Seaweed On A Pedestal

I was the speaker at the downtown meeting yesterday and I was my usual brilliant, confident, wise, insightful, and totally full of self-absorbed bullshit self.  Ironically, I read the section from The Book that talks about the tendency of alcoholics - and many other people - to be Directors: people who try to arrange the world to their own liking, mixing in wonderful motives, terrible motives, and all flavors of motive in-between.  The suffix "self" appears approximately one billion times in that section, as does the outstanding phrase: "So our troubles, we think, are of our own making."

Yeah.  I got that. Self.  Self.   Self self self.  There's something about the alcoholic being an extreme example of self-will run riot, "though he usually doesn't think so."

The point - should you be trying to find a point here and good luck with that  - is that help and service come in many guises.  I fancy myself a Recovery Beast, a god of Sobriety as it were, forgetting that nothing could be further from the truth.  I got as much of a reaction from the crowd as any standard garden variety drunk, befitting my status as a standard garden variety drunk.  I reflected back on the guy who recently sent me the job review that he thought was devastatingly bad, spending a good deal of time typing out a thoughtful response defending my take that he had in reality gotten a solid B minus.  He responded with a one line thank you and that was the last I heard about it.  I expect to be Put on a Pedestal and instead suffered the  Brush Off.

Kept me sober.

My home group has a page on a social media site and a guy I know asked for some help with the financial amends part of the 9th Step.  I'm going to meet with him this weekend; I've actually done this a few times before.  Money is numbers and I'm good with numbers.  My experience is that mostly people get afraid when money is discussed and they just bury their heads in the sand.  I did that whenever sex, money, or politics came up.  I made little, tiny mouses into great big powerful elephanti.

Tomorrow I meet with a sponsee.  He wants to go through The Steps again.  This is admirable and always helpful but I believe his angst stems from the fact that he is a smart, talented guy and he's not challenging himself.  I'm going to tell him that.  I'm also going to make sure that he talks to a lot of other people because really, what do I know about anything?

Not too damn much.