Cha-Cha-Changes . . . .

Change:  To become something different; to make something into something else.

I attend a meeting that's pretty large.  As is the way with larger meetings there are a few people who feel compelled to share every day.  Important people.  Important, special people.  And if this wasn't irritating enough they feel compelled to share for a long time, often bumping up against the timer that is in place to remind them that they've shared just goddam long enough, which often doesn't even stop them from continuing to share as if the goddam timer only applies to other people.

I don't get this, personally.  To me it suggests that someone is so clueless that they don't realize this kind of behavior defines selfishness.  Rude selfishness.  You know the type - talks loudly at lunch about their own self to the exclusion of everyone else.   I can't imagine being under the impression that I'm so interesting that everyone one wants to hear the pointless, excruciating minutia of my fairly mundane life.  One guy even took the time to explain to the group that - even though many people have told him that he shares too much - he thinks his message is so valuable to newcomers that he's going to . . .  well . . .  keep sharing as much as he goddam wants.

What do you say to someone like that?  Someone like that isn't going to stop doing what he's doing.

A few of us suggested a format change so that on three days during the week the group leader calls on people at random before opening up the meeting at the end so that anyone with a pressing need to talk has the opportunity to do so.  At our business meeting this weekend we voted on this and I was pleased to see that my long losing streak in group conscience votes was extended.  I wasn't surprised - being a muckraker I'm often supporting change and people in general don't like change, let along rut-bound alcoholics.

I was pretty annoyed yesterday.  Today I'm mildly annoyed.  Tomorrow I'll probably be OK.  I talk a lot about acceptance to other people who are struggling with something so I better be sure that I'm practicing it in my own life.  

I've talked a lot and for a while now about some changes I need to make in my life - my diet and coffee consumption, the over-exercising that I do, my regular attendance at a meeting that has been frustrating to me for a while now.  Talk, talk, talk.  Sometimes I need a stressor to make me go through with the change which I have recently pointed out is hard.  Even when something is making me uncomfortable I have trouble changing.

A resentment and a coffee pot.