Bad.

Bad:  Not good; not as it should be; defective in quality; below standard; lacking in worth; inadequate.

I left a meeting early this morning.  Stomped out or stormed out might be more apropos phrasing but I don't want to get dramatic, either.  I leave meetings early from time to time - not often but it isn't a rarity by any means - demonstrating that I have at best a glancing knowledge of the concept of "principles before personalities."  Not  "principals before personalities," of course, which would look more like a line-up of the men and women who ran your school standing at the head of a group of indeterminate personalities.  "Principles before personalities" is only the main spiritual axiom which governs the functioning of our whole Fellowship so you can easily see why I slight it so often, preferring to concentrate on more important matters like how am I going to get my way today.

This is a meditation group so it doesn't attract a lot of newcomers.  It's hard for me to sit still for 15 minutes straight and I've been working away on this whole thing for 25 years; there's no way I could have done it early on.  That leaves a group that has a lot of sobriety - not a bad thing, to be sure - but people like that can get in their heads a little bit too much, forgetting about sharing from the heart.  And it isn't a big group, either, so the same people share each week and as a general rule, most people talk too long, violating the ancient Seaweed Principle of "You aren't nearly as interesting to other people as you are to yourself."  I keep an eye on the clock when I'm talking - unless I'm really in a bad way or I'm all wound up about something or the other I think 2 minutes is plenty of time to say what I have to say.  Anything longer than that and I'm in the "I sure like the sound of my voice" zone.  A distinctly bad zone, one that I should have obliterated by picking up the phone and calling someone a long time ago.

This morning the people who spoke for the amount of time I could tolerate their toneless, aimless droning-on were not riveting.  I listened for a while, contemplating a beautiful autumn morning out the window directly in front of me, imagining the thrill of my large coffee sliding down my throat, and I got up and left.  Not impressive behavior; not especially spiritual, either.

If you've never been to a bad meeting then you haven't gone to enough meetings.