I have a summer seasonal affective disorder. I know it’s a bit controversial diagnosis, but I absolutely have a terrible time during summer. It’s so bad I start to be increasingly anxious about summer by the end of February because I know it’s slowly approaching.
I find daylight to be pleasant like everybody, but after a very short time I start to feel drained as if it was too much. I like cloudy days or when it rains. During summer, I basically don’t sleep. Even when the heat is not an issue I just can’t sleep.
Lately I’ve been smiling and laughing more and more; I feel much more at peace. It’s always strange to finally feel energized and genuinely happy when most people around me feel the complete opposite.
This is me, though I figured out a while ago it’s better if I just ignore Daylight Savings.
My inner clock doesn’t “switch”. There’s no change. There’s just half the year where I’m up an hour earlier and forcing myself to bed earlier and it completely fucks my energy cycle.
And then you go to the Arctic circle, look outside in summer, see daylight, see 12:00 on the clock and have no idea which 12 it is…
That’s why I love 24 hr time keeping
that’s the devil’s timekeeping
Presumably the hint there would be where the sun was coming from. In the south, noon. In the north, midnight. Just, uh, like 6 and 6 during the summer. East, am. West, pm.
Where I live it gets dark around 19:00 now. End of December it will be around 18:30. It still leaves me time for a bike ride or a quick hike after work.
Last year in December I was in Poland and at 17:00 it was completely dark outside. The bizarre thing was that it wasn’t just getting dark, there was no one outside. Walking outside at 18:00 felt like walking in the middle of the night. I would look out the window, decide it’s time to go to bed then look at the clock and see it’s 19:00. Pretty depressing.
Gets dark around 16:30 in most of the usa around dec/jan. It sucks. Wake up in the dark, go to work in the dark, and get home in the dark.
Hahaha, you guys think that’s early,good one
For a lot of people if it’s dark when you leave work it doesn’t really matter if it got dark at 16:59 or 14:00.
Yea but it’s darka at 1400 here on my days off too. Also,we have many many days with no sunshine. Just likes weeks,no vitamin D.
Come to southern Spain. It’s a great place to spend winter.
That’s exactly it, you can help somewhat with artificial lights but not really.
Don’t know if anyone actually can stand this. The closer you are to the equator the better your mental health gets just because of this.
In summer you have this nice thing that you wake up at 5am, also pretty shit for your mental health. I would have to get to bed at 10 to get 7h max.
I like it. Cold weather is best and I don’t appreciate trying to sleep when it’s bright.
Depends where you are but at 50N you will have both the winter depression and the summer craziness because you sleep 5h each day in summer. Or in winter 15h of sleepiness.
I hate it both, the summer thing you can try to get rid of by installing something in front or your window.
You cannot make winter less dark, I have not seen a light that does that. Maybe more cold blue in the morning.
i have seen a light that makes winter less dark. i lived in this place where i had a streetlamp just outside my only window. blackout curtains did not work. i would wake up at midnight thinking it was noon and it was just that godsdamned street lamp.
so like, there are solutions they just drive you the other end of crazy
The cold is fine. The short days absolutely suck.
Everyone talking about being depressed because it’s dark “early”…
I work third shift, this is fine. I’m pissed when I’m getting dressed for work and it’s still daylight.
“I have no such weakness”
- Me living in the equator
Next month it will be 4:00. Ugh.
Already 4 here, anywhere not on the coast is in a valley so the functional susnet is even earlier.
I hope you guys never get mosquitoes there, because it mean mosquitoes time is now 4pm.
Not many mosquitos when it’s -20C.
Really out of the short days bullshit by this point. Good luck northern hemispherers lol
I fucking hate “daylight savings”
Daylight saving (not “savings”) is good though. I wish it was daylight saving time year-round.
The problem is the switch, not whichever half is the “savings” - which I refuse to learn because it is silly. Nothing is being saved. If it was like either year round, we’d get used to it and adjust work schedules.
Around the equator there is no daylight saving time. The sun’s always up between 6am and 6pm the entire year. The downside of course being that the whole year it gets dark at 6pm.
I don’t know why we ever “fall back”. I dream of a life in which we “spring forward” and stay there forever.
I dream of a life where noon is noon and we worked fewer hours so we could just get off earlier and hav plenty of daylight before and after work kn the summer.
Like if working hours were 9 to 3 it would be even better than DST in the summer!
I love working third shift because it’s my choice whether i want morning daylight to myself OR afternoon daylight.
LOL dream on.
We should stay on standard time. DST is fucking dumb
If we stay on permanent DST you get to go to work and school in the dark.
I’ve worked both day and night shifts. My experience with day shift is 90% of the people working it aren’t awake until 9-10am anyway. Pre shift time is “work” adjacent time.
Evenings, on the other hand, are the best. Having a day that lasts into 830-10pm is glorious.
And on standard you come home in the dark. I’m doing more after work than before.
Yes, exactly. With standard time I go to work in the dark and come home to am hour of daylight. I’d love for that to be two hours.
I would love DST permanent, but I understand that it’s not great mentally for school kids to get up and go to school in the dark. I would sacrifice that for the next generation to have a better experience.
But really we should start school later.
No, you’re only looking at one half of the argument.
The other half is that permanent Standard time is healthier for us.
In what way? Healthiness of a time standardization seems like it would be hard to validate. I personally prefer DST I’ve never considered either healthier or unhealthier. I remember hearing statistics about an abnormal number of car accidents and stuff happening the Monday after DST/ST changes. I’ve also heard some rhetoric about risk of car accidents with kids walking to bus or school being mitigated by standard time.
I’m assuming you mean something less acute than those which are focused on immediate outcomes like death lol? The only thing health related I can think of is daylight exposure and vitamin d levels, but it seems inconsistent whether people are more likely to take advantage of extra morning sunlight or evening sunlight. Seems like it would be a wash?
Anyway, I’m legitimately interested to know what you mean by “healthy”
I’m in an area that would benefit greatly from permanent DST. But permanent DST absolutely hoses those in the western parts of time zones in the winter.
Just don’t change your clocks and go by whatever time you want. Don’t be a dst conformist, fight the man, light your neighbors house on fire, the possibilities are endless when you stop caring
Unfortunately I need to eat which requires showing up to a workplace, or at least logging in, at specific times.
Just rob a Walmart, if you get caught you go to jail where they feed you for free AND you don’t have to block in anymore, win win
Ew no I hate daylight savings time, I’m glad it’s finally normal again
Just spring forward 30 minutes and leave it there forever
Because of like farmers 100 years ago apparently
Actually, not in the slightest:
It is a common myth in the United States that DST was first implemented for the benefit of farmers. In reality, farmers have been one of the strongest lobbying groups against DST since it was first implemented. The factors that influence farming schedules, such as morning dew and dairy cattle’s readiness to be milked, are ultimately dictated by the sun, so the clock change introduces unnecessary challenges.
Been there, done that. Cows absolutely hate DST, as do most livestock, but cows are the worst. And your complete schedule needs to change and it takes months to acclimatize to the new schedule.
It was started during WWI to increase production.
“The first iteration of Daylight Saving Time was officially implemented two years into the First World War in Germany. After Germany established this practice, almost every other country that fought in the war followed suit, including Canada, the United States and much of Europe.”
Nope! Mostly golfers. Farmers never cared for DST.
Daylight savings is the summer and so society could revolve around banking hours by shifting sunrise closer to when the banks open. It has nothing to do with farmers, as they just starting work when the sun is up.
Living abroad and this being so much less extreme really let sink in how much I hate this 😭
God try being in Northern Ireland, get goes from black to dark gray about 10.00 then goes from gray to back to black about 15.00. It’s so depressing
For all the people who don’t understand how time works.
Noon is supposed to be at 12:00. Let’s say someone lives in a place where that is literally true. If they lived on the equator then sunrise would be at 6 am and set at 6 pm. If it is the equinox anywhere on the planet would be sire at 6 am and set at 6 pm.
If they are far enough north or south that the shortest day is 10 hours or less, then the sun will rise at 7 am and set at 5 pm. This includes most of the US and Europe. The sun setting at 5 pm during the winter is normal.
The primary issue, at least in the US is that the typical workday of 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 has 5 hours in the afternoon and only 3 or 4 hours in the morning. Being afternoon heavy means getting dark at 5 seems early, especially after the stupid DST shift making it seem like evenings should have even more sunlight. We basically changed society based on banking hours and are angry that time works the way it does and instead of just shifting working hours to what we want we pretend that the sun is the highest in the sky at 1:00 pm for part of the year for no logical reason.
This includes most of the US and Europe. The sun setting at 5 pm during the winter is normal.
Most of the US is considerable more to the south than Europe. Remember that Naples, a city in the south of Europe, is on the same latitude as New York City, as city in the Northern part of the US. So you can’t easily transfer experiences regarding this from one to the other.
It is just dark in the winter in large parts of Europe, and no amount of clock fiddling is going to change that.
Getting dark at 5? Lucky.
Shortest day is like 6 hours here.
Even high schoolers don’t see daylight, let alone people with jobs.
It’s horrible
Personally, I just lean into it. I get up at 04:00 so that I want to go to sleep by 20:00 at the latest. The bears have it figured out. Extra bonus is that watching late night TV early in the morning doesn’t feel as unproductive.
I hate how early it gets dark, but I did get the third shift achievement of clocking out at 1:30 am and getting home at 1:20 am this morning, so that’s kinda neat.
It takes you fifty minutes to get home?
Unpaid?
40, it took me ten minutes to grab my stuff and actually leave. And yeah, unpaid, commutes aren’t usually paid in the US.
No, it takes them -10 minutes to get home, duhh
Now THAT is speeding.
Timezone border.
No, it’s that the fall back happens at 2AM.
Obviously crossing timezone borders.
Isn’t it unpaid everywhere?
If it wasn’t, people would move further away from work on purpose. This incentives even bigger and more spread out suburbs.
Where I live you can get tax exemptions for transportation costs if your distance from work exceeds a certain length.
And no, it would only incentivise spread out suburbs in car centric countries. Which is basically the US (or North America?). It works fine here on account of public transpartion, without creating suburban sprawl.
Damn, where I live you’re not allowed to include your commute as part of the tax-exempt “personal vehicle usage compensation”, nor are you allowed to drive your work vehicle home unless it’s specifically on your way back from a work assignment and doing the extra drive to work and then going back home with another method of transportation is a ridiculous extra time sink. I don’t think you can compensate a bus pass or anything either - though not too sure here.
Tax free bus or train pass compensation would be a great change to our tax code actually. It’s distance based compensation for commuting that IMO would be stupid for commutes and I’m glad that it doesn’t exist (though companies are cheating and using personal vehicle usage compensation for this - tax authority doesn’t have time to check everyone)
In the US those tax breaks only benefit people who itemize which almost no workers do (they use standard deduction).
In Estonia, taxes are handled by the employer generally (even though legally, income tax is paid by the worker and social tax by the employer - the payments are still all made by the employer’s accountants who have to do the reporting and all the math). Meaning it’s up to the employer to pay you extra income in tax-free ways if they want to give you more while paying the same in tax. Employers do this to be more competitive, so obviously the bad ones don’t, but the good ones do. If you can give someone 20% of their monthly net income as an extra benefit with zero tax attached to it, that has a motivational benefit similar to giving them a 20% raise, but costs you just over half as much as the raise would.
The biggest benefit, unfortunately, is not to regular employees, but people who do their own accounting and taxes.
As an example, I am currently self employed thru an LLC (Estonian equivalent, anyway). I purposefully set myself a low-ish salary so I only have to work 50 hours a month to pay it out, and the rest I can use for compensations and future dividends. This isn’t even me trying to avoid tax as much as possible, I legitimately sometimes have trouble working more than 30 hours a month because I’m also a single dad with a pre-kindergarten age baby AND ADHD.
I’ve already paid myself out sports compensation as a tax-free benefit. 100 euros for 3 months of gym membership. Next year I might just go all out and pay for the whole year because that’s significantly cheaper. But that’s irrelevant.
If I have a busier month anytime soon, with significantly more hours billed to clients, I’ll pay myself the personal vehicle usage benefit for visiting clients. This is up to 550 euros a month (50 cent per kilometer, up to 1100 km), tax free. Saves like 500 euros on tax compared to paying the same money out as regular income. Usage has to be documented though.
Where you are, travel time is paid to and from work?
Not paid but where I live you get compensation for your travel time/distance (depends a bit on mode of transport, public transport vs car vs bike). I don’t think anyone gets paid for their travel time, unless it’s specifically travel for work rather than to work.
Isn’t it 23 hours and 50 minutes to get home?
Welcome to the United States.
That’s all the western world. You work where they hire, you live where the rent is affordable. I had a 90 min commute on my last job
