All for Spring Forward!

I was surprised last week when reading a post on the Huffington Post's Living Section about daylight savings time that many people in the comments section were not fans. They complained about how it was so dark in the mornings now, about losing an extra hour of sleep, of how they didn't need that extra hour of light tacked on at the end of the day. I couldn't disagree more!I look forward to 'springing forward' and putting the clocks one hour ahead from the moment we put the clocks back in November.

Psychologically, turning the clocks back in November really affects me. It's hard to look outside the window around 5 pm and have it already be dark. Somehow I always think of the days as being a lot more difficult to get through when they get dark so early, which is actually kind of odd because you could argue that it's easier to get through a day when it appears to end sooner. Either way, I always feel this undeniable sense of relief when I turn the clocks forward in March. I've made it through another winter, another period of dark days and cold weather, and for the foreseeable future it's bright days ahead. It's a really great feeling, and a feeling that easily gets me through those first few mornings when it's tough to lose out on an hour of sleep.

In early March, so before the clocks had changed, I came upon this recording of a cool radio segment about a woman who had spent one year in Antarctica - from September to March there was 24 hours of daylight, and from March to September 24 hours of darkness. She described how she suffered from a hormonal imbalance called T3 syndrome (which is caused by lack of light) during the long winter. She said her brain literally slowed down and stopped working as well. But on the flip side, she talked about how amazing it was to step outside in the middle of the afternoon and see a dark sky full of stars. She said seeing both the moon and planet Mars were especially fabulous; and that it seemed like Mars was shining extra bright just for her. I listened to the radio segment twice because I liked it so much. And while I would have to be paid millions of dollars to even consider spending an entire winter in Antarctica, I do have to admit that seeing the stars and Mars and the moon in the middle of the afternoon would be incredible. Even on the darkest day of winter here, I can never see stars as soon as it gets dark.

It's interesting that the majority of those Huffington Post commentators seemed to want lightness in the morning as opposed to at night. Even though I tend to usually get up fairly early, I would always much rather have the extra hour of light at the end of the day. It's nice to have brightness outside for longer; you can leave your lights off for longer, can walk home in daylight at 7 pm... Although over this past fall and winter I've realized how pleasant it is to wake up to/with natural sunlight. My bedroom in my apt in Austin last year was so dark. I always kept the blinds closed as the windows opened onto the outdoor hallway, which other people in the apt complex walked on everyday. I spent as much time as I could in the rest of my apt, really only going into my bedroom to sleep. My bedroom in Toronto, however, has three windows. I keep the curtains open all the time on two of them and I get so much natural light. The mornings that I do sleep in and wake up when it's already bright are really lovely; it feels as though the light is gently lulling me awake. I am determined that wherever I live next year, my bedroom must have an abundance of natural light. Until then, I am going to enjoy springing forward into longer and brighter days.

To The Suburbs & Back

Ever since I was little, I'd been one of those city people who loved big cities and everything they offered, and had never been able to understand why people chose to live in the suburbs. I pictured row upon row of identical houses (with identical swimming pools to match), boring strip malls, being so far away from the action and the interesting restaurants/streets/houses/buildings/cafes/museums/etc in the actual city, and wondered - where is the appeal in that? Living in midtown/north Toronto my whole life, when leaving my house, 9 times out of 10 I headed south (towards downtown and the lake), except if I was going to A.'s house, or to the grocery store. But all that changed last September, when I started working in the far northeast corner of the city, and even more so this past January, when I started working in Markham - a quintessential suburb of Toronto.

I first drove out to the Markham campus of the school I work at a few days before classes started - to both make sure I could find it, and to get a lay of the land. Despite being from Toronto, I could only remember having gone to Markham once before, on the last day of school of grade 11. A girl in the grade above lived in Markham and her family was moving, so she had a party in a house without furniture. Although, there were so many people there, I almost didn't notice the lack of it. Everyone sat on the floor, signing yearbooks, talking, drinking beer. I sat next to my boyfriend at the time, who was a year ahead and was graduating, and listened to him and his friends celebrate the fact that they were done. Around midnight we went for a walk down the street, him so happy he was done high school and going to university, me sad for the same reasons. After a few blocks there wasn't much more to say, and I became aware of how quiet it was - a suburban quiet I thought at the time, one I was sure didn't exist anywhere in Toronto.

Now I go to Markham twice a week; I'm the opposite of the norm, as unlike the thousands of people who live in the suburbs and work in the city, I work in the suburbs and live in the city. I have to admit I like it. It's true I don't see a lot of it. My work is right off the highway, so my perception of Markham is somewhat limited. But my building has great views (albeit mostly of the highway and cars but you can see a lot of sky too) and is convenient to get to. Since I'm going against the normal traffic flow, it doesn't take long to get to and from work. In fact, the longest part of my drive is after I get off the highway back in Toronto and have to navigate city streets to get to my house.

Old habits die hard though. Despite having made this drive many times now, and accepting that I work in Markham, whenever I pass the big Toronto sign (see picture below) on highway 404 as I drive home from work, I always feel mildly glad and relieved to be back in the city. One Monday in February there was a big snowstorm which caused horrible traffic going both directions on the 404 and I was half an hour late for my writing class downtown. At the break I explained to everyone that I was late because I work in Markham, but then quickly added "I don't live there though!" Afterwards I was really embarrassed I'd placed such emphasis on not having lived there, like I thought it was somehow a bad thing. I realized that if I've learned anything in my time working in Markham, it's that the people who work and go to school there are really great, and do not at all fit the silly stereotypes I had of people who live in the suburbs. In fact, I'm really glad I've had the opportunity to have a lot of my stereotypes debunked. And while I suspect there will always be a part of me that wants to make it very clear to other people that I do not live in the suburbs, I think that from now on I'll be able to do a better job keeping it in check.