So I pitched a bitch and didn't go to my men's meeting to protest the selection of current reading material. I'm sure I showed them. I'm sure they could barely manage to hold a meeting with me absent. I'm sure they didn't know what to do without me because it is . . . no doubt about it . . . all about me.
I opted instead for a different men's meeting near my house, one that I had tried before and found personally to be a poor fit. Nothing the matter with the meeting, mind you, just didn't scratch my itch for a variety of mundane reasons. I walk in, sit down, eye the very young secretary approaching. He introduces himself; asks if I've new to the meeting; asks if I'm new to The Fellowship, which pisses me off even though it's an excellent and entirely appropriate question. I'm pissed off when I go to a meeting and no one asks these questions. You can see I'm pissed off fairly easily when everything's going my way so I've really go my finger on the trigger right now.
Then he asked if I wanted to lead the meeting which also pissed me off - I hate people who wait until the meeting is about to start to find a leader, believing it to show a certain amount of laziness on the part of the secretary. I ignore the fact that many of my friends like this technique, believe that off-the-cuff remarks come from the heart and not from the head - alcoholics don't like too much time to think about things. I ask for one of our Books to help me select a topic - it's better to hear the wisdom of our founders than the wisdom of Seaweed. They don't have any literature available - pissing me off - although they agree to let me use one of the new books that they have for sale, somewhat begrudgingly, I thought. Maybe they thought I was going to share and then take off with the book at the cookie break. I'd be more likely to take off with a couple of bags of cookies.
Because I'm a little anxious and shut-down right now I talked about the two deaths that I believe are still affecting my mood, the low-grade depression hanging over my head like a little storm cloud. The funny thing about losing my sponsor is that Ken is exactly the guy I'd call to say I'm upset over losing my sponsor. I did say that I had a Vacation City sponsor, admitting that because I don't have the depth and strength of a connection with him that I did with Ken that it's harder to pick up the phone and call. The section I read out of The Book talked about the fact that most of our problems are of our own making, that we act like directors of a play who want to control the sets, the lighting, the music, the performers, and that everything would be OK if people did what we wanted.
So what did people want to talk about? How to find a sponsor. I'm often amazed at the disconnect between what I say in a meeting and what people hear. When I think I'm tearing it up nobody says boo; when I stumble around, trying to collect my thoughts, I seem to hit a nerve. This turn of events, of course, really pissed me off. Why weren't these actors reading from my script? I tried to open my mind, to hear what people were actually saying instead of what I wanted to hear, and realized that there were 5 or 6 guys at the meeting who had announced less than 30 days of sobriety. Of course - my message was meant to spark a conversation about how to accomplish the difficult task of asking someone to be a sponsor instead of one revolving around the fact that someone who should know better isn't reaching out for help. It also made me realize that I need to ramp up the effort and get some more phone numbers instead of criticizing the people who I'm not calling anyway.
That kind of pissed me off.
No comments:
Post a Comment