Show Time

"There is always a temptation to speak beyond your own experience, in order to make a good impression.  This is never effective.  What does not come from the heart does not reach the heart.  What comes from personal experience and a sincere desire to help the other person reaches the heart."

I love the feeling of giving a good speech at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  You know what I'm talking about - people are nodding or laughing and I'm thinking: "Awwwwwright - Show Time!"  This is why I spend half of the meeting preparing my remarks.  I want to sound good and wise and insightful.  I don't care what you're sharing - I care about the impression I'm making.  This is bad enough but what makes it worse is that I got a schtick for most topics.  I got a little speech I can recite that sounds good but may not be what I'm currently feeling.  I love pitch meetings or those where the leader calls on people.  I can listen better when I'm not sure I'm going to get to talk.

I went to a jail meeting when I lived in Cincinnati.  This was a bad jail, a big time prison for men who had committed violent felonies and where going to be locked up for a long, long time.  I was scared shitless the first few times I went and scared almost shitless every other time so to compensate I tried to act like a bad-ass.  For the record - I am the least bad-ass person you'll ever meet.  My wife - who weighs like 100 pounds - can beat me up so I'm sure I fooled precisely no one who was incarcerated.  The lesson I learned was to be authentic.  It's not hard to get a feel for who I am.  I'm pretty transparent.

My part.  My part.  What is my part?  Your part is none of my business.  But I don't want to look at my part!  Your part is more delicious to dissect.

Isolate: To set apart or cut off from others.

Solitude:  The state of being by oneself.

Solitude versus isolation.  One is okay and one is not.  You can figure it out on your own.

Living sober means being uncomfortable sometimes.  Or: The good thing about being sober is that you get to feel things again but the bad thing about being sober is you have to feel things again.

I have a good complicator.

Regret nothing.

A.A. is a little play world where we can practice being adults.  I did not know what I was doing when I got sober so I practiced on some patient A.A.s.