Circadian reset

It was already dark by the time train 499 reached Halmstad last night, so after commenting on a few student papers and taking some melatonin, I fell into a dreamless sleep, only to be brutally awoken by my Suunto watch at 6 a.m. After an epic struggle to get out of bed, I had no choice but to cut my planned run to Jansa Brygga short and instead go for a quick bread run to the local Bärlin sourdough bakery.

Under beautiful blue skies, I then did my best to get as much sunlight as possible between classes, and back home the tinted glass cast beautiful reflections on the wall, a promise of what is to come. Still, with the jetlag monster never far away, I headed out for five more kilometres at sunset to help further reset my circadian rhythm.

Seeing the images coming in from the Artemis II mission, showing the Earth from the far side of the Moon, certainly puts my own jetlag struggles into perspective. Instead of the mere twenty-two thousand kilometres that I have travelled over the last week, the Artemis crew will have travelled millions of kilometres by the time they splash down in the waters outside San Diego tomorrow. Like so many times before, space exploration points to what humanity could become if we directed our energies outward, toward building rather than destroying.