We've been asking readers this week to tell us whether they like daylight saving time or hate it. Before I share my thoughts on the subject, I offer a little public service announcement.

If you haven't sprung your clocks forward one hour, put down the newspaper. You're late for church.

I actually like daylight saving time. I also hate it.

I like that, just as the days are getting naturally longer, we get to add an additional hour to the end of the day. It comes just as the weather is getting nice and most of us are looking for reasons to be outside in the fresh air.

On the other hand, I hate losing an hour of sleep. I like sleep. I don't get nearly enough of it, so it hardly seems fair that the Time Police come along and take an hour from me.

Worse, they take it from me in the middle of the night. When I need it the most.

Such a brazen theft of my sleep times makes we wonder why we call it daylight saving time in the first place since we have saved neither daylight nor time.

We haven't saved time, as I have shown. Time has been taken away. And we haven't saved daylight. Yes, it's lighter for an hour longer at the end of the day. But it's also an hour darker at the beginning of the day.

Really, we should call it "daylight shifting time."

In preparation for losing an hour of sleep this weekend, I've tried to fool myself into thinking that I'm actually gaining hours. Remember, this is leap year. That means we had a whole extra day in February.

So even when I lose an hour this weekend, I should still be 23 hours ahead, right?

Another thing I don't like about daylight saving time is that I sometimes get confused about which way I'm supposed to move the clock.

My mother always taught me that we should "spring forward, fall back." But it also makes sense to "spring back, fall forward," and if you choose the wrong one, you're really in a mess.

Then there is one thing I used to hate about daylight saving time that I now like.

It used to be that when you either sprang forward or fell back, you had to go around your house and change all the clocks - the alarm clock by your bed, the clock over the mantel, the VCR clock, the clock on the kitchen wall, the clock on the microwave, the clock in the car.

Today, thanks to the amazing advancements of modern technology, most of my clocks will change by themselves - the clock on my cell phone, on my computer, on my iPad. Even my clock on my mantel will change by itself.

Every year about this time, as we all prepare to lose that precious hour of sleep, some people make the argument that we should do away with the time shifting. Either keep it daylight saving time all the time or do away with it all together, they say.

There's some merit to that. If that extra hour of daylight stays at the end of the day, then it won't be totally dark when I leave work at 6 o'clock in the middle of winter.

On the other hand, if we don't switch back to regular time in the winter, then the sun won't come up until well after 8 each morning, and we'll all go to work in the dark.

I don't much like that. Dark is for sleep. I don't want to get up until it's light outside.

I lead a busy life. I'm not wild about losing an hour of my time. It's not like I can tell people who expect something from me that they'll just have to wait until November, when I get that hour back.

So for now, I'm going to take a nap. I need to bank as many hours of sleep as I can.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays. Read previous columns at gainesvilletimes.com/mitch. Follow him on Twitter @MitchTimes.