Carpe diem

I was wrong. All of you who asked whether we would have few hours of daylight during the winters in Sitka may recall me saying that wasn't the case. That is the case. Somehow I assumed that was only further North. But now that the sun is setting at 3:25 pm (and it's setting earlier and earlier) it feels like time is flying (though it is worse farther North). We notice it most on weekends because they seem to fly by so quick. It was starting to really bum us out--we kept on saying "where did Saturday and Sunday go?" I think we figured it out, though. What happens is that you wake up around 8-9, eat breakfast, don't really get out of the house until its close to 11 or 12. Now you have 3 hours of daylight (or sunshine if it's not a typical cloudy Sitka day). In terms of outdoors stuff all you can do in a few hours is a short hike. Then you get home and see its dark at 4 pm and you start gearing down as if it were 9 pm. Your brain does that automatically for you. You don't want to venture outside, you just want to get in your PJs and start winding down. Then your productivity really goes to crap and you're confused because you swear its got to be 10 but its only 7.

One good thing about this is that it makes you try to get more done. We're realizing we can't really lounge around in the mornings--we need to plan our days in advance, see what's going on, try to get out. Yesterday (Sunday) I woke up at 9 and said to myself "ok, you have about 12 hours", and throughout the day I would countdown to bedtime to keep perspective on where time was really going. It's the weirdest thing. Seize the day has never been more real to me. Revenge is sweet though; come summer we've got up to 18.5 hours of daylight.