Spring Forward

So over the weekend, some of our clocks automatically skipped 60 minutes and landed an hour later. Some of our clocks were lazy and just waited for us to do their work for them. Some were forgotten until people were late for work on Monday.

What did this mean?

It meant that instead of waking up to an increasingly blue sky, showing glimpses of what the rest of the day might hold in store and forcing my sunglasses over my eyes on my morning commute, I was thrust back into rolling out of bed with the shades of night still depressed over the city.

It meant that instead of putting together some lacking substitute for a home-cooked meal beneath the chilling bite of the night air, I was given the joy of preparing food while still hearing birds chirping.

And it meant I was a little more tired on Sunday than usual.

But what it means now is a change of pschye that is so important around this time of year. After a long, cold, bitter, sweeping late fall and winter, it's nice to shed the burly jacket for a light one, to skip warming up my car just to get that temperature gage off of pinned down, and to smell the mixing scents of spring parade through the air. 2009 has welcomed me with a pleasant trend of better than usual circumstances that I can't help but to be grateful for. But the pressure of winter, not forcing to act under stress, but the general weight of the weather, the pressure has a way of making a walk a trudge, making a flight a fall. So even when things are falling better than usual, better than bad is still not that great.

Springing forward was always depressing for me since I only looked at it as a loss of an hour of sleep. And now, while my sleep is cascaded along intermittent segments of non-REM naps, sleep should seem more important than ever. But given my current state, the better mood that comes with lengthening hours of daylight and brighter afternoon drives home gives me a feeling warm enough to carry me through the inconsistent perils of March weather in Chicago and land me in the summer. So for now, springing forward is the forced light at the end of the cold tunnel. The warm beacon of hope. And the beginning of the end of winter. Even if it will only be 31 degrees tomorrow. And 28 on Thursday. There's still hope.