Blog entry for:

long enough to learn to listen, allows me to get more out of meetings than just being present. i cannot speak for others, but i know that in the past, i often shared just to hear the sound of my own voice, to be the main attraction or to appear more spiritual than everyone else in the room. i cannot say what the motivates my peers to share as they do, but one of the ironies is that sometimes those who find the need to share the loudest and proclaim the mots often about how well their recovery program is going are the ones who drift in and out of the rooms and speak to being “around” recovery. there are those, however who do this gig, just for today fore years on end:

Ryan B,
SIX (6) years clean.
I do remember when you struggled to get six hours clean.
Thank you for showing me how to do this recovery gig.

Jayme S.
TWENTY-One (21) years clean.
WOW -- living proof that this stuff does work!

back to the topic at hand.
as i look to my meeting attendance, i can see that it waxes and wanes based on my level of spiritual fitness. ironically the more spiritually fit i feel, the more i attend meetings. when i am “out of sots” i find a plethora of excuses to keep myself out of meetings and the one that pops to the top of the stack, most often, is that i just do not get anything, because all they share is “bumper stickers, slogans and clichés.”
as true as that may be, who the f*ck do i think i am to toss an entire group into the dumpster, merely because i am not looking as good as i desire to be? certainly food for thought as i head on out this morning and look to my own motives and the content of what i share this evening. it is a good day to be clean and to be starting my sixty-third trip around the sun.

∞ DT ∞