I’ve asked a guy here to be my sponsor. I heard him talk at a Sunday meeting I attend and could relate to his story quite a bit. He mentioned his home group – a big book step study – and invited us to join him there on Wednesdays. This was right before Xmas and when I thanked him for his share after the meeting I asked where to find it.
Two weeks later I found myself at the Wednesday night Big Book Study and they were on step 9 – the lead referenced the book, the participants did too and it was a good meeting. There was even talk of traditions and a reading from a pamphlet.
The group puts on a retreat in April, I went to the committee meeting about it and became intrigued. The next week i heard they were going to have a business meeting/group conscience so I went to that to help decide – it was then that I decided to make it my home group. I volunteered to be the Grapevine rep and joined a Traditions breakfast committee that we’re putting on in April.
I’m excited to be a part of this group.
I met the guy I asked to be my sponsor on Saturday morning to see if we both thought it would work out. We met for an hour and a half and chatted about all kinds of things. He has some different takes on things than I’m used to but I’m willing to listen and open to change. He has what I want – a knowledgable calm… best way I can describe it.
He says we’re going to look at the steps together around “the big three” in my life right now… and my job is to identify them so we can begin… scary, interesting and challenging to me and foreign ….
We’ll see how it all plays out, but I’m hopeful that I’ll continue to change and grow.
It was a weekend full of AA stuff, and there wasn’t even a round up.
Friday I attended the 5:30 meeting at Prince of Peace – they have a meeting there everyday at 5:30 I guess and the format is different on each day maybe… on Tuesday I spoke there and heard the Friday was a call-up ticket meeting so I told Cliff about it and we both attended. It was a very full meeting, saw many faces I know and enjoyed the meeting. Afterwards Cliff and I had dinner at a restaurant across the way – not bad at all.
Saturday morning I headed to AHWATUKEE for the morning Men’s stag, it’s open discussion. It’s really a birthday meeting, they let celebrants share and then pick the topic. Saturday a gentlemen picked up his 40 year chip and the topic wasn’t too bad. Afterward Cliff and I had breakfast, then I met his dog Gunner. Cliff was also kind enough to bring my new bicycle home in his truck and I went riding almost right after I arrived home. I rode about 10 miles and then was ready to go to sleep for the rest of the day, but I didn’t. 🙂
I’ve been watching the TV show Warehouse 13 on Netflix and one of the characters is in AA and that’s been interesting to watch, in one episode he switches bodies with his partner and she’d been drinking and it kind of throws him for a loop. I like that he’s a regular guy in AA and still able to deal with the world – as weird as it may be – without being so different or a stick-in-the-mud.
Sunday morning was another meeting, i even went to the fellowship before the meeting at Starbucks. My friend Roger picked up his 18 year chip and talked about his recent trip back to NY where he first sobered up many years ago. There was also someone who just moved to the area who picked up a 2 year chip, she moved here from Virginia Beach and her sponsor told her to find a meeting to make coffee at and she asked for help to find such a place. Over all it was a good meeting.
After the meeting Sunday I did laundry and then took the bicycle out for a nice ride, there are nice bike paths all over here so lots to see and do.
This morning I’m going to work, some meetings and a doctor appointment in the afternoon – more on that later.
I’m certainly busier than I usually am. Between work, AA and finding things in the new city Im have very little time to just sit and do nothing or even try out the pool (I don’t think the water is warm enough yet, but soon). I’m going to three to four meetings a week, bowling on Tuesday nights with a sober group and that’s been fun.
Several people here with long term sobriety regularly go to 2 meetings a day. They hit a 7:00 a.m. meeting and a night meeting. Not one clue why you’d need to, but if that’s what they need I guess that’s what they need. It might make them a stronger community I guess. But that’s not for me, not only because I am on my way to work around 7:00 but because I think it’s stupid… at the beginning of this paragraph i was trying to not judge… but thats what I really feel. A purpose of AA or any of the other 12 steps is to get us to be active participants of the real world in a beneficial way – I think going to so many meetings is trying to hide from alcohol or temptations of alcohol. There is a real solution written about in our book that makes it safe to go into even the most sordid of places if our motives are right. I think one meeting a day is overkill… two makes it hard not to shake my head when I hear about.
I picked up my 19 year chip at a few meetings in the last week and was asked to speak on Step 12 Monday night. That’ll be fun.
I’m looking forward to seeing Star Trek this weekend and Memorial Day Weekend the following.
At today’s meeting, like at most meetings, the secretary/chairperson/whomever made the announcement for everyone to please silence their cell phones, she did so to her own phone as she was asking all of us to. This has become common place in meetings that I’ve been attending for quite a while now, however when I first came to meetings cell phones weren’t generally found outside of your car, where they were attached by a cord. (Yes, this means I am quite old.) It doesn’t really matter if the phone is silenced, I and others can still hear it when you have it on vibrate and then all the noise you make while you rummage through your purse or back pack trying to see who it is that contacted you. But, don’t worry, I’m sure the person talking wasn’t saying anything important enough for us to be able to hear them.
Old Princess Phones
This morning someone’s phone rang during the meeting, it was an actual phone ring tone like the old princess phones used to make before technology came and made those outdated. The woman rummaged through her purse for several minutes, giving us that delightful tone repeatedly 5 times before she got to it – unfortunately she didn’t silence it then and we were subjected to the voicemail notification sound, which was a high-pitched chirp. Experience, strength and hope? nah, thanks, I’m trying to answer the phone. It’s bound to happen, I myself have forgotten to turn off my phone on a few occasions and now double-check more frequently than I used to.
It’s usually not too bad when this happens, at the same time that this woman’s phone was going off music started to play outside the room, we could feel the deep bass reverberations and it grew increasingly louder – several people went out to see what was going on and the music stopped – for a while – it made an appearance again later.
What really gets my goat is the folks that are using their phones and gadgets in the room during the meeting. One guy in particular gets several messages on his cell phone during meetings and he just answers them and puts his phone back in its holster, did I mention it makes a “beep” each time he gets a message, he has it turned down low, but all of us can still hear it. Thank you sir, but perhaps you should talk to your sponsor about the definition of sharing, this isn’t it.
Two people at today’s meeting were busy reading emails and typing away on their iPhone, one of them had the “click” activated for each letter and we were able to hear that she can type quite fast when she’s using it, I’m sure her boss is happy about that. Thanks for sharing.
Is it really so much to ask that you pay attention during the meeting instead of using your phone? I called someone out of this a year or so ago, a chronic relapser that was busy typing away into his iPhone right next to me when I was trying to listen to the meeting. I told him after the meeting that he might have more success at staying sober if he put his phone down and listened to the message. He didn’t take it well and a few months later he went out to do some more experimentation.
Recently a conversation about younger people and their attachment to technology was had by Suzanne and myself, she’s a supervisor and during a recent training session mentioned that young people have a different work ethic than what was instilled in people my age or older. It’s not that they don’t work and get their job done, but they tend to do two things at once that us (and I’m not trying to group us all up into one category) older folks can’t really do as well. This is not an excuse for the sales clerk in Macy’s to be on their cell phone when I’m checking out or for the Burger King worker to be texting instead of helping the customers, but it should help me to come to terms with the changing face of how things work, sometimes even in AA meeting.
At a Big Book meeting in San Antonio last year I was getting annoyed at a man who was on his iPad during the meeting, it really started to get to me. Then when he shared his experience he started reading from it and I realized that he had the text on his iPad, I suppose this should have made me less annoyed but it didn’t, I had to come to appreciate it, it doesn’t help that technically speaking what’s on his iPad is not General Service Conference-Approved material. I have it on my iPad also, sometimes it’s nice to be able to look at the Book on the technology that’s available and I hope AA catches up soon.
Speaking of AA and technology, this afternoon I was able to make my AA birthday contribution via credit card on the web, I LOVE that. If it’s your AA birthday you should check it out at www.aa.org .
It was nice to get away for the weekend, even if only to Virginia Beach. I flew down to spend time with Suzanne and celebrate my 17th AA birthday – even though that was on the last day of the trip. Thursday night we hit a Big Book meeting and some fellowship before at Ruby Tuesday, we had tried to go to a Mexican restaurant but as it was Cinco De Mayo it was impossible. All the Mexican restaurants get busy with white people on that day and we were the unfortunate whiteys. Ruby Tuesday’s while good food, was just one of the oddest restaurant experiences I’ve had. The wait staff thought one of our party ordered a side dish as a main meal, a glass came apart at the table a flooded us with soda, asking for napkins to help clean up the soda was confusing to them… and to top it off they didn’t even give any discounts for the soda/glass disaster.
At the Thursday night meeting there was fun too – one of the guys present was on fire with AA and the book, he brought some life into the meeting – just a little over five years sober and he was alive with the spirit, great to see. We also had the other spectrum, the new girls who kept chatting during the meeting about this and that and we kept hearing “Cinco De Mayo” they were asked to be quiet and when that happened were insulted – one of them left. Alas, we alcoholics are sensitive creatures and it takes some of us a long time to outgrow that handicap.
Friday I just sat around and watched cartoons on my iPad and that evening we went to see the movie Thor – which we all liked.
Saturday I walked around the mall while Suzanne took a final and then taught a fitness class, it was alright. Then she and I went out to eat before hitting another meeting, this one started with a read from the Daily Reflections and was going pretty well when “Part-Time Alcoholic” started to share about why he was different and special and didn’t really belong – several people interrupted him with “Keep Coming Back” (including me) until the lead asked him to stop advising him to find a sponsor who could help him sort out if he belonged there. He left, and then the meeting changed to folks talking about that as other people thought the meeting chased him off – and a few people who are forced to go to the meeting were offended and left… someone chased after them. I was actually alright with it, the “Part Time Alcoholic” is still suffering from his terminal uniqueness and if he’s going to start to learn it should be now.
Sunday, the morning of my anniversary, Suzanne and I met her husband Paul at the gym for Body Step – at least it’s not too boring. Then Paul and I went to iHop where we had a self-proclaimed “OCD server” who asked us if we were right or left-handed (so he knew which way to turn the cup handles) and if we could place all our trash in a pile at the end of the table so he could collect it…. it was odd, but the food was good. Then we moved a couch from their garage to their living room, one of those sofa sleepers that are stupidly heavy.
All in all, it was a nice weekend. Suzanne kept asking me what I wanted to do and there really wasn’t anything that I wanted. Which I think she found very frustrating – not much I can do about it. It was nice to be away. Oh… did I mention I got to spend time with Farley, her dog? I’m his favorite uncle.
