Your Extra Hour Has Plans
When the clocks fall back on November 1, Georgia gets an extra hour and an earlier sunset. The trick is deciding what to do with all that suddenly available indoor time.
Give the Darker Hours Somewhere to Go
The end of Daylight Saving Time has a way of rearranging an evening. Dinner somehow feels later at 6 p.m., the porch gets abandoned a little sooner, and the hobbies ignored all summer start looking surprisingly appealing again.
In Thomasville, that could mean putting something creative on the calendar. Thomasville Center for the Arts offers a reason to trade another evening on the couch for something involving actual paint, paper or imagination. Its classes and creative programs provide a natural starting point for anyone who has spent years saying, “I should try that sometime.”
The same idea works at home without requiring a great artistic awakening. Shorter evenings are built for the things that tend to disappear when daylight stretches past dinner: pulling out a puzzle, finally finishing the book on the nightstand, baking something that requires more effort than opening a package, or declaring one night a week game night. A craft basket that has been gathering dust since February also deserves its moment.
Let the Kids Burn the Energy
Families have a slightly different problem. The sun may be setting earlier, but children generally decline to do the same.
In Statesboro, The Clubhouse gives families an indoor option when backyard time gets cut short. Up in Dahlonega, Lane Collins Co.’s Indoor Play Yard offers another place for little ones to move, explore and play when cold weather makes an afternoon outside less appealing.
Blue Ridge takes the indoor plan in another direction. 2nd Story Entertainment turns miniature golf into an all-weather outing, which is useful when everyone needs to leave the house but nobody particularly wants to stand around in a coat.
That may be the best way to approach the November time change. Instead of mourning the vanished evening light, give those darker hours a job. Pick one place to go, one thing to learn or one neglected pastime to bring back. By January, an extra hour spent reading, painting, putting or playing may feel less like filling time and more like having reclaimed it.
When shorter days send you looking for another way to spend an evening, see what else is happening around the state in the Georgia Business Journal Arts & Entertainment directory at https://gbj.com/arts-entertainment.
