"Fall Back" Fallout.

All my life, I have always looked forward to Autumn and all of it’s accompanying glory. Throughout that time though, when DST was over and it was time to get an extra hour of sleep, it was like icing on the cake. What could be better for a young man with a slightly eldritch mind than twilight coming even sooner?
So, as the years progressed I looked forward to setting the clocks back and settling in for a long night of sleep.
That was then.
Perhaps there is still some joy in the prospect of extra sleep. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the idea of having one more hour to surrender myself to my still eldritch dreams. But there are other aspects of the impending lack of light at the end of the day that now mess with me more than they provide enjoyment.
It could be that, as an adult, I now have a day job that lasts until six in the evening. Progressively in the spring and fully in the summer, there is always time to get dinner finished and work outside after work. But in the late fall and winter, twilight swoops in with its raven wings and settles darkness on the land long before I ever clock out for the day. As a result, I feel muzzy-headed and tired long before I cross the threshold to our home. I’m ready to sit in the recliner, click on the idiot box; or better, slip into my pjs and nestle into bed.
Some would call this ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’. The change in time and light affects basic circadian rhythms, certainly, and the zeitgebers, or sensory stimuli that signal certain physiological patterns may cause a small ‘bump’ in the road of my daily internal schedule. This change in the daylight, which is one of the biggest zeitgebers can affect some humans for days or weeks with no known cure.
I’ve never minded darkness, however, as I’ve mentioned. And I love the chill air, the golden leaves falling and even the approach of snowy weather. So, why is it that I am feeling downtrodden? Why do I feel squished under the heel of darkness rather than rejoicing at it as I have in the past?
The answers, it appears, are both philosophical and biological.
The philosophical part is really me having to be philosophical in realizing the truth about myself. While, I’ll never acknowledge that I’m old or even getting there, I’m heading toward the roadmark of ‘middle age’, which means that certain biological truths are inevitable.  It’s also possible that a big-boy job and family duties have so programmed my internal clock that I’m really set in the daily schedule of things and they are hard to train out.
At any rate, whether it is old age creeping in, however glacially, or if it is my biological rhythm changing due to the more routine aspects of family life, I don’t yet know. What is perfectly clear is that this muzzy-headedness from the early onset of dark and cold is keeping me on the very edge of grouchville and also making it increasingly difficult to wake up in the morning.
So, if I snap at you, when in the past I was to be found under the deepening night of a Fall evening with an idiot grin on my face, blame DST.
Some fool’s genius idea is making a sleepy grump out of me.