IF YOU LIVE in the continental United States as we do, today is the first full day of summer.
Yesterday at 2:24 AM MDT was the official summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.
Downstairs in our L.AS offices, it was already 3:24 AM, and there is a very deliberate reason for that.
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The offices of Life. And Scoreboards include a lower level, a walk-out basement with windows and doors along three sides overlooking the hill that slopes away outside. The structure resides in the Mountain Time Zone, but the lower level is on Central Time.
About five years ago, our office manager was out of town the particular weekend in the fall that we’re all supposed to change the clocks back one hour, “fall back, spring forward,” as the mnemonic goes. I changed the ones that didn’t automatically do it themselves on all of the upper floors but was a couple days late in changing the clocks downstairs. I still actively worked there, too busy to worry about more stupid clocks at that moment. But then I noticed something really cool while I worked.
I would glance at the nearest clock and think, 5:15. Crap, I’ve only got—oh, wait. It’s actually 4:15!
Whenever I looked at the clock — any clock downstairs — I would go through that little flow of logic and feel a small dose of pleasure.
I have an extra hour.
You might think that would get old, but five years later, all of the clocks on the lower level are still an hour ahead of the ones throughout the rest of the building. If you’re thinking sharply today, that sentence tells you a lot. That means, when the clocks change forward an hour in the spring, I also changed the clocks downstairs to maintain the “Central Time Zone lie to myself” and the time differential between the levels of the building. Same thing twice a year since then: all the clocks get changed to stay out of sync by an hour.
I’ve done a decent job of preventing myself from acclimating to the difference in the clocks and the one-hour-ahead thing. I’m aware of it, and the one-hour-earlier adjustment in my head happens quicker now, but it still happens. Just a little pause now, while my system says, wait, it’s actually an hour earlier again.
Time is worth more than gold.
It’s like small dose of a mild drug. That little “thought trick” continues to generate a little flow of warmth that wipes through the biosystem for a few seconds, and I say to myself, relax, you’ve got another hour.
It’s got to be doing something for me because I’m still doing it after five years.
It helps.
Or I’m losing my marbles.
Either way, Happy Monday, and have a great summer.
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