Living by the daylight
A year of letting the light shape the day: slow winter mornings, candles after dinner, long June evenings.
Every winter for most of my life I fought the dark. Alarm at six, lights on, coffee, out of the door before the sky was grey. Every spring I felt as if I had been ill. This year I tried something different: I let the daylight set the shape of my day, as far as a job and a family allow. It changed more than I expected.
The experiment
The idea was simple. Wake with the light where possible, do the hardest work in the brightest hours, and let the evenings be darker, quieter and shorter. In December that meant a slow start and an early night. In June, an early start and a long, light evening outside. ((I am lucky. My work is mostly writing and I can choose my hours. I know many people cannot, and I will come back to that.))
