Step Back, Jack

 During Zoom Time I've amused myself by putting different whimsical screen names under my image.  Some are whimsical only if you ignore the kernel of truth in each of them.  Last week it was Self-Righteous Steve and this week I logged in as Swimming Against the Current Steve.  Here's the kernel of truth: I have been swimming against a strong, icy current with the Keep It Complicated group.  I was so proud of myself, bringing up my distaste for the hybrid meeting format, throwing in some humor and self-deprecation and showing an awareness for why some members might disagree with me, and doing this after checking in with some folks who have come once or twice and then disappeared or have not bothered to even check it out once.  I felt a groundswell of victorious support welling up.

Yesterday I mulled over the strong possibility that the Zoom only participants are going to want to weigh in and I understood how that was going to go. There are a lot more electronic attendees than personal ones.  Then, at one of my regular Zoom meetings yesterday I spoke with a woman who is firmly in the "let's not do anything and see what happens" camp - she flatly disagreed with me in a manner that left open no possibility of compromise.  And there was also a guy there who only attends the Zoom portion and I could see that he was barely listening to what I was saying.  Neither of them had a tiny modicum of interest in my proposal.

I realized I was cooked.  I could see the handwriting on the wall and it's in thick, red, permanent Magic Marker.  Even disinterested SuperK could see that there was no give from either of these people.  I've lived a life characterized by change - I've lived in several cities in several states; I've traveled to almost every state; and I've been all over the world.  Clearly, I don't like static things.  I'm an agitator for change.  I'm not a patient-waiter.  This is neither good or bad - I believe the world needs promoters and it needs patient-waiters.  I'm much better at patient waiting today but it's just not who I am.  I don't like something I try something else.  If it's not as good I don't give a shit - I'm always glad I gave it a whirl.  In most things I believe it's a lot easier to stay with the old way of doing things than it is to envision how things might worked out with more adventuresome action, especially when they could possibly, maybe get worse.

I was pissed, so pissed I could barely concentrate on the meeting.  I actually wrote a couple of pages with the obvious, glaring outcome being I have to step away from the group for a while.  Things need to work out without my agitation.  Most of the regular attendees don't welcome the change are of the mind that patient waiting is the best course.  I'm also aware that the people who don't like the current state of affairs won't attend the business meeting.

SuperK: "You need to give that group a rest."  

All my writing led me to the conclusion that I need to give that group a rest.  This is one of those situations where I don't need to check in with any of my guys.  I can see a slaughter coming.

Group Conscience

Patient:  Willing to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting.  (Ed. Note: Oh, go fuck yourself.)

"The elder statesman is the one who sees the wisdom of the group's decision, whose judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound, and who is willing to sit quietly on the sidelines patiently awaiting developments."

"I need Alcoholics Anonymous a lot more than Alcoholics Anonymous needs me."  Tom R.  (Tom was my temporary sponsor when I first moved to California.)

Conscience:  The moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behavior.

"This is the experience which has led us to the conclusion that our group conscience . . . will be in the long run wiser than any single leader."

 Group Consciousness:  The awareness exhibited by individual group members about the group, its members, and their commonalities.  Just as self-consciousness pertains to awareness of the self, so group consciousness pertains to awareness of the collective.

People who want change usually aren't vocal about it while people who want things to stay the same fight tooth and nail against the change.

"Seaweed, do me a favor - try not to talk today."  An early A.A. sponsor of mine.

My Speech

"I will try to help others.  I will try not to let a day pass without reaching out an arm of love to someone.  Each day I will try to do something to lift another human being . . . "

Very briefly . . . as your resident grenade thrower and pot stirrer and pushy east coast presence guy . . . I wanted to mention that at the business meeting next week where I'm going to propose we end the great hybrid experiment.  I've been grateful for Zoom over the last year and believe it's going to be a permanent presence in AA here on out.  However, I've been attending the live meeting for the last two weeks and I find the hybrid portion so distracting that it's keeping me away from the actual basement - the whole flow of the meeting is gone with all of the moving of mics and chairs and the delays muting and unmuting people.  Moreover, I've noticed that a lot of members who came here regularly aren't coming back - not even for a look-see - and, more importantly, I've seen a number come back for a meeting or two and then not return.

I decided to do an unofficial survey of some of these people who have come a few times to see how they feel and I've also contacted some people I respect and the almost unanimous preference is to separate out the Zoom and the live meeting.  I know this would be a hardship for those of us who live out of town or can't make it physically to the meeting but I really think we're in a crucial time here - a lot of people attend other meetings or aren't returning here once they see it's a hybrid and I'd like to see the meeting thrive.

The other ongoing issue is going to be finances.  We now have to pay full rent and over the last year we've not gotten much in the way of contributions from Zoom attendees, myself included.  Plus, I think having a big screen and a camera is going to keep newcomers away.  I don't think we've gotten a single newcomer in two weeks.

I don't think this is the time to discuss this further but I feel so deeply about it I wanted to give people fair warning it's coming up -  I'd be happy to stick around after the meeting if anyone wants to shoot arrows at me.

Change, Baby

 "Discipline of yourself is absolutely necessary before the power of God is given to you.  When you see others manifesting the power of God, you probably have not seen the discipline that went before.  They made themselves ready."

I think often about the relationships I have in my life.  I am blessed and grateful for these relationships.  I realize that there are many people who don't have anyone that they can talk to on a deep and personal level.  Many people can't even connect with family members in more than a superficial manner.  I am so grateful that I have these people in my life that I've actually written down . . . with a pen on paper . . . lists of my friends.  I look at them often.  I want to remember how blessed I am.  There are profound relationships that have been around for decades and there are profound relationships that I've developed in the 10 years or so I've been in California.  There are people from Ohio that I've known for 30 years.  And there is a constantly evolving list of good friends of the moment who may or may not hang in there or drift away.  

On the other hand people and relationships cause me most of the angst that I have in my life.  So there's that and that, my friends, is a conundrum.  It is a concept in conflict with itself.

I read an opinion piece recently about how CoVid has interfered with our normal way of socializing.  This sociologist was of the opinion that most of us try to maintain too many relationships, that most of us can handle 6 or 8 really deep ones, that they take a lot of work, that maybe it's a good thing to have let some of the more peripheral ones lapse while we've been more or less isolated.  We really don't have the time or interest to stay current with people we play tennis with or see at a book club.  They're casual relationships and they don't deserve more than a glancing attention.

This has been on my mind as I begin to attend live meetings again and as I see a very different landscape.  People I've known for a long time have gone to other meetings or drifted away completely.  Some of them were pretty intense relationships at the time.  Maybe they'll rekindle or maybe they won't.  It's going to be important for me to realize this as I move forward.  The Big Picture, man.  

I was at a new coffee shop yesterday.  The one I used to frequent moved to a new, less convenient location.  I knew a lot of the employees there on a somewhat personal basis but now they're all gone, forever.  I'm getting to know the kids who work at the new shop.  This is fun.  I miss the old kids but now I have some new kids.  While I was sipping a flat white and reading the paper I idly listened to a couple of men talking in French at the next table.  Relentlessly outgoing and curious I engaged one of the young men after his friend left.  We had a really excellent conversation for about a half hour.  This was fun, too.  I have no illusions this is going to develop into anything more that an occasional brief chat but who knows?  Some relationships hang in there, some don't, and I often have no idea which is which.

Change, baby.

Plagiarism

 "It's the old law of the more you give the more you get.  You never know when you may help somebody.  The satisfaction you get out of helping a fellow human being is one of the finest experiences you can have."

"Do not fall into the error of calling for help and not doing the things that should be done.  You need a life of prayer and meditation, but you must still do your work in the busy ways of life.  The busy person is wise to rest and wait patiently for God's guidance."

"I must prepare for the future by doing the right thing at the right time now.  If a thing should be done, I should deal with that thing today and get it righted with God before I allow myself to undertake any new duty."

"It's the thing that are hidden that weigh on the mind.  They feel a sense of release and freedom when they have opened up their hearts to us.  I must never say that I have only enough strength for my own need.  The more I give away, the more I will keep."

Reaching Out

Today I'm pretty OK with the Keep It Complicated schism . . . although with all the bitching and attention I devote to it you might think otherwise.  I'm attending the original meeting in the original church basement after the facility reopened and the church invited us to start back up with some conditions based on the pandemic, the conditions which infuriated the break-away people in the first place.  The joke about the bitching, grouchy break-away members is that they're generally not my group - not that they're bad people or that I'm unfriendly with them or can't learn anything from them but that I'd hope, as the ocean liner was sinking, that they would swim over to the other rowboat. If I got to pick the people in my rowboat I wouldn't pick them first.  I wouldn't use my oar to try to fight them off if they swam over to my rowboat but I'd be happier waving at them over turbulent, shark-infested waters.   Frankly, if someone had told me six months ago that we could reduce the attendance of the original meeting by asking these bitchers to leave I would have opened my wallet and started throwing $20s at him.  A more perfect list I could not imagine.

The minor conundrum for me is that my sponsor is going to that meeting.  So I don't really have any interest in talking to him right now because in a general A.A. phone call the conversation inevitably touches on "how's your Program?" at some point, and I do not want to hear jack-shit about the bitching meeting.  So do I keep calling him and try to avoid the topic?  Do I fire him?  Do I just quit calling him and hope this situation resolves on its own as society recalibrates?  As you can imagine I'd prefer explaining to him, in minute, exhausting detail why he's fucking up right now because everyone loves unsolicited advice from me.

I hate falling back on my long-term sobriety as an excuse for anything because I think that's a slippery slope.  Nevertheless, having a sponsor after 35 years of active, engaged attendance in Alcoholics Anonymous does give me some wiggle room.  I talk to members with long-term sobriety almost every day; I write almost every day; I read A.A. literature every day; and I attend a ton of meetings . . . so I'm not walking a fine line between drunkenness and sobriety, but I do like the concept of a sponsor: someone that I'm accountable to, that I see regularly, that knows a lot about me as a result of regular contact.

The idea of calling my sponsor to tell him I'm pissed at my sponsor is quite funny when you think about it.

I did call an old friend from Cincinnati to bounce this stuff off of him.  Like me he's an old salesman.  I could envision him organizing his thoughts as I was talking; asking measured questions in a slow, considered manner; probing for what was really going on.  I like talking to salespeople, particularly those who worked in a technical field.  We're used to managing groups of people in chaotic, uncontrolled situations - we had to take control while not seeming too bossy.

"Seaweed, guys like us . . . with a lot of time . . . we basically know what we have to do."  If I was new the advice in this situation would be to suck it up or to get a new sponsor.  If I was new I would need that sponsor presence a lot more than I do now.  It's not like I'm not talking to a lot of people who have a lot of sobriety, most of them with more sobriety than my current sponsor.  Still, I need to deal with this situation for my own peace of mind.  I woke up this morning and things were clearer.  One of the most amazing facts of the human brain is that when you're asleep it remains highly engaged and it can work through things all on its own and present its owner with good solutions the next morning.  I don't have to be actively thinking about something to find an answer.  This is a feature of the mind.  This is also why we "intuitively understand something which used to baffle us."

I believe that for a while I'm not going to make any outgoing phone calls.  If I do speak with him I'm going to plead heavy engagement in helping the meeting get back on its feet (which is true but not an excuse for not calling him) and fall back on the aphorism "Out of sight - out of mind" (which is not true but I think some mild evasion in the service of kindness is a good idea).

And that's that . . .  at least for a couple of hours.

Change That Resentment

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

I know I've looked this word up many times, fraught with great importance as it is.  I just love the idea: something then something else.  One thing then another thing completely different.   The topic in the meeting this morning was change.  The leader has a shit-ton of sobriety and she's struggling with this great transition from an on-line CoVid pandemic society to one that's opening up.  It's weird, frankly.  I didn't mind going virtual in my recovery life until I started to get tired of looking at people on a screen and now I'm getting up to trundle off to an early morning meeting thinking: "Fuck this getting up early stuff."  That's me - whatever it is I find something objectionable about it.  If I change something I bitch about it and then if it changes back exactly the way it was I bitch about that even though it's what it was in the first place.

Whew.  I'm confusing myself.

I'm really fascinated with this idea of a resentment right now.  If I see someone kicking a dog is my dislike for this person a resentment?  It sure doesn't seem that way to me at the moment.  What if I'm sitting in my car and somebody I know knocks out my windshield, hires a good lawyer, and skates free on a technicality?  How do I deal with this person?  Am I supposed to like him?  Is the absence of a resentment simply that I don't let this guy live rent free in my head?  Do I forgive him and then what?  Back to normal, more standoff-ish, or active animosity?   I've never been too invested in the idea of acceptance, either.  Am I supposed to stand by while someone kicks that dog thinking: "Everything is exactly as it should be in God's world."  That doesn't seem right.

This is life, isn't it?  What a weird, wild ride it is sometimes.

Don't Dabble In The Past

 I'm always writing down notes in my . . . well . . . notebook.  A few days ago I jotted this perplexing phrase: "Don't dabble in the past."  Yeah, no clue what memory that was supposed to trigger.

My relationships are a continual source of amazement to me.  I spend a lot of time riffing on how many people I hate and why I hate them and why I don't understand the fact that they won't get away from me . . .  I am joking, of course.  I am blessed with such a raft of friends that there's really no more room on the raft.  If you're currently not my friend and you'd like to be then you'll have to knock someone off the raft.

There's this guy I know from A.A.  He's way, way on the other side of the divide vis-a-vis politics and social issues.  We've developed a relationship over the years in large part, I think, because I have a ton more sobriety than he does so he uses me as a sounding board from time to time.  We've managed to set any contentious issues to the side and focus on common themes, although occasionally I get a glimpse of his Facebook feed which alarms and dismays me. He delivers newspapers in my neighborhood very early in the morning so if I'm up I'll pop outside, flag him down, and we'll chat for a minute.  Remember I don't really like him all that much.  We'll never be Go To Coffee friends. 

I recently took a subscription to the Sunday New York Times.  It's all I can do to get through that huge thing in a week so I decided to curtail my subscription to Sunday only.  The next Friday I got a paper with this note attached: "Happy Friday."  Now the paper splats on my driveway whenever he has an extra copy . . .  which is every day.  I presently have a pile of newspapers.  I can't read all these newspapers but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to tell him to stop.  I mean it's a free newspaper!

I've gotten bogged down in an extended free newspaper riff when the real point is: This is Alcoholics Anonymous.  This is the result of a life dedicated to growing spiritually and being of service.  This kind of stuff happens all the time.  I'm not surprised any more when it happens.  If the paper stops coming I'll be fine.  If I continue to get it I'll be fine.  When I listened to this guy drone on and on about problems of his own making, problems which interest me not a whit, a concerned and solicitous and mostly fake expression plastered on my face, I wasn't hoping for a free newspaper.  I was trying to be of service.  I was trying to be helpful.  I was trying not to think of my self every goddamn minute of the day.  Sometimes when I'm listening to people unburden themselves I'm barely listening.  I'm thinking: "I am so grateful to not be thinking about myself."

Remember this: Don't Dabble in the Past!

It's So Fine

Fine:  Being acceptable, adequate, passable, or satisfactory. 

Here's why I talk to friends one-on-one . . . 

One of my Go To dudes is a kind of mediator between disparate public agencies so he's practiced in the art of herding cats.  I'm less skilled in this arena.  I think most cats are idiots so they should all listen to me and do what I want and, thank God, the cats don't generally do this.  We were shooting the shit today about the severe polarization of our society and how this is affecting life as society begins to open back up and particularly how this affects A.A. as we transition back into a more familiar world.

One of my favorite words is fine.  It sums up so many areas of my life.  It's also remarkably hard to put into action.  When some part of my life seems out of control, unmanageable, objectionable in some way I often say: "It's going to be fine."  And it usually is.

We were talking about how different Alcoholics Anonymous groups are handing the transition from Zoom to In Person as churches and municipal buildings begin allowing us to meet again.  My trials and tribulations with the Keep It Complicated group are well documented.  The business meeting for his home group is so structured that everyone present is given the chance to speak - they go around the screen, in other words, instead of the free-for-all that occurs when my home group meets.

When it got to my buddy he said: "If we stay on Zoom, it'll be fine.  If we meet in person, it'll be fine.  If we set up a hybrid meeting of some kind, it'll be fine.  And it's probably going to be fine in a way that we don't anticipate."  It was that last phrase that really rocked my world.  It's a reminder that I can plan and plan and control and control but life usually weaves and jukes according to its own rhythms.

My home group was meeting in person for the first time today.  I decided not to attend because I anticipated the first meeting would be a little chaotic; then I decided to attend to show my support; finally I got up this morning and didn't go.

It was fine.  I'm having a fine day.

Count 'em - Four

 I think if I ever start my own multi-national company (Fair Disclosure: I don't know what this company would do or how to start a company or any desire at all to start a company) that the official motto would be: "Making Big Things Out of Small Things."  We'd run a series of commercials that featured wry actors asking:"Do you have a mouse?  Would you like to make it into an elephant?  Give us a call!  We can do that!"  In select markets we'd show a married couple puttering about the house, getting along, until one of the partners would take offense at a seemingly harmless remark and respond a little more forcefully than the circumstances would seem to warrant.  We'd show the argument getting more heated and venomous until it blows up into a fully-fledged crisis.

On a side note I looked up the phrases "Buck Naked" and "Butt Naked" last night.  Buck Naked came first, believe it or not, and the origins are murky.  There was a lot of chatter about it having some Native American connection, the idea being that male deer normally run around without any clothes on.  Seems sketchy to me.

"The first requisites of an abundant life are the spiritual things: honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love.  Until you have these qualities, quantities of material things are of little real use to you."

The Four Absolutes: Honesty (Is it true or is it false?); purity (Is it right or is it wrong?); unselfishness (How will this affect the other person?); and love (Is it ugly or is it beautiful?)  These were benchmarks of behavior in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I particularly like the qualification for love: Beauty versus Ugliness.  That's simple and it's clean.

Here's another funny contradiction in the spiritual life that we pursue: that the longer we're sober, the longer we're on a spiritual path, the more stuff we seem to accumulate and the less important it is to us.  This is manifestly unfair.  The exact opposite is true, of course, in the realm of our personal relationships: they get better and better, more abundant, and we value them more.  But the stuff, the money, the houses?  We don't seem to attach as much importance to them as when we were drinking.

Resentments

 "Try never to judge.  The human mind is so delicate and so complex that only its Maker can know it wholly.  Each mind is so different, actuated by such different motives, controlled by such different circumstance, influenced by such different sufferings.  You cannot know all the influences that have gone to make up a personality."

Resentment:  Anger or displeasure stemming from belief that one has been wronged or betrayed by others; indignation.

"Never forget that resentment is a deadly hazard to an alcoholic."  Bam.

"But with the alcoholic . . . this business of resentment is infinitely grave."  Boom.

"Resentment is the 'number one' offender."  Badda Bing.

"The elder statesman is the one who sees the wisdom of the group's decision, who holds no resentment over his reduced status, whose judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound, and who is willing to sit quietly on the sidelines patiently awaiting developments."  Judas, Mary, and Joseph, please leave me alone.

I'm pondering my resentment over the break-away Keep It Complicated group.  I've been trying to convince myself it's not a real resentment, that it's not a serious, deadly resentment.  I'm looking up words, reading from the literature, talking to other alcoholics whose wisdom and experience I respect, and I gotta tell ya I'm getting slaughtered: I got a resentment.  I can soften it by calling it mild or justified but then again I used to justify drinking 18 beers and then driving a ton of steel and glass at 70 MPH.

I don't think I'm resentful about the group itself - SuperK pointed out I don't even know who's attending the meeting.  I'm pretty sure I'm resentful at the ringleaders who started the meeting.  I see them as grouchy, grumpy, bitchy old men who don't like to be told what to do and if you explain why they're being told to do something they don't want to do they brush the explanations off with facile reasoning.  And I perceive - maybe correctly, maybe not - that this kind of behavior has taken an awful public health emergency and worsened it and extended it, and this has affected ME.

It gets worse.  My sponsor also attends this meeting.  I don't put him in the same category as the ringleaders but he's still attending the meeting.  And when the ringleaders do something I find particularly irritating he sort of laughs it off.  This irritates the shit out of me.  It sounds like one of those laughs that came out of me when I would say something like "those 18 beers?  boy, I don't remember the drive home last night" or "I gave that woman gonorrhea but she thought she caught it from her boyfriend."  It's humorous if you're soulless.  

I'm having trouble talking with my sponsor at the moment because "how's your Program going?" is a standard part of my stump speech with any alcoholic.  It's a way to keep my friends accountable and a way for me to remind myself that I better be taking care of my Program.  The good thing for me is that I have a ton of close friends who have a ton of sobriety so my sponsee-sponsor relationship at this point is a lot less fraught with importance . . .

Still . . . infinitely grave . . . 

Justified

Justify: To provide an acceptable explanation for; to make an argument to prove that one is in the right. 

I have a Facebook account which I try to avoid.  While I enjoy the occasional  humorous reflection there is too much ill will and political bullshit and general mendacity for me.  I do check in from time to time to see if there are any funny cat videos but that's about it.  Imagine my consternation one day to see a distant A.A. friend holding a bottle of some kind of non-alcoholic beer.  He included a long, somewhat defensive sounding post about why it was OK for him to drink a non-alcoholic beer.  He's a smart, considering guy so his rationale was well-thought out.  And it sounded to me suspiciously like an alcoholic drinking alcohol and justifying it.  A lot of people chimed in with a lot of atta boy, good for you kind of comments but they also sounded like they were justifying drinking alcohol.  One guy said he just really enjoyed a nice hoppy tasting beverage after work, that you can only drink so many seltzer waters.  I'd point out that there are many thousands of other non-alcoholic drinks out there but this crowd was on a roll . . . 

After much reflecting I posted this on his page: "I think the non-nonalcoholic beer crowd would point out that regular beer is typically 5% by volume while nonalcoholic beer can be as much as .5%. Very low alcohol, yes, at no more than 10% of the alcohol of most regular beers but it still does contain alcohol. Perhaps it's like comparing a shot of whisky with a shot glass that has 90% water and 10% whiskey.  To me drinking 12 oz of non-alcoholic beer is the same as just taking a couple of sips of regular beer.

My general philosophy about social media can be summed up by saying: "My page - my prerogative."  Everybody gets to post whatever they want and if I don't have anything supportive to say I generally leave it alone but I felt strongly enough about this bullshit to chime in.  I'm assuming if this guy was interested in my opinion he would have asked for it . . . which he did not.  The next time I checked in I was flinching a little, ready for some flame-throwing.  Nada.  Nothing.  Not a peep.  For the next few days I looked at my post which was totally, completely ignored.  Who knows why?  Although I wonder if my rationale was a little embarrassing for the non-alcoholic beer crowd.  I mean . . . why the fuck would you even do that?  It would be like me saying I found this vegetation that looks like weed, smells like weed, tastes like weed, and has 5% THC content - very low, but still present - and I was smoking it in a 3 foot long purple bong.

 I guess the great thing about quitting drinking is that it's an individual decision.

Doctor Seaweed

"Calmness is constructive of good.  Agitation is destructive of good.  I should not rush into action.  I should be 'be still.'  Then I should act only as God directs me through my conscience.  Calmness is trust in action.  I should seek all things which can help me to cultivate calmness.  To attain material things, the world learns to attain speed.  To attain spiritual things, I have to learn to attain a state of calm."

Speed, baby.  It's what makes the world go round.  Fast is good, faster is better, fastest is what I'm shooting for.  Get there fast.  You don't even have to know where you're going as long as you're in a hurry.  Nothing ever goes sideways for me as long as I act quickly and without considering the consequences.

What do I think I am?  An emergency room physician?

Full Acceleration

"God can work through you better when you are not hurrying.  Go very slowly, very quietly, from one duty to the next, taking time to rest and pray between.  Do not be too busy.  Take everything in order."

I've always said that I have two speeds: Full Acceleration and Completely Stopped.  I either have the accelerator mashed to the floorboards or the car is sitting in the garage, up on blocks, with the battery disconnected.  Back to balance, Seaweed.  Get in the middle.

"In dealing with personalities, it is a mistake to step out too much on your own.  You must try to be guided by God in all human relationships."

I can't even comment on this passage today.  How powerful is the thought that if I turn my relationships over to a Higher Power then they'll work out fine?  This has been particularly relevant for me as the Keep It Complicated group has been holding a series of interminable business meetings to decide how everything is going to work as we transition back to live meetings.  There are members who are eager to start meeting in person again, as soon as possible; others who want to keep Zoom going, people who don't drive or have kids at home or are sitting in from out of town; and a faction who would like to see some kind of hybrid meeting where a monitor would be set up in the meeting room so that Zoom people could virtually attend the live meeting.

Thank God I wasn't in charge of this clusterfuck.  East Coast Seaweed would have been out of control in his attempts to be in control.  My attitude has always been to get things started as simply and quickly as possible and then work out any kinks as we go along.  The church is undoubtedly going to be changing the requirements for using their room fast and furiously as society starts to reopen so to my thinking we needn't try to work out how stuff is going to be working six months down the road.  It's hard enough trying to imagine everything in a month let alone next year, especially since we're probably imagining incorrectly.  The group, alas, has a different agenda which seems needlessly involved to me.  In my mind a well-run business meeting should last about 20 minutes so I didn't feel overly guilty bailing out 45 minutes into the last two meetings, both times before anything of substance had even been voted on.

Surprisingly enough, they got along fine without me.

"We alcoholics used so little self-control when we were drinking.  We were so absolutely selfish that it does us good to give up something once in a while.  Using self-discipline and denying ourselves a few things is good for us."

This is always good advice.  Deny yourself something every now and then.  Doing something just because you feel like it doesn't mean that it's a great idea.

Calamity

 Calamity:  The distress that results from a great disaster.

"We know this because we see monotony, pain, and even calamity turned to good use by those who keep trying to practice A.A.'s Twelve Steps.   Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity."

I've had like four calamities in my life - and none in the last 35 years - but, to hear me talk, you'd think I was under a constant mortal threat.

This whole idea of being hard on myself . . . Where does this come from?  Why can't alcoholics give themselves a break?  When I was physically sober but not yet emotionally sober I would often leave a sales call - a sales call where I SOLD SOMETHING - and sit in my car, feeling bad about myself.  I didn't sell more things or a more expensive thing or meet more people to sell more expensive things to.  This is too much.  This is a joyless existence.  It's wonderful to be motivated, another altogether to be compulsive about it.

Dude talked this morning about suffering through some growing pains.  He's maybe four years sober.  I've been at this for 35 years and I'm still suffering through growing pains.

Another dude talked about his coworkers chiding him for being a little intense.  If this guy reduces his intensity 90% he may get to a little intense.  He's a long, long way from a little intense.

I asked a guy before the meeting started today if he lived in our town.  He paused.  "That's an interesting question," he replied.  Only in A.A.  "Where do you live" is not a trick question.  You should have a quick response to that one.

"God takes our efforts for good and blesses them.  God needs our efforts.  Our efforts are necessary.  We cannot merely relax and drift with the tide.  When difficulties come, our efforts are needed to surmount them.  But God directs our efforts into the right channels and God's power is necessary to help us choose the right."

Constitutionally Unable

 "Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.  There are such unfortunates.  They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way."

Constitutionally: In respect to mental or emotional makeup.

This phrase, found in Chapter 5 "How It Works," has always made me a little nervous.  I think sometimes it's an excuse offered by people who aren't doing the work to get and stay sober.  I think most people who don't stay sober aren't doing the work; through stubbornness and willful ignorance.  I don't think there are too many people who are so damaged internally that they can't work The Steps.  I think most people just don't do the work.  It's hard - I get it.  But it's not that hard and it's not as hard as you think and there are countless other folks who have had it worse than you and still managed to do the deal.  So get to work and quit feeding us bullshit.

A few nights ago a friend of mine from A.A. was struck by a car crossing a busy road at night and at an unmarked crosswalk.  His injuries were severe.  He was declared brain dead and died shortly after his family removed him from life support.  He leaves two sons - one in his 20s, one still an infant.  He had drifted away from The Program and back into addiction the last few years.  He was a profoundly damaged man, having spent 15 years in a mental institution when he was a kid.  I don't know whether he had finally had enough and just walked into heavy traffic or if he was high and drunk and didn't know what he was doing or both of those or neither.  I guess it doesn't matter at this point.  He was a gentle soul, much loved in life who will be sorely missed now.

This is constitutionally unable.  This qualifies.

Malevolence

 Big Book story today.  The jist of the story was that the protagonist never felt comfortable in his own skin, never having a feeling of belonging until he entered Alcoholics Anonymous.  This is something that is very common among alcoholics, that feeling of apartness, of not understanding how anything worked.  Everyone I ran into seemed so comfortable in their own skins and I felt like my skeleton was trying to burst violently out of my body and run away.

I process alcohol differently than most people.

God speaks to me through you guys.  I have never had God speak to me directly.  I don't know what God's voice sounds like.  I did, however, hear voices from time to time when I got the right cocktail of drugs and alcohol working real good.  And I know what SuperK's voice sounds like.  She's sort of a minor god in our household.  I don't believe she's the only God but she's godlike.

Malevolence:  Having or displaying ill will; wishing harm on others; having an evil or harmful influence.

A woman shared this morning about joining the Benevolence Committee at her church in an attempt to be of service.  I wonder if there's a Malevolence Committee that meets down in the boiler room?  Real secretive group.  Hard to join.  Harder to leave.  Everyone's dressed in black and everyone's pissed.  I'd be interested in that group.

And Malevolence would be an excellent name for a hard rock band.

The leader shared about being in the throes of a general life funk; one of those times where his serenity is thin and his ire is ascendant.  The advice he keeps getting is: Take it easy.  We're human.  We're not always going to feel great.  Deal with it.  It'll pass.  He's right around five or six years sober and my experience in A.A. is that lots of people get irritable at that point.  The easy gains have been made; the heavy god-sense is still being developed; and the day to day recovery work seems repetitive and onerous.  

You're Perfect

I read an opinion piece from a woman who was reflecting on her personal relationships and how they've changed during the relative isolation from other people that we've all had to endure during the pandemic and how these relationships are going to look as society reopens.  Like me this woman has a fairly introverted personality, preferring time alone or with a small group of friends and family instead of joining in larger, more raucous events, so she hasn't been as crippled by her more isolated than normal pandemic circumstances.  Her point - backed by many psychologists - is that most of us have the time and capacity for a handful of really deep relationships.  These relationships require maintenance and for most of us we don't have the time or the interest in doing the work to keep a larger group of people very close and intense.  She felt some freedom in not having to engage other parents from her children's school or to chit chat with the group of people who work in marketing on the next floor down.  And that this is OK.  This is OK.  I've learned to manage my relationships a lot more efficiently in A.A., maintaining the important ones and giving my self a break for not maintaining the less important ones.

I will note that for most of us in Alcoholics Anonymous we are in the position to enjoy the embarrassing riches of many deep relationships.  I keep a list of mine and there's like forty people on it.  Forty people!  Some of them I'm in contact with almost daily; some I engage weekly; and the rest may lay fallow for weeks or months at a time but when we next speak it's like putting on an old velvet glove.  It's as if we were having a conversation and I had to excuse myself to poop and when I return we just continue the conversation, ignoring the fact that I was gone too long to pretend that I just had to pee.  Everyone knew I was pooping.

This is a blessing.  The friends, not the pooping, although that's a blessing, too.  Probably a bigger blessing at my age.  If someone said I had to choose between a life as a hermit, with no friends, or taking a good poop first thing every morning I'd have to get back to them on that one.

Anyway, the point isn't an analysis of my bowel movements but rather this reminder that we all need to enjoy a comfortable, relaxed, understanding relationship with ourselves before we re-engage other people.  If you cherish your time alone or you need to be in a crowd all the time or - more likely - somewhere in between, it's all okay.  You're fine.  You're perfect.  Go with it and go with it guilt free.

Me. At the Center of the Universe.

 Easy Does It.

"Alcoholics always do everything to excess.  They drink too much.  They have too many resentments.  They hurt themselves physically and mentally by too much of everything.  So when they come into A.A. they have to learn to take it easy.

Take it easy?  Take it easy?  Tell me more about this concept, oh, master.

A.A. teaches us to take it easy.  We learn how to relax and to stop worrying abut the past or the future, to give up our resentments and hates and tempers, to stop being critical of people, and to try to help them instead.  So in the time that's left to me to live , I'm going to try to take it easy, to relax and not to worry, to try to be helpful to others and to trust God."

This is some wild shit.

"I must overcome myself before I can truly forgive other people for injuries done to me.  The very thought of wrongs means that my self is in the foreground.  Since the self cannot forgive, I must overcome my selfishness.  I must cease trying to forgive those who fretted or wronged me.  It is a mistake for me even to think about these injuries.  I must aim at overcoming myself in my daily life and then I will find there is nothing in me that remembers injury, because the only thing injured, my selfishness, is gone."

Sometimes the stuff in the Hazelden "Twenty Four Hours a Day" book gets a little too religious for me.  But then again I'm usually looking for things to object to so when I chill out and lay back I learn to see all of it from a different perspective.  I don't have a totally clear understanding of this metaphysical paragraph but I get the jist of it - I'm so worried about myself that I place everyone in the world into a category with me at the center.  It just isn't about me.  If I think you hurt me somehow then I'm looking at the situation from my perspective.  

I ask that I may hold no resentments.  I pray that my mind may be washed clean of all past hates and fears.

Immediate Cognition

 Instinct:  An intuitive reaction not based on rational conscious thought.

Rational, conscious thought.  Hmmm.  I like that.

Intuition: Immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes.

There are so many good hard rock band names here I hardly know where to start but Immediate Cognition is going to be hard to beat.  It sounds like something you'd hear on an old NASA tape as a rocket to the moon reached ignition: "We have immediate cognition."

Reading from Step Four in the 12 & 12 today produced these gems in the first three pages of the Step:

Instincts on Rampage.

Collision of Instincts.

Misdirected Instinct.

"Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably on others . . . "

Just rack up those band names.  I mean . . . Instincts on Rampage?  Are you kidding me.  That group would have like five lead guitarists.  If you had a Finnish Death Metal festival in an abandoned nuclear waste cave 2 miles underground you could do worse than leading off with Instincts on Rampage and then having Collision of Instincts and Misdirected Instinct follow them wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.  

Whenever I read about the alcoholic and his or her instincts I'm always struck by the tension between these instincts that all of us have - for sex, money, and prestige - and the overwrought application of these instincts in the average active alcoholic.  It's not that the instincts are bad but that we take them out to the Nth degree and we do it on both sides of the fucking degree.  We hoard money or we waste it.  We act like sluts and then we act like monks.  It's never in between with us.  Reading this Step always reminds me that when I came into A.A. I felt like I didn't have the basic tool kit for life that most of you seemed to possess.  I didn't get it.  I didn't get anything.  I was totally lost.

Well, that's what this literature is for.  It's the toolkit.  It contains the instructions.

Eternal Thought

 All material things, the universe, the world, even our bodies, may be Eternal Thought expressed in time and space.  The more the physicists and astronomers reduce matter, the more it becomes a mathematical formula, which is thought.  In the final analysis, matter is thought.  When Eternal thought expresses itself within the framework of space and time, it becomes matter.  Our thoughts, within the box of space and time, cannot know anything first hand, except material things.  But we can deduce that outside the box of space and time is Eternal Thought, which we can call God.