A shiny, new hour for free (& EDM #144- Something Square)

Watercolor on Arches hot pressed paper in sketchbook, 5.5 x 7.5″
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This week’s Everyday Matters challenge is to draw something square. I searched my house and office and found nothing square until I started thinking about time.Then I remembered this kitchen timer that I’m going to use to make the timed paintings I wrote about yesterday. It was sitting next to these tea bags which are also (nearly) square.

I’ve been having a hard time making the transition back to ordinary time after the end of Daylight Savings. The actual day of “falling back” is my favorite day of the year because it means getting an extra hour.  Instead of resetting my clocks on Saturday night and wasting the fresh new hour sleeping, I pick an hour that I want to experience fully as my new hour. I use it for something extra special, or for something that in my usual driven way I don’t allow time for—like relaxing in a bubble bath or other such luxuries. This year I stretched it out through Monday, actually giving myself the hour several times, and then each time deciding that it wasn’t the one, and giving myself another. It was such fun!

But by Tuesday when I returned to the office, I still hadn’t settled on the perfect hour or reset my clocks and it was getting confusing. Instead of getting to say, “Oh goodie, it’s not really 3:00, it’s only 2:00! Whoopie! Another free hour!” I was looking at my watch and saying, “Oh drat, it’s not really 3:00, it’s only 2:00 — three more hours until I can take my headache home and put it to bed.”

And then today (Wednesday), even though I went to bed early and woke on time, I ended up arriving at work really late—exactly opposite what should be happening, given the extra hour in the morning. So now I’ve finally reset all my clocks and joined the world in ordinary time.

I wonder if it’s possible to give myself a special “free” hour every day, without having to wait for the annual end of Daylight Savings. Maybe I could just declare one hour each day a special hour to enjoy as I see fit. Why not? What do you think?