only ever flown, so far, across 4 time zones in either direction from where i am, east coast Canada, and if i remember to drink a lot water in flight, i then usually just have the east-west sleep thing to make up if i'm overnight flying. I can't sleep on a plane. Last time i stayed up 32 hours by the time i got to bed but a good night's sleep and i'm 90% ok the next day.

We used to use the Time change as an excuse to extend our curfew as teens, when you had to change the clocks at midnight, not 2 a.m. The clock went back to 11 see, so we should get to stay out until midnight as required, which meant getting an extra hour. We would of course pretend not to notice the forward change and never went home an hour early just because the clock said 12. It was really only 11 you know LOL

[zerozero]

The non - rational bit of me believes you are right about jet lag being caused by moving through the earth’s magnetic field too quickly. If I’m visiting somewhere special I always make sure that I get out of the car and walk the last mile or so, to make sure I arrive at the right speed.