Okay, I confess:

I really hate Daylight Saving Time. Especially that it starts so EARLY in the year.

I think it's mostly because of my work schedule: when I'm doing fieldwork, and just fieldwork, I try to get out as soon as the sun is up, so I can get the maximum amount of work in before the heat of the day. It matters not to me if the sun is up at 7 am or 6 am - I'm up and out there. I wouldn't mind if the sun were up at 5 am in the midsummer; it seems silly to me, in a hot climate, to push the day forward an hour so people are still active and doing things during the hottest time of the day (around here, that's between 5 and 8 pm in the summers). However, on the back end, I like to go to bed around 9 pm in order to accommodate my getting up early - and in the middle of the summer here, it is still light out that late, and thus, hard for me to sleep without some kind of a sleep mask. (I bought allegedly room-darkening blinds. They do not.)

When I'm teaching, I need to be in the office by 7, regardless of what the sun is doing. So I went, over the weekend, from driving in as the sun is rising, to having it rise as I'm heading down the hall for my first class of the day. I don't like driving to work in the dark. (Driving home in the dark doesn't bother me; that feels more like how it's supposed to be. I will note that in the years when I teach GIS in the fall, toward the end of DST, there are theoretically days when I could go without seeing the sun at all). Also, there are points where it is sort of dusk out, and lots of people think it's JUST FINE to drive without headlights, seemingly especially so if they are in a gray car. (This also happens in fog. I nearly ran into a guy in a gray pickup that I could not see on a foggy day until I was almost upon him)

I'm particularly irritated about it this morning, because while trying to pull out of my garage (in the dark - yes, I have an overhead light, but it was dark outside) and while being tired (getting up at 4:30 ish to work out was painful this morning), I hit my lawnmower and bent one of the struts for the rear wheel. I don't know if it's fixable or if I'll have to either use a crapped-up lawnmower or break down and buy yet another new one. (This one was new, I think, last spring).

I think what gets to me so much about DST is that it's convention, or the government, or whoever sets these things, telling us we must do something that has no good reason (it doesn't save the energy it was once claimed to), that a lot of us dislike, but if we don't do it, we're out of step with everyone else. It's something I see no point to or logic in, yet I am forced to participate.

And apparently, although Ben Franklin allegedly came up with the idea, it was actually more in the spirit of a "modest proposal"
kind of thing - a joke designed to make a point. But, I guess, this is one of those "be careful what you wish for" situations, because lots of people seemed to think (at some point) it was a good idea.
(I know, it could be worse: in WWII era Britain, they had so-called "Double Summer Time," where the clocks went ahead TWO hours.)

Allegedly it saves energy, but I've seen studies that say it does not do so. And at any rate - is taking an already sleep-deprived population (most Americans are) and taking an hour of sleep from them a good idea? I could not get to sleep at what would be my "normal" time last night (I went to bed at 9 pm and tossed and turned for a good hour and a half) because my body-clock has not yet reset. (It seems that the older I get, the harder it is and the longer it takes to reset).

(I'm sure no such silliness would exist in Equestria. For one thing, Princess Luna would take something like Daylight Saving Time as a personal insult. For another, I suspect the farming lobby is strong enough (the Apple Family seems to be quite large and prosperous - considering the number of new barns they can afford to put up) that they would quickly tell Princess Celestia that farmers rise with the sun, regardless of what time that is. And thirdly, it seems most of the lamps are firefly powered, which means that the "saving energy" trope would carry less weight.)