Back in my clubbing days in Hollywood/LA, 2am is often when the headlining dj would start…and the drugs would begun to take hold. Good times. Good times indeed.
Yeah, I think most of the best things in my life took place around 2 in the morning.
As a lawyer, I’ve gained a couple of clients who have called in the wee small hours (I have an office line extension in my house). Usually, they’re drunks who’ve been picked up for DUI, and they’re calling from the police station. Small potatoes mostly, but hey, it’s business.
Winning a game of Risk.
Wandering, with friends, down to the all-night diner for something greasy, sweet or both.
Realizing that a date was - ahem! - going to end the way I had hoped.
Finding the exact right rhyme to complete a poem.
Typing the last page of a term paper that I was heartily glad to be done with.
Wrapping the last Christmas present.
Our oldest dog Loki wakes me up around 3 am every night. I put her on a leash and walk her down to the meadow. It’s quiet and peaceful. If it’s raining I get wet.
I’ve gotten to really enjoy the 5 minute walk, and it feels good to go back to sleep.
Like many of us getting older, I’ll often wake up around 2 or 3 am and can’t fall back to sleep right away. Instead of fighting it, sometimes I just embrace it and read a book or watch a movie for a couple hours, then I’m sleepy enough again to fall back asleep.
We have two adult male children still living in the house (youngest just turned 18) and they often stay up very late and don’t often respect quiet hours. It’s not unusual for a yelling argument to break out between them at 11pm. So those early morning couple hours of a silent house, when I am up, are nice. It’s kind of ‘my time’.
More about shift work. At 2am when many where half past dead, we would go play frisbee in the parking lot. This was a quiet GIS job. Or a coworker and I would just have a quite walk in a nearby park. It’s kinda surreal.
Does nothing count as something? I enjoy the nothing at night. The lack of having to actively handle adult responsibility is a good thing. I don’t know what they were thinking in the 80s, because adult responsibility is a lot scarier than Freddy Krueger could ever hope to be (unless you’re Robert Englund in which case Freddy Krueger is the adult responsibility rather than a bogey man
).
When I was pregnant with my son, my water broke about that time. It was good in the sense that the baby was coming, less good in that prolonged rupture of membranes is unhealthy for the fetus.
Whenever I play a show or run sound at one, I usually get paid after the bar closes. The bars close at 2AM in Texas, so I’m almost always paid for those gigs after that time. I’m pretty fond of being paid, myself.
ETA: But now that I think of it, shows are starting and getting finished earlier in the post-covid era. I have actually been paid a few times recently when the show is over, but the bar is still open.
Some of the best, most life-changing conversations happened between me and my friends at 2 a.m. Its after a long night having fun, your defenses are down, and people are willing to discuss topics that just don’t discuss well in the light of day.
I miss those conversations.
In days long ago, I worked in an all-night convenience store, and that shift was especially amusing, when people would come in at 2:05am to buy some beer but we could not sell it to them because it was now 3:05am, past the 2:30am legal cutoff time.
You could also un-receive bad news. Like, there’s some big newsworthy disaster, and someone you know was in the area and you’re worried about them, and finally at 2 AM, they manage to get through to you and tell you that they’re all right.
I wrote c. 80 % of my Master’s Thesis at or after 2 AM. I have also solved hundreds of problems of every ilk at those hours, sitting or lying in the peace and quiet, brain ready and idle to do some real work.
I love the peacefulness of nighttime.
Remember that first beer at 6:00 am when the bar reopened? Did that count as past 2:00 am, or was it before the next day’s 2:00 am?
If you were still awake, it counted. And man, was it DElicious!
Did you finish it at 25 or 6 to 4?
I know that’s a Chicago reference, but I have never paid attention to the lyrics.