Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
People have taken to using people’s full names, tagging them in posts, and much more in the new online meeting world. We discuss what might be acceptable and what might violate traditions, specifically the 11th tradition. The online meeting world is a lawless land where the rules are etched in beach sand, at best. We also go over some of the funniest things people have seen in online meetings so far. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/.
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4/12/20 People have taken to using people’s full names, tagging them in posts, and much more in the new online meeting world. We discuss what might be acceptable and what might violate traditions, specifically the 11th tradition. The online meeting world is a lawless land where the rules are etched in beach sand, at best. We also go over some of the funniest things people have seen in online meetings so far.
Transcript:
you to record it tells me you’re recording ask me but it tells me you are and now thing just popped up in the corner interesting it’s it tells me that you know it might be illegal in some places to record without informing people and so it’s gonna ask I’m like oh okay now doesn’t ask it just doesn’t I mean it tells me but it right permission or I didn’t have to click anything I guess the the permission is just here you are you’re informed it’s happening yeah it’s implied because there’s a recording button up in my top corner hold on
saying I need something something new to say this week well I’m in long-term care at work alright are we ready yeah yeah I think all right welcome back to recovery sort of I’m Jason I’m the guy in long-term care and I’m Billy I’m a person in long-term abstinence so before we do anything else I wanted to send out a big congratulations to us because this is episode 26 which means we have to do this for half a year Wow right we’re we’re halfway to season two it’s just uh you know look I don’t know if the everyday person struggles with you know deciding they’re gonna do something and changing their life routine slightly to make that happen and sticking with it for any amount of time I get it we might not make a whole year we might not make five years whatever but we did make a commitment to do a podcast and here we are six months later we are still continuing to do this I get the feeling that you know out of every hundred podcast probably 90 of them fall off by this point because there’s not much glory in it for sure so I don’t know I think that’s a congratulations to us not that we weren’t already meeting on Sunday mornings to meditate anyway but still a little more work and out of our routine yeah for sure and yeah just the amount of I mean we haven’t I think only missed one Sunday and we recorded it on another day right you’ve been you know made a commitment to do this and following through and yeah that’s awesome I don’t know if it speaks to our commitment level our obsession with doing it or just with the fact that we have no lives and we can definitely show up on Sunday more yeah for me it’s actually as I’ve gotten older I have gotten better at following through with things I can tell you at a younger age you know I would have definitely quit doing this by now there would have been you know there would been something that was like I can’t you know whatever we’ll do it next week it’ll be fine it doesn’t matter you know and just in that face as I’ve grown in my recovery commitments mean more I guess or I am better at following through on commitments I would definitely agree with that as I’ve grown in recovery and just gotten older in life and all those things I don’t think this is something I could have done it most points in time in my life but here we are we can’t even meet in person we’re still finding a way it’s Easter Sunday we’re still recording so you know now that I actually I do really like getting together with you and talking and we have a good time I enjoy your company so that’s a big part that makes it easier to so it really does your input and having fun and you know I enjoy doing it so no I’m totally with you there’s a lot of times it’s like Friday night or Thursday night and we’ve just decided our topic and I’m like amped up and I’m like god dammit why can’t we just record this now like I’m ready to go want to wait till Sunday morning so yes congratulations to us thank you for anyone who listens I know it’s even harder to listen during this time for some people for me for sure I am struggling to find any time to myself my kids are always up in my business being home all the time but here we are so after last week talking about step four we had a just a couple of nice comments on Facebook when we posted it Elaine talked about listening to the podcast and love here in our perspective say it she’s read to basic read a few times in the basic text and it works how am i but she gets so much more out of here and other people’s experience and she says we’re awesome and so she’s been chipping away at step four but she’s only at the resentment section out of her step working guide I’m guessing she does not specifically say that she said she’s kind of sitting on it because she doesn’t have all the resentments that she had first thing when she got clean like I get that I used to have a lot too you know but little things pop up here and there and she chooses to write and so we had a little a little back-and-forth you know she was saying probably because it was what you mentioned like having a set time each week to do that like set out on her schedule and so I started responding to her and I’m like yeah I’ve been sitting on mine for six months kind of written a little bit a couple months ago and then I set it down again for the school semester and and then you know as I’m typing I’m like you know what let me just pick a date in my calendar and so Monday nights at 6:30 is now my step work time so thank you Elaine for inspiring me to finally commit to that I appreciate it and then Noah Noah decided he said this step where keeps hiding from him but strange how the the week’s podcast helped him to find it and I all I could do was agree because uh it’s actually coming on here and talking about recovery that really inspires me to continue my recovery and then Patti just mentioned to keep your eye eye on the prize freedom from guilt shame regrets and remorse while remembering that there’s assets that will make your future joyful and blessed keep it moving without getting caught up in the feelings and uh that is motivating for me right like there’s still times when I know I’m acting as a parent with my kids out of a little bit of I don’t know ego or resentment or still some frustration and so it is motivating to be a little more free of that and a little better of a parent I believe so with that stuff out of the way a little recap we have a little bit of a topic this week and I think Billy you stumbled across a post that inspired this so I will let you take it away yes so as we’re doing more of the online meetings seeing more posts popping up about join this meeting and join that meeting and I’ve seen more some that have been sort of what I would call advertising a speaker where it’ll say hey tonight at you know such a such time Joe from Baltimore and then I’ll have a link like he’ll be tagged in the post so that you could go to his personal page for personal Facebook page and see who Joe is that sort of thing and then I saw one even more ended I’m gonna say advertently advertising which is you know it named the guy first and last name he was an actor mentioned some movies that he was in you know I mean this is this he’ll be speaking at the zoo meeting at 8 o’clock you know please come join and I thought holy [ _ ] like it’s you know it’s one thing when you’re we’re kind of pushing that boundary I I think and then to me that was like an over-the-top like come on now that’s like it’s definitely an advertisement for a speaker at a recovery meeting like how do you think that it’s not yeah that definitely when you told me about it I was like a pretty much same reaction holy [ _ ] like that that does not seem okay whatsoever yeah and so it just you know it brought up to me like wow you know what what has happened with some of our traditions how do they fall into this you know social media you know how they fall into this sort of whatever you call this particular pandemic situation with all the online meetings like you know what is an appropriate way to deal with our social media and our links to recovery and our affiliation with our particular forms of recovery in this digital era so I did a little digging and and just wanted to get some input and talk about it a little bit yes so I think you know when you first mentioned it I was it’s funny five minutes before you text me that I was on Facebook and I was getting ready to go in one of our recovery closed groups on Facebook and I was gonna post that my home group which is tonight and this was yesterday we were talking about it I was gonna say hey tomorrow you know my home group is gonna have a speaker from Texas for anybody who wants to come and then you text me listen I was like [ _ ] should I not be doing that and so it made me think of you know all the Flyers I’ve ever seen for speaker jams where they’re like oh we got out-of-town speakers and this kind of stuff and I’ve heard people [ _ ] about that like what difference does it make why do they have to be out of town who cares like a speakers a speaker and but it is kind of refreshing to hear somebody you know from somewhere else you hear the same people sometimes in your area and so I mean I guess everybody’s got an opinion about that about whether we should even say we have out-of-town speakers or just a speaker or but you you bringing up a really I mean an even further dynamic of this like you know we’re talking about a famous individual and even though it is in a closed group that is supposedly only for people in recovery there’s no real guarantee that all those people are still in recovery you know they might have been added when they were and then they left and nobody unaided them it’s not like we’re all running around keeping track of of everybody in a group and yeah the definitely mentioned in the movie like really got me I was like oh my god really but I didn’t know I mean I I went and read the traditions on this like you went a different route and found a bulletin about social media and I went and read the 11th tradition out of a couple of pieces of literature and I don’t know I I’ll say this it definitely feels wrong right it definitely feels like there’s some kind of not so positive spiritual principle behind it right and and I know for me if I was the one doing it if I had gotten the speaker and he was in my group and I was telling everybody he was there it would be because I want that like a claim by association all right I want to gain that prestige of look who I got look who I brought in so I’d be looking for some kind of validation in that I don’t know like what’s your take on it yes so like say I went and looked for some information on the different fellowships what I can’t say the difference between the two big ones that most of us are familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous both of which have a pamphlet or booklet that addresses social media in the Alcoholics Anonymous one they more specifically address those types of issues it actually gives a little bit of a story of mmm I guess back in the early days there was a famous baseball player who made a notable you know turn around I guess between his public life and falling apart and then getting into recovery and you know his career coming back and things like that and then he affiliated with the fellowship of which they were they were great with it at the time they’re like oh this is awesome you know it’s great publicity it helps defeat stigma you know all those things and what they found out like with not that individual but what happened after that is sort of slowly more and more people started breaking their own anonymity some sort of people that had been in there long term then they started open in like recovery houses or recovery places affiliated with you know that 12-step fellowship you know like an endorsement kind of thing and it got very very hairy and so they reverted back and and really came back to that you know intent of that tradition which is anytime I mean and it sums it up pretty simply they don’t seem to be a lot of wishy-washy area at least in that particular informational pamphlet that I read you know you don’t give your last name and you don’t affiliate with what your path of recovery is it’s fine to say I’m a person in long-term recovery or I don’t drink anymore I’m abstinent or whatever you want to say but you should definitely not identify with your last name and as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with any sort of picture of your face and it’s pretty clear they don’t beat around the bush much at all hmm and that and that totally makes sense that’s interesting I was just reading a post about a baseball player but he was in our fellowship I believe and had something a bit is this the same guy no different okay yeah interesting all that [ __ ] up baseball players let’s run with them guys yeah right interesting interesting and then I read some stuff from the Narcotics Anonymous fellowship and there seem to be a little more open to the idea of public media in essence I mean that the AAA one says and it says it a couple times in there it’s pretty specific I’ll just kind of read
you know let me say where was it Oh should I be concerned about the anonymity of others who view my sites and this is talking about any social media sites when we use digital media we are responding this is their answer it’s a question answer so the question was should I be concerned about the anonymity of others who view my social media sites and the answer is when we use digital media we are responsible for our own anonymity and that of others when we post text or blog we should assume that we are publishing at the public level when we break our anonymity in these forms we may an inverted inadvertently break the anonymity of others and then there’s another one about using our pictures on our social media sites I won’t read the whole question but it says yes if full face photography and other easily identifiable photos of AAA members who are described as AAA members are published or broadcast even through even though their full names are not given these are considered anonymity breakers so they’re saying even a if you link your you know anyway that you link your name photo and affiliation with you know that fellowship is breaking your anonymity and in therefore a violation of the tradition the intent of the traditions and that was still the the a a pamphlet yes a pamphlet and so that anyone seemed a little more open to different different ways that we can lock some of those things down different ways that you can have which I guess gets more into where we’re at now which is what if you have a quote-unquote closed group and you share things within a closed group the Narcotics Anonymous service pamphlet seems to be more open to those sorts of things um using those you know it describes it as if your group is locked down well enough it’s similar to sending a letter is the way they describe it um but you know my specific question concern comes into you know let’s just take you know some group that might be called the Cecil County recovery community page or whatever you know who so who is in charge of who comes in you know how do we know who’s coming in and then who gets to decide what that group is for and then what Fellowship is that group representing because they all seem pretty clear that we should not have like just for example we should not have like the Baltimore Narcotics Anonymous group on Facebook like that should not be a thing right so if we have these general you know recovery groups we all I mean you’re in some I’m in some you know that they’re linked with a fellowship seems like more or less maybe not everyone in that group is but you know a lot of these ones in the different groups that I’ve been a part of generally affiliate with one fellowship more than another right and they will do lots of things share meetings share anniversary share all sorts of stuff and is that okay I mean is that really a close group uh you know I’m still learning some of these settings really I remember when people first started asking some really like fellowship or program specific questions on Facebook in you know close groups I guess but I didn’t even know the groups were closed I was like I’m not answering that [ _ ] on my public Facebook and it took me a while to catch on that like only people in that group could see it and I was not aware of that now look if I’m hugely concerned about my anonymity I should still not answer that question because a lot of people that like I said people go in those groups people relapse people leave recovery people could easily take screenshots use it against you whatever like if that’s a concern don’t ever say anything on those groups for sure but yeah like I was just sitting here thinking about all the people I know who’ve created like events for their anniversaries to invite people on Facebook and is that a closed event like I don’t know can everybody see that or we all break in our anonymity if we agree to go like I don’t think I’ve ever actually said I was going to any through that method but I really don’t know if that’s open to people or not yeah and so in a little bit of my reading what it made me aware of painfully is that one I violate that tradition in in a couple different ways I have shared Reshard events associated and on my you know public page on my you know and and I say public I mean mine is closed to the general public but it’s open to people that are my friends or family or anyone that I’m a friend with on Facebook can see my post is that generally open to everyone I’d like to say I’ve these sites and it mentions some of that in one of the IP and one of the pamphlets I can’t remember one of the talks about that a little bit is that these sites they can change those policies at any time they can change you know reset or change those settings if have site-wide changes and people don’t always keep up with that stuff like they should or even understand you know who can see what or or who’s you know what happens when you tag someone in a post you know those sorts of things and and how are we effective people when we share photos of people and say hey these are some friends that I was at this convention with or these are some people that I used to hang out with in recovery you know when I was in this area you know how are we aren’t all these I mean and then I started looking at like yeah wow that is pretty much all violating the spirit of anonymity like to me it’s an again I do it I’ve done it a lot it made me painfully aware of how loose or lacks I’ve gotten even in doing this podcast you know in the beginning it was kind of a thing if like I don’t really want to affiliate and then before I know it you know that’s what I’m talking about that’s affiliating all the time because that’s you know part of my life and I was like wow that you know and reading this information it brings up to me like oh yeah you’re violating the tradition every time you do that and so I I don’t I don’t know are we like because we don’t say our last names so we don’t post pictures of us well yeah I kind of do post pictures of myself on our social media we’ve definitely said Narcotics Anonymous yeah I was I was sitting here wondering the same thing I was like are we [ _ ] up with this again and it’s not I mean I I don’t know that I’m a hundred percent right I I did read some other information there’s a guy William white who’s a historian of an Alcoholics Anonymous historian and sort of famous advocate for the recovery movement do a lot of different information out about that same kind of thing you know how do you how do you come out of the shadows as a person in recovery you know and and present yourself to the public in a way that says hey I am a person in recovery I’m a success story in her not just a person in recovery but I am a success story in recovery but do that in respect to you know the traditions and anonymity and it’s it’s touchy you know there’s not an exact line to say you know this is okay and this isn’t it really comes down to each individual to decide you know what what that line should be for them I think with some general I mean again general guidelines behind the spirit of anonymity you know what am I really trying to do so I I definitely feel like I’m just violating this all over I do the podcast where we’ve kind of you know we believe we’ve probably violated it I’m I might still go on Facebook and post that I got a had a town speaker today like I’m still not sure about that and then just a few days ago I posted pictures I came across some old pictures from early in my recovery and I was posting them all over people’s Facebook’s you know and show it I’m like hey remember this time and isn’t that now I’m pretty sure I never specifically mentioned that any of them were recovery pictures I think I just posted I’m like hey God you remember when this was going on but still that could have like I mean it was you know 12 of us outside of a church I don’t know I don’t know is that breaking people’s anonymity if they’re in a church service yeah and so that’s where some of this gets interesting because you know like in that case if you’re not mentioning what it is then it’s not but then what do you do if someone else comments or mentions in there right you know how did what’s your is that are you responsible for that or are they responsible for that or is it you know so I think like if you have a post you can take down comments and stuff right I think so yeah you can remove comments or block comments and then are we I mean if we’re going to post those kind of pictures or do that kind of stuff are we responsible for the comments underneath of that right and and then we have definitely seen people over the years taking pictures in me of anniversaries whatever posting them all over Facebook you know what about that and then there’s just so I mean this a lot of this goes back to what we talked about in our episode about stigma like if we’re gonna break this stigma we gotta be out and yet at the same time being out puts us in a very vulnerable situation as a representative of a fellowship that or a program that unfortunately I don’t ever really want to be it’s kind of why I don’t wear any you know any t-shirts or hats or bumper stickers on my car because I don’t want to be the [ _ ] jerk representation of na and I will be at some point if you watch me long enough I’m gonna be the dick like it’s it’s bound to happen that’s just my nature at some point I am gonna you know show my ass so say and I’m gonna be a guy that is not a very pretty representation of our program right that’s kind of what I think so when it gets in and like traditions and stuff sometimes I think there’s a I’m gonna call it lazy way to sort of look at okay these traditions are these rules that we’re supposed to follow and I don’t think that’s the way that they’re meant to be implied where the meant to be understood I think the traditions like there’s a there’s a spirit behind those traditions you know what is the point of anonymity well there’s a couple points one is to protect the fellowship as a whole from just what you’re talking about you know I go out and I’m wearing my recovery t-shirt you know that names my 12-step fellowship or my pathway or recovery on it and I cut somebody off or cut somebody out in the store or whatever then I become a representative of that so I should be maintaining my anonymity you know at that public level but then at the private level you know I I shouldn’t be affiliating with that particular fellowship either it seems to be fine and you know again some of these informational pamphlets and stuff talk about this like it seems to be fine for me to go out and say hey I’m a person in you know whatever long-term recovery I haven’t used since this amount of time you know I belong to a 12-step fellowship but like it’s fine to make those kind of comments those kind of statements those admissions on your public media it’s when you start specifically affiliating with that fellowship that it seems to be pretty clear that you shouldn’t do that yeah yeah it’s so I read the 11th tradition this morning out of our basic text and it works how am i and there I go I mentioned recovery program specific literature so I guess I’m breaking anonymity all over again first before I even mentioned what the hell they said they are the shortest two goddamn readings in any book helps feed bears and I’m really jealous that they’re not step readings because that would be super easy to do it’s like five minutes to read both up I was like holy [ _ ] these are short so I guess there’s not much to say about it so only 11th tradition what is that our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press radio and films and so the first question for me is is social media press is podcasting radio like I don’t have these answers right but those are like the first pressing questions like this isn’t a national press radio or film per se and neither is my social media but I don’t think they were really prepared for social media when they wrote that either you sent me a link to a proposed update to those two that tradition that mentioned like in any public posting or I can’t even remember the wording of it but it included you know social media type posts in the new newly worded 11th tradition proposal which I thought was interesting because I really don’t know if social media is considered press radio or film and so that’s like my first hang-up but the traditions went on to say and like you said it doesn’t have any formal hey this is how you do it there’s no rules or regulations the spirit of the tradition read that basically we don’t want and a celebrity endorsement right we don’t want you know the Michael Jordan you know on our commercial for Narcotics Anonymous like hey I’m a great athlete and Narcotics Anonymous help me win six championships and you should try it we don’t want that celebrity endorsement was basically what it was saying about you know keeping our personal anonymity at the level of Press radio and films because like you said those people could turn out to the reputation could get tarnished and then our reputation is tarnished as a by-product or all these other cases of that and so the whole tradition was mainly dealing with you know that we want to be attractive rather than promoting ourselves not that we can’t advertise in some way shape or form we just want to advertise you know what we know we’re capable of which was that hey this program has worked for some people it could also work for you it’s possible we don’t want to make any glaring promises about what this program will definitely do for you because that is false and that is promotion we just want to say this has worked for us it could work for you too and we don’t want to do that with any celebrity person and so that’s what I got out of the whole tradition it really didn’t say anything about what we’re doing as a person or saying our whole names or any of that stuff about social media and it’s interesting so I was just thinking about that as you as you were talking there and I read so I’m gonna go back to and even now I’m like is it okay to say I’m reading something out of the NHANES literature I don’t know I kind of like the way they describe this so I’m gonna pull this little piece out and it says
if we look at the history of AAA from its beginnings in 1935 until now it is clear that anonymity serves to different yet equally vital functions one at the level at the personal level anonymity provides protection for all members from identification as alcoholics a safeguard often of special importance to newcomers and to at the public level of press radio TV films and other media technologies such as the internet anonymity stresses the Equality in the fellowship of all members by putting the brakes on those who might otherwise exploit their AAA affiliation to achieve recognition power or personal gain so you know when you look at those two if we say all right well that’s the two aspects of anonymity if I am only revealing that information about myself to try to help others or to try to promote you know the recovery messaging am I still keeping in the spirit of anonymity like if I’m just saying hey you know I have this life thanks to my 12-step fellowship or because I went to this program or I go to these meetings you know they can work for you – hmm I’m doing that sort of thing you know it seems like in in the spirit of the tradition in the spirit of protecting anonymity I don’t know it’s just interesting you know if I break my own anonymity in a way that’s helpful or serves others is that okay yeah and this goes back to our stigma conversation and where I feel like I’m kind of at today if I continue to stay in hiding then the stigma does not get broken right if I become a social worker and I don’t constantly speak out about Who I am then social workers continue to judge and decide if people like me are worthy of coming in when really it shouldn’t be any decision I’m a human just like anybody else that applies to be a social worker like I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to do it just because I did you know I have this in my background at some point so I think with if we never speak up about it that never changes we just continue to think of addicts as these certain type people and we need to monitor them extra closely unlike the rest of the people and I don’t know it that doesn’t sit right with me I say this there’s we’re not getting any we’re not building our reputations off the backs of Na in this podcast that’s for sure we’re not getting critical acclaim because of Narcotics Anonymous that’s for sure so everything we’ve said so far I don’t feel like as classless as it might have been for the person to post that about the famous actor I don’t actually feel like it violated anything it was in a close group I was probably only people who were addicts and thinking about going to a meeting to begin with that just had you know the ability to consider going to this specific meeting yeah and it’s hard to say for that individual I know if I don’t know how I would feel if someone posted something like that about me advertising me as a speaker at a meeting I don’t know that I if they didn’t ask my permission ahead of time or get you know what I mean like I wouldn’t feel comfortable with someone doing that to me so it’s hard to know whether they got that individuals approval or permission or whether they just kind of did it on their own you know no way they got approval for that to me that makes a difference because you know what what you’re violent like in that case not only is that sort of promotion you know rather than attraction which is a separate tradition from anonymity but it’s you know it’s basically outing him with you know whether he wants it or not which I’ve seen that over the years on Facebook a few times with a few different famous people and people saying oh this is their anniversary day and posting them with pictures of their medallions and [ _ ] and I’ve always thought oh that’s so [ _ ] tacky like it’s kind of cool if you’re a person in the fellowship to know that there are famous people that come like that’s kind of neat to know but like you said it feels wrong when I see that you know it feels wrong when they’re saying Oh so-and-so you know is is this big public person and their recovery in that part of their life becomes really public – and then with notes when those people have gone back and relapsed and died and overdosed and things like that and what does that say about us is a fellowship I’m just mad that you know there’s not way more people advertising when I share personally about that guy no I I definitely I’m with you I did think you know does he know about this that was a curiosity question I had because I if he’s you know practicing these principles and all her his affairs I would imagine that it probably doesn’t sit well with him to have that either and at the same time I would bet he’s probably pretty used to being treated that way because he is a celebrity like that’s what happens right people wanna ride your coattails I don’t know people want to get a claim from having you people want to use you to build their brand I guess you know I don’t know what it is a everybody should come to my meeting you know like it’s just a meetin bro he’s gonna share in another one three days from now like it’s not it’s not really building your brand I guess right but I get it I get it so what I wanted to post about the guy share into my home group tonight from Texas completely in the spirit of hey if you happen to be a person in this area who normally just hits local meetings like I know me personally I’m all over the place with the meetings right I don’t need I’m not technology what would you call that disabled I don’t know I’m pretty good with technology like I can look things up and find things so I’m all over the place but for somebody in this area that’s maybe not as fluent in technology that just hits local meetings and you know hasn’t heard many speakers lately it’s more for the but that’s why I wanted to post it for the benefit of those people hey maybe you something out of this maybe it’ll inspire you to hit a meeting because he’s out of town I don’t know it’s not because I need more people at my home group meeting because I really don’t give a [ __ ] we have our 15 every week and I’m happy with that and everybody usually gets a chance to talk because there’s not too many of us so I don’t know let’s let’s take a quick pause here so we can do our head it’s kind of hard to time because we’re on a different system i yeah and take a quick break and and we’ll come right back to this are you pausing your recording no I wasn’t going to oh did you just for a minute yes timing it was like oh I better ask yeah I figured we would just take a quick break I made that pause I took was at 38 seconds just so you know oh my god okay Why What are your at 39 something now right yeah 39 30 yeah so it was like in seconds that like 38 something anyway hopefully we don’t need it oh god I hope not because that’ll be a disaster I don’t even think I can like when I run audacity on my Chromebook it’s only capable of handling like very small files or it gets overwhelmed because it’s not running the way it’s supposed to and so I if we got to do like an hour and a half of two tracks I guarantee it’s just going to freeze up and so I think I have to like borrow my mother-in-law’s computer and download audacity and I don’t want to do all that yeah I want this to work yeah okay so what were we saying this is it oh the guy from Texas and just to help people and don’t how we gonna come back in from that
waaah start and then we can just I’ll just say you know talking about you know having like advertising a speaker like if well let’s see how do I want to say that yeah we can come back I’ll get there I know what I want to say okay all right welcome back from the break and so you know what’s your thoughts on that Kenya advertised a speaker yes so when we talk about advertising you know speakers if we want to use the word advertising but normally in the normal course of life you know I would talk to you at a meeting or run into you somewhere hey we got this guy coming from out of town to speak to the meeting you know maybe come over check it out and and some people might talk and that information would kind of get passed around word of mouth amongst people within the recovery community I’ve had conversations with people about that but that’s a little different like you know is it breaking someone’s anonymity to say something you heard in a meeting about someone you’re friends with to another person in recovery you know those kind of things like you know you go to the meeting share you’re having some personal issues I share with some friends some mutual friends of ours out of concern you know what I mean and say hey Jason’s really struggling with this right now maybe give him a call see how he’s doing you know there’s areas like that that you know is that breaking someone’s anonymity if it’s in the spirit of caring and concern but I think anyway when we talk about speakers coming from out of town or having new speakers like that stuff would normally get shared within the closed recovery community know about people’s anniversaries you would know about all that stuff not hanging a flyer at the Acme you know not posting a flyer at the church where the meeting happens hey you know Jason’s anniversary this Saturday come on you know we do that within our closed community and right now with social media I don’t know that we have the ability to close them down you know like like we want to in your case like what I thought and just my take on it was there would be nothing wrong with saying hey we have Josie from Texas coming out to speak at the meeting tonight you know at this time now again whether we should be sharing that with in some of these clues groups or not I don’t know you know I don’t know how unless the group policy is posted somewhere or what you know what their intent is of the group those would be things that would matter if I was gonna post or advertise recovery things within those groups I guess see I think that our closed Facebook groups are just as locked down as our meetings I don’t know about this area I’ve never actually looked into it too much and I know there are some smaller areas where it might matter a little more where meetings are closed and definitely some other fellowships that might have a little more stigma random are for sure having closed meetings but like the Greater Baltimore area almost every goddamn meeting is an open meeting and that means for anybody who doesn’t know that people who aren’t addicts are free and welcome to come whenever they want they’re asked not to share but you can attend so anybody that truly wanted to could be at any of these meetings listening to anniversaries be announced or looking at our Flyers that say that you know Josie from Texas is coming to share the speaker Jam Sunday like most of our [ _ ] is not closed down that way and I’m I don’t think it is up here either as far as I know now I believe in this area we have one closed meeting every other meeting is an open meeting right and so I feel like that’s just as open as our closed Facebook groups if not more open honestly well I guess I think in terms of let’s say you have a you know whatever I’m gonna go back to the Cecil County recovery page or whatever so within recovery page you know there’s people in different fellowships and different walks of life there’s people that are supporters of recovery not necessarily recovery members and so you know how does that work is that still a closed group yeah I don’t know or not and I gotta say I’m not sure it’s better that’s what I’m thing to do that I’m feeling like it almost doesn’t matter to me not that I don’t want to follow traditions and protect you know the fellowship but just from what I read in that eleventh tradition none of this seems like a violation that seems like all about the advertising and the way we deal with the public in the sense of how we promote our message and in the sense that we don’t want to promote our message we don’t want to have anybody standing up and being the face of us but that we’re welcome to you know share as we feel it is helpful with people and so for us that is on a small podcast level at times and on closed recovery pages with the intent of helping someone that is the goal right now look like I said earlier I don’t personally believe that that post about the actor and his movies he was in had a whole lot of class right yeah yet if there was a person who saw that and they were feeling down and they weren’t generally going to hit a meeting that day and that inspired them to click onto that link and hit one was it beneficial probably so it’s hard to say really yeah and so in the Narcotics Anonymous pamphlet they actually say something similar and I won’t find it right this second but it talks about that as far as you know we just like it can look like we’re endorsing certain people what if there’s people that don’t like that [ _ ] guy and think oh he always plays villains he’s always a bad guy he’s a terrible person he was in this movie and he raped people like I don’t want to be affiliated with anything that he’s a part of you know they they caution about that happening as equally as someone being attracted to it someone can be put off by it as well you know and they worded it pretty well but it was it was the the counter to that like yeah some people can be attracted to it but it could just as well push someone away who looks at that and says I don’t want to be affiliated with anything a [ _ ] guys affiliated with known and that makes sense but I would take that back to the episode we had about specialty meetings right like if the meeting where he’s at isn’t good for you go to another one right that was what we kind of agreed upon at the end of that episode was that I get what you’re saying in a sense of if he became the face for our fellowship then people might leave the fellowship because they don’t want to associate with it but if he’s just a guy sharing at one meeting that helps some people get motivated to go to that one meeting even the people who aren’t motivated to go to that meeting will go somewhere else like that’s that’s not that’s like saying people who are against women’s meetings will just leave the fellowship because they don’t like what to be associated with that no they can just go to a different meeting yeah well the way they talked about it was as far as newcomers like Newman drawn to the fellowship right what and if he was the face yeah if he was the face of our fellowship if he was our public endorsement face yeah I would see that totally hmm I can’t imagine here and he’s doing a meeting or anybody’s doing a meeting and be well no that’s not true there’s a person I know that if they were doing a meeting I might think about leaving Narcotics Anonymous not gonna lie you know I probably wouldn’t but I’d at least consider it yeah so anyway and then I think about like okay so why does any of this [ _ ] matter like what’s the big deal who cares my personal like how does any of this affect me and my personal recovery and so I’ve always it like the traditions and a lot of this stuff because again over the years I have violated that spirit of anonymity in every way possible I thought he’ll do it in some ways today I mean there was times where I were you know in a t-shirts and and you know hats and all kinds of stuff and then there was a period of time where I went back to like wearing some stuff that had like an older logo on it that didn’t actually have you know na in it you know so I would sort of look for things that were a little more inaudible yeah a little more subtle wasn’t quite so obvious I know my wife wears lots of t-shirts and clothes that are about recovery but none that affiliate with specific you know programs and stuff so we have changed over the years to try to adapt to some of that not so much for the stigma part of things but just to try to live more in line with these spiritual principles that are within these traditions you know I don’t so I always think I know the harm that’s gonna come from when I do things but I have in my brain this part of me that will justify and rationalize certain behaviors and think it’s not going to be that bad it’s not a big deal it doesn’t matter you know and then I act out on some defect or I I do something and I don’t realize the spiritual consequences of that like I couldn’t predict those spiritual consequences ahead of time and this is another one where for me personally like I like to look at it that way like I try to say well I want to live within the spirit of this tradition of anonymity because I don’t want to you know reap harm down the road that I didn’t foresee and so I don’t just get to throw it out the window and be like I doesn’t matter we can [ _ ] just do whatever we want on social media I mean it’s mom looking it’s [ _ ] advertised speakers and [ _ ] promote all our stuff and just affiliate out the ass with all kinds of fellowship and I’m not saying that we should or shouldn’t do those things we’re just saying that we shouldn’t have hazard lis travel down this road and throw it off like it doesn’t matter because for me what happens and it’s the same thing that’s happened the podcast so as we started doing the podcast in the beginning I know I was and I think you were a little more mindful of you know affiliation and those things well then listening to other podcasts and looking into other recovery podcasts and like there is all kinds of them out there to better [ _ ] steal and logos and they talked directly about their fellowships and they talked almost there almost like they are spokesmen for their fellowships mmm all these people were doing it it’s got to be fine right I mean everybody else is doing it so it should be fine and so I begin to throw my values out the window and justify behavior because it’s easy and convenient based on what everybody else is doing and that’s not the kind of person that I want to be today that’s the kind of stuff that I did when I was using you know and and this may seem like a minor thing to some people but if I thought that anything that we were doing could cause harm to a fellowship or cause harm to a newcomer or push someone away like that that’s not the person that I want to be now I’m with you uh man so many pieces that I want to talk about one the the tradition in our literature actually does talk about wearing clothing it does not say there’s something wrong with it it just mentions the cautions about you know being aware that we have that on and trying to present ourselves in a certain light I can’t remember exactly how it says it all but I thought it was interesting that they specifically addressed that so that’s kind of cool
likes to sell merchandise and literature there you go you’re probably right and you mentioned all I could sit over here and think you were talking about you know you don’t think this is harm or anything and I was like we talked about in the traditions that you know their hard-won experience gave birth to these traditions and I’m thinking man they’re hard-won experience turned out to be so good we should get our own hard-won experience that’s what we’re doing with social media we’re getting yeah very yeah well we’ll feel like [ _ ] for a little while but we’ll learn some good lessons out of it right I don’t know I was thinking man what happens when I put that actors name in the title of this podcast to try to gain and speaking of so it was funny in the in the one fellowship pamphlet that the NA one they make sure to bring up copyright infringement and use of logo and things like that in there there’s a whole section about all that in the Narcotics Anonymous one that didn’t seem to be there in the AAA one they weren’t as worried about that as the NA people were yeah it is interesting I hear a lot about our literature and how we make money and why do we need money and you know there’s a lot of debate about that maybe one day we’ll get more informed and we’ll we’ll talk about that topic or maybe we’ll have somebody on that’s informed I don’t really want to do that kind of research that sounds like work I could link it with some Facebook groups that they have all that [ _ ] they’re like printer and literature yeah the good old baby blues yeah it’s there’s still a whole movement of all that people that are starting their own new affiliated fellowship but they’re not starting a new one cuz they’re taking back ownership of this one and oh it’s it’s fun man I dream of a day when I have that kind of time on my hands yeah those people have kids I’m just curious yeah kids are pretty passionate I will say that they are very very passionate you know I frequently get passionate about things and what I find later is that that does not always serve me as well as I hoped it would it gives me a lot of energy and drive but it doesn’t actually turn out to be great results usually what I’m letting that name be the drive I don’t know you got any more to say about this what do you ultimately think was it was it a bad thing for them to post that post or was it in my opinion yes I think there’s a way that you could do it that was a little more within this what I would call the spirit of anonymity but I felt like that one was definitely done in a spirit of Attraction not you know I mean a spirit of promotion I it was it seemed like [ _ ] a promotional flyer as what felt like to me and and so in that context it felt wrong I don’t know that I would think that that was right even in a meeting if I went to a meeting and saw that flyer laying on a table I think I would be like oof that’s yeah you know that something doesn’t feel right about that but if I saw the same flyer that said you know out-of-town speakers you know Josie from [ _ ] Texas and Phil W from Montreal or whatever I wouldn’t think much about it you know that you also wouldn’t know who the hell they were though right but isn’t that the point of anonymity it is but I’m curious if there’s a way like there’s just so many more subtle ways they could have done it even even in you know mostly given away who it was but still keeping it a little classier I guess from my point of view like I do get the point of hey this might motivate some people to come out to a meeting because he’s well-known right I get that like that I’m not even trying to take that away I just think you could do it without you know hey he was in these blockbuster hits in 19 the top yeah it was it was deadly like it’s you know I don’t know it’s for me personally like it’s a slippery slope and the you know when I start opening myself up to breaking my anonymity is and looking into some of this reminded me of of Y of some of the dangers and why I need to be careful about me to be frank I am you know I’m not out to save the world on most of this kind of stuff anymore it’s about how do I want to live what do I want to do with my social media how do I want to handle those things I belong to a lot of those groups you know what do I want my behavior to be within those groups because just like I feel like you know or the the danger is there that as much as I want to combat stigma and show that the program works that’s kind of ego that’s taken for granted that I’m always gonna be a person that’s gonna be able to show that the program works and if I picture for now I’m using then I’ve become a person that just feeds right into the stigma and says see that [ _ ] doesn’t work recovery isn’t real that’s a lie you know so it’s a balance I if I’m gonna wear one hat the other one comes along with it whether I like it or not yeah I mean but I don’t know that that’s a reason to shy away from from doing it right like if that does come with it I get it I get that it could have a little negative connotation to people who already want to see that it’s negative you know yeah of course it’ll be a way for people who already hate to hate more like yeah I knew it that proved my point right but at the same time I think if you do that you got to accept it yeah to me that gives me more reason not to do anything like using right that gives me more reason to hold myself accountable in public like hey people do know who I am I better really try to mind my manners and be on my best behavior so that that just gives me more focus I think the knowing that my hand indivi tea is a little less you know secure than other people’s I I need to [ _ ] watch what I’m doing like I need to really work this program and be about this [ _ ] that I say that I am about if not I’m gonna be you know that guy right guy that I would judge and there’s a likelihood to that if I am understanding and appreciating and taking ownership of my own anonymity that it’s way more likely that I’m going to understand appreciate and take ownership of your anonymity or my wife’s anonymity or other members of my groups anonymity you know if I’m willing to kind of throw mine out the window and get lacs with some of that I may inadvertently not purpose but I may inadvertently do that to other people because I’m not my my awareness isn’t there you know what I mean so I don’t know I don’t think that it’s bad I know plenty of people you know do break their anonymity and again I’m sure I’ll do it again soon enough I’m sure it’ll happen if you follow you know anything that I do on social media eventually I’ll reshare something or post something or say something that in some way is the violation of that in a spirit of promotion usually to try to I mean in the spirit of attraction to try to attract people to recovery right so I think we’ve beat that topic down so we can give it a nice burial now and move on we we did this last week and it did not get recorded let’s go back and talk about our zoom meeting so you know we started last week and we’ll try this again here like what has your experience been so far for me I I know I’m hearing that there’s like two camps the camp that is really enjoying this and the camp that is just not on board and cannot wait to get back to in-person meetings which to that camp I say oh my god I am sorry because that might be a while my experience is definitely I’m all over the place I decided one morning I was gonna get up really super early in the morning and hit an Australian meeting because it just seemed like the coolest [ _ ] ever and and so that just spurred me on I’ve been to Australia the state of Georgia Virginia Scotland Texas the UK Hawaii South Africa and just yesterday I did Israel and I am like having a blast with that so what’s your where are you at with all this I hate it I don’t you know even this like I was like ah let’s not do this over this [ _ ] internet thing let’s just go meet at the place and do the thing that we always did and I feel that about my home group it was novel for half a minute you know I did two or three meetings and now my home group I think will be in week 3 or 4 at this point and you know this week after the home group I was like I’m gonna text five of those [ _ ] next week and just say hey let’s just meet at the place we’ll meet outside the pool just [ _ ] stand six feet apart I can’t you know it just feels so distant and separated I really missed that personal interaction and I get personal interaction I go out to work you know I’m crafting with people face to face it’s not that I just totally lack personal interaction in my life I have it at work but it’s it’s a different feel for my recovery you know i part of the appeal of my home group has been going to that place and hanging out with those guys and laughing and cracking jokes and you know having a good time and the meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting and that’s been happening a little bit on the social media but it’s just not the same right so I’ve found definitely my experience is way better on my laptop that on my phone yeah I cannot stand the online meeting on my phone honestly on my laptop I have a pretty good time I will say this though I need to treat it just like an in-person meeting in order for it to be beneficial for me there’s been days where I had already done a meeting and then I hopped in for a second one and I was like oh you know I’ve already been to my my real meeting today I’m just here kind of hanging out so I can like play on some other browser tabs or answer some text messages or catch up on something else I get zero out of that [ _ ] meeting I hear nothing that they talk about usually what I’m doing that and so I need to like close everything out just beyond the meeting just be watching the speaker who’s talking that’s the only way I really get a meeting out of it but when I do that I’m getting really good meetings I’m impressed hearing people from all over and I don’t know I thought it would wear off a little bit but so far it’s been really really good yeah and I mean that’s a weird you know I think a very personal thing for me in general like I’m not a big conventions person not that I don’t enjoy hearing speakers but you know if I want to just hear a great speaker at any particular time I can find them you know a good message online different places or whatever I’m such an egotistical jerk I was like if I want to hear a great speaker I talk so you know I and I mean obviously conventions are in person but there’s something that I don’t get the connection with when I go to a roomful of 40 people that I don’t know any of them really well or there’s not that you know friendship or companionship build up over time like those are important aspects of my support network in my recovery on a regular basis you know and if I didn’t have those things like I’ve always said I’m my homegroup is a favorite meeting I go to and it’s not because the quality of the meeting is always the best we don’t have speakers sometimes there’s seven of us sometimes people are sitting there for five minutes nobody says anything you know it’s it’s the companionship of the friendship that’s been built over 16 17 18 years of time that that isn’t you yeah no I get it I will say there is something even though look my home group is is mostly like three recovery houses in the area and and me and the guy who owns the recovery houses and you know one or two other people could stop in and so looking at that from the outside I would say oh my god that meeting probably sucks ass right but because it’s my home group and I’m comfortable with those people I love that meeting and like I feel connected when I go to it and I get a lot out of what people say in it and I’m like if you told me that that would be the case I wouldn’t believe you but it is and and I do feel more connected at that meeting than any other meeting yeah I think my goal with these other meetings a is just the neat experience of hearing accents and and what different people talk about in different areas but to like I’m hoping to make connect in these other areas maybe not all of them but just to build new friendships like I don’t know could be really interesting for me so that’s what you know that’s what the online thing has been I think there’s a ton of meanings we can hit and we had posted on social media a little while back about the craziest or funniest thing people had seen in an online meeting so far do you have your list pulled up yep all right so we’ll take turns again and we’ll try this one more go-around if it doesn’t work this time you guys are beat you’re never hearing it so Christine said that she saw a lady that was sharing for five minutes and the lady was just muted immediately and I that sounds rude for one but I’ve seen a lot of meetings where they’re like after four minutes they throw up the one minute timer I would just imagine I would think they would wait till like eight minutes to mute you like five minutes in is pretty harsh oh okay I misunderstood the way that so the way that reads I thought what she meant was she had herself on mute and then started sharing you know what I mean oh my god like I do
something and you can’t hear but Billy’s talking on mute of course I thought it was that you know anyway that that would be a lot funnier actually you’re saying isn’t the moderator meted that muted them oh you’re at five minutes moderator mute yeah I thought that that’s got gone I would like that maybe we should start doing data by people right on the 5-minute mark your version is much funnier I guess yeah how did we not realize that last week when we did this
so Joe s says myself examining my face my overgrown haircut etc in the camera forgetting everyone else could see me as well oh my god that’s funny and I’ve noticed some of that with stuff going on in the background and things you know moving around in the house I try to be aware so on one of the platforms I realized there is a view that you can turn off the self you where you don’t see yourself because that grooming off at first to like trying to speak and then I’m looking at myself talking is just weird you know that’s just very weird then I realize I could turn myself off but you had mentioned before like I have to be careful if I don’t see myself want to sit there and do weird [ _ ] right right I will definitely if I’m not paying attention like if I’m in another browser tab I might pick my nose or something you never know what’s gonna happen all the more reason to stay focused to being in the meeting for sure yes so so Mar Mar said someone walking around behind the person that is sharing like sit your ass down there’s a meeting going on you were distraction my friend and you know she said that in comedy but it’s true there is a lot of distractions and I was kind of curious I almost I might do it a Twitter poll about this are people doing this in speaker view or in gallery view because I have a feeling that a lot of people are doing the speaker view where it’s a big picture of the speaker and you know not really any other pictures distracting them I personally love gallery view cuz I want to see what the [ _ ] is going on and everybody’s house and so I probably do it a worse way for distractions but I’m curious what everybody else is doing are you guys are you guys watching everybody’s reactions are you just watching the speaker so on my phone I was doing speaker view I found that that worked better on the phone plan okay it just made it easier anyway on the computer I personally think I like the gallery view and I don’t like when people don’t have a video up I don’t like when people put it o up I think the whole point of doing these meetings right now is because we are missing out on that ability to have that personal connection and even though this is an overly personal it feels way less personal when it’s some stock photo of either the avatar that’s blank or some stock photo of a person you know we go I just don’t like it you know what I will tell you is do not go to South Africa yeah so when I went to the South Africa meeting what I found out is their entire area is on an audio-only you go into the online video sharing platform and you’re on until meeting time and then they shut everybody off and it’s audio only and so they say they are doing that one for anonymity purposes which they say but the other purpose is that it costs money for people to have the video stream into their phones and so in order to save money and be more you know widely available to lower socioeconomic statuses they shut out video so only the audio has to stream into people’s devices and I just thought that was a really interesting take I actually meant to bring that up when we were talking about the anonymity portion of you know the the conversation earlier but I guess that I agree I think I love the video I think it makes a little more connection but I guess there areas like you know that connection was not worth cutting people out yeah I was a little disappointed yeah so Chris is next and it looks like he has a photo of a guy wearing looks like a maybe I can’t mask wolf I think it’s a wolf it looks like a can so yeah guy where know it’s like a half mask where you can see the bottom of his chin but you know I’m gonna find my son’s panda head from his home in costume and just go to meetings like that excuse me earnest mentions a dude with no shirt on please folks be respectful and that I was kind of I didn’t even know how to respond to that really because I I wouldn’t go to a regular NA meeting without my shirt on obviously in person but if I’m in my house like am i hurting anything so and this actually ended up coming up after he posted this I had the idea that I wanted to go to a meeting from my hot tub out back like it’s just I was like [ _ ] yeah why not right but then I’m like oh [ _ ] I’m not gonna have my shirt on is that rude what do I do and so I was able to keep the camera mostly at face level and above so I don’t think it was too rude and then it actually 15 minutes into the meeting got dark outside and so nobody could see me anyway but what’s your take on that do you think it matters if people have shirts on in their house ah I mean I don’t think it matters I think I can choose to not look at anyone I want you know we’ve had eating set events where you know people are in swim trunks without shirts on and right he’s like that I mean to me it doesn’t matter to me I don’t know I think we just need to start a shirts off meeting online completely shirts off yeah sure Damon’s wrap a woman’s wrap will be way more interesting yeah but they’re not covered
so Steven says I like trying to see if I can find people napping if you follow that one down that thread there there’s actually a picture of someone absolutely completely asleep yeah which is hilarious I can’t picture falling asleep in a meeting but that goes back to when I had my first online meeting with my home group it blew my mind how many people attended meetings laying down I was like what the [ _ ] is wrong with you sit up you’re in a meeting right like I just can’t even fathom in my head and I guess with the phone it’s different I’m usually on my laptop but I just can’t fathom laying down in a meeting like it just feels so weird to me I am up when I am on webcam I’m sitting up for sure yeah I found I have to be sitting up to I can’t be laying down even on my phone I have to be sitting up we did miss one above that underneath the Ernest when Kim had said that she saw a guy naked on his bed with a pillow over his Winky which I just saw – hilarious not to mention I’m hoping that’s in the spirit of getting some laughs and not in the spirit of exhibitionism yeah so yeah and I’ve heard some people joke about kind of thing you know getting on meetings naked getting on you know showing their junk or you know one guy’s like oh when my soon as mine picks up its just a picture of my balls okay but yeah I think people just trying to be funny trying to trying to make a joke out of it I remember when I first got here my first sponsor used to talk about how he had been to some anniversaries where people like stripped down to their boxers and you know figuratively said they were gonna get naked in their share or whatever but they literally stripped down to their boxers in the goddamn meeting I was like that’s a little too much I think uh yeah that’s a little weird where we had Elizabeth anymore she says rapey naked so she’s about someone naked yeah unfortunate name they’re rapey yeah not the name I would want in recovery yeah I don’t know who ray P is but I don’t know I guess if it was funny or crazy he must not be all that great to see naked yeah and you know I don’t know I know that’s been a wasn’t it a like a PETA advertisement for a while where they had all the women sorta half naked or there was some advertising campaign about that and I’m pretty sure was PETA was doing something like that so maybe it’s attraction rather than promotion it was definitely promoting yeah Michael says someone share their experience for the good old ironic answer oh yeah Erik says just heard a toilet flush yeah and then John continues with he heard that and in the stream before uh very I don’t know so I I guess that’s the same kind of people that will like go into a public bathroom to take a poop and then call somebody on the phone I personally think that’s really weird but some people just do that yeah that is odd I did actually kind of had to take a phone call while I was in the bathroom the other day which was kind of weird I mean I guess I could have waited and taken it when I was done but it was sort of a work we were in the middle of a situation so that was weird it just felt awkward like oh they can tell them in the bathroom right yeah I don’t I don’t I get too graphic I guess when the main portion of my bathroom is done like I have been on the phone before after that I’m like well they’re not gonna hear nothing now I’m pretty good but not in the shower obviously yeah yeah I forgot I was gonna say oh that’s okay oh okay Todd I think yeah Todd people being asked not to vape on video so they are hiding it behind their hair that is the weirdest thing how can you ask anybody not to smoke or vapor in their own goddamn house I don’t get it I saw some people smoking a baby and it reminded me of like early meetings I mean it you know people used to smoke in the meetings when I first started coming around and you know that was like it a big deal where you could go to that because it was it was right at that time where they were stopping allowing people to smoke in a lot of facilities so I won that you could smoke game was like oh that was cool yeah I went to one smoking meeting back in the day it was called smoking on Sundays down in Canada and you know what I always thought leading up to go in there that it would be a great idea I’m like [ _ ] yeah good smoke in the meeting and then I got in there and it was so goddamn smoky it was miserable it was a hero I did see some people vaping in a meeting and it dude you could not see their [ _ ] house when they baked it was ridiculous I was like holy [ _ ] I am glad I have not that guy vaping anymore I’m glad I quit trying to blow the biggest cloud of bacon yes I mean their whole screen was just fogged out and look like their house was on fire we better call emergency services yeah Angele said other people not on the meeting but walking by the camera in underwear unaware that they are you know being seen because somebody in your house is on zoom’ that could get tricky I mean the setup I got the only thing I got behind me is a wall but I could see where if I had a desk where it was you know the desk was against the wall and people could see behind me there’s people in my house that run around naked even if it’s my five-year-old son sometimes just does it randomly like that could be that could be tricky I could be a lawsuit of some sort I don’t know how yeah I usually creep into the bedroom and close the door and try to keep it the same thing we have kids running around and things going on and at any time there could be some sort of argument or crazy crazy chaos in the background so yeah I try to go in the bad bedroom close the door you know one for me it’s almost like you said if there’s too much going on I get distracted I’m so easily distracted my attention span is like a gnat so part of its for myself but then the other part of its for everyone else too let’s see so this was I got like Carolyn trying to tell a story so I’m gonna jump down to Heather tries to tell the story here and I’ll try to explain it as well so Caroline Katie Felicia and Heather having an in-depth conversation about tiger King and all his shenanigans and how we would all totally vote for Joe exotic for president when all of a sudden a person entered the meeting her account said she was from California she thought she was early to the meeting but the meeting had ended 20 minutes ago we were trying to explain to her that the meeting was an East Coast meeting and that it was over she couldn’t hear us very well so she was yelling and we were yelling it was a [ _ ] show we tried to engage in conversation and found out that she was alone and ordered to a shelter in place we felt bad and tried to talk to her but she just kept yelling which isn’t the funniest story to read but if I’m picturing there’s so many times I’m in a meeting and just the little things crack me up man whether it’s somebody who’s not muted and all of a sudden they’re telling their wife that they don’t want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner or just like the most random [ _ ] or people who are muted and trying to share or people who it’s incredible how funny some of that stuff is because it’s so ridiculous and the technical difficulties and so just pictured in that sense I think that probably was a pretty comical moment people not realizing their headphones aren’t turned up or they don’t know how it up on the headphones so they can only hear like a whisper you know [ _ ] like that and that Saturday Night Live was on last night I don’t know if you stay up that late but it’s a show Jen and I love to watch it and they did a bunch of remote like all they did a live show or it was pre-recorded but sorta live like it was all recorded skits that they had done over some sort of meat platform or whatever from their house and one of the skits that they did was like five of them in a zoom meeting or six of them in a zoom meeting and of course they had the two older ladies that couldn’t figure out the technology and did all of their stereotypical things you know the lady carried the [ _ ] thing into the bathroom with her and you know the other ladies can’t figure out the camera so she’s all like yeah it was it was kind of funny I mean it was not as good as it could have been but it was pretty good that’s the thing that most all of us have experienced if you’ve been doing any of these technology friendly meetings oh my god you know the only thing I am jealous about is I can’t do the backgrounds thing on the platform I’m using and that kind of there’s so many good I would be like I would be good at that I would be good at choosing fun yeah I know I can’t do it either yeah me too I feel like the people who I see do it are all wasting that talent I’m like you’re wasting the ability to pick back round right so Robin mentions she watched a guy who didn’t share but was visible on the gallery folding laundry for the entire meeting and she said it must have been a lot of laundry and huh yeah yeah an hour’s worth of folding good god yeah it takes me like 10 minutes to fold a load I mean what the hell was he I don’t know that’s really yeah and I’ve been in live meetings and seen people do we [ _ ] so I don’t think folding laundry would catch me off too bad over the years we used to have a guy that would crochet during the meeting like the entire time he’d just come in with his yarn and he would crochet the entire meeting I had another was a friend of mine an old sponsor actually they would do Tai Chi poses he would stand in the back not overtly you know crazy but he would stand and do kind of different Tai Chi poses during the meeting it’s a way to sort of focus and that’s some incredible self acceptance right there cuz like I’ve known about I would love to do like stretching like it’s stretching is something I never have time for and I feel like I could stretch and still listen I would love to just stretch or do some kind of yoga during a meeting and combine those two things but there is no [ _ ] way you were gonna see me in the back of a meeting doing yoga so I don’t know you got anything else to wrap up with today are you feeling good about no I think like most people I think I am just getting I’m gonna say worn down by the staying at home there’s you know for definitely some benefits we’re getting a lot of projects done around the house my wife and I were just talking last night about how you know how nice it is now you know why people in their 50s and 60s tend to be generally happier people like we’re you know get to the other side of like our kids now pretty much leave us alone most of the day they’re doing their own thing they’re pretty dependent we kind of got a lot of our personal time back so it’s great we’ve been doing stuff together we’ve been hanging out we were watching some shows working on puzzles doing some stuff with the kids too you know when we want to get them to interact with us all having dinner together like all five of us sitting down at the table having dinner on up every night those are things that in the hustle and bustle of our life had gotten lost so you know some of those things are great but there is a part of me that misses you know Little League and meetings and you know hanging out and doing different sort of public things you know it it gets it gets old quick but I don’t know no yeah I don’t know either I’m thinking I might be pretty introverted I’m like hoping this goes on for quite some time not to the detriment of other people who are struggling with it but definitely like I’m just thoroughly enjoying it I haven’t not that I don’t miss some of those things you mentioned and in that I will appreciate them when I get to do them again but I’m not missing them so bad that I’m in any hurry to like run back out into society right now yeah and those are minor minor problems you know mine is more of an uncomfortability than anything else I will say an area that I do personally just struggle with and it’s me and my weird [ _ ] anxiety is knowing what I should be doing you know what what things are okay for me to do like what’s responsible and what’s not possible and you know obviously I know it’s okay to go out and get groceries but what if I need some stuff at the hardware store and you know am I supposed to be making those are those things okay and then obviously we need food but you know Rita’s is opened back up so we want Rita’s is is it cool to go out and get Rita’s you know or you go into the grocery store and stockpile everything at home and I understand those are little minor things but it for me personally like I get a lot of anxiety about like is this the responsible thing to do am i upholding my responsibility to my community am I being a good you know sort of steward or example to my kids like it’s just my head [ _ ] goes crazy with that [ _ ] no I can actually relate a lot not as much we’re talking about driving and taking a hike today which according to the you know Maryland State Parks or whatever they’re still open because Hogan said you need to get out and get exercise and so I guess you’re allowed to drive there as far as I could tell from that yeah but no I get the same anxiety we have some kids next door that my kids play with and like so far we’ve told them they’re not allowed to and they wanna don’t like my five-year-old does not understand why he can’t go next door and play with his buddy right right but yesterday they a neighbor had a tree fall / they were bringing some wood over to my house my kids were and the neighbor kids joined them I guarantee they were closer than six feet at sometimes yeah and I’m like well I don’t know if the neighbors parents go out to work everyday or not I really have no idea so how much more exposure in my Riskin like is this okay I don’t know a week ago my mother stopped up randomly to my house and I thought that was kind of shitty ever honestly like I love my mom and I can’t tell her not to but she works in a grocery store and here she is just dropping by my house like nothing’s going wrong and I’m like no so yeah I struggle with and you know talking about us meeting up I’m like it’s only me and you but you do go to work I was just around my mom who went to a grocery store like I feel like the more times I say it’s okay that’s how this spreads like that’s exactly what happens and so I’m trying to follow extreme rules my wife went to the grocery store a second time this week because she could get a free ham I had told her not to yeah I was like dope we don’t need it [ _ ] that ham right let’s follow the rules but she thought it was good so I yeah it’s very up in the air like I don’t know what’s right and I get anxiety when I don’t know what’s right as well yeah and I just you know I want to be safe I want to get through this I don’t want to you know again my big thing for just personally in a lot of areas of my life back to the tradition and back to you know this stuff it’s like I just don’t want to cause harm to other people anymore you know it’s been a largely life being a selfish self-centered prick who didn’t care who he hurt you know as long as I got what I wanted I didn’t really care about anyone else and now part of trying to make amends or to you know be a different person in recovery is trying to do the least amount of harm as I can to people you know and and creates some anxiety right now I will completely agree with that sentiment and I think that’s a great place to end let’s all try to be better people and we’ll do this again next week