This time of year, the sun rises at about five-thirty in the morning. That means that, when my alarm goes off at five o’clock on weekdays, there’s already enough light coming in through the windows to see where everything is. I don’t have to stumble through the darkness feeling for a switch on a lamp. I can’t tell you how right my mind feels about that, mostly because I’m a person who believes that I should not have to get out of bed while it’s still dark to do something as boring and ordinary as going to work. If I were getting up early to go on a fishing trip, fine. Done it. Loved it. Getting up in the dark to go make a buck? Still haven’t made my peace with that.

They’ve got a name for people who can’t adjust to the shifting hours of daylight: Seasonal Affective Disorder, which sounds all official and you can probably get prescription drugs and a medical accommodation for it, which you couldn’t if you just called it “depressed because I had to get up in the dark this morning.” Call it what you want, it’s the same thing.

I get the same thing for the opposite reason in the summer on weekends. It’s pretty nice to have daylight at five o’clock in the morning when I have to get ready for work, but on the weekends when I want to sleep in until seven or even eight o’clock, not so much. I can lay there and pretend to sleep, but when the sun’s streaming in through the blinds at six-thirty, my pretending to be asleep is about the least convincing act on the planet.

A nap in the afternoon, though? That I can do.