I am a meeting starter. Every six months I would hand off my meeting and go find a place and start a new meeting. I did very well at this. I had the skill set to put on a suit, go get a place and go for months if necessary by myself till people began to show up and I didn't cling on to it.
Then the court people began showing up. I would be uncomfortable about the affiliation issue. Also, the slip was worded such that under penalty of perjury I swore that the people were in attendance at the meeting.
Some wanted to get their slip signed and leave. But to me, that was not attending the meeting, it was just poping in for a signature. I was perjuring myself at every meeting. So I tried not handing them out till the end of the meeting. Besides being physically threatened a lot, I felt I was holding people hostage. It was supposed to be attraction rather than promotion.
Finally I simply couldn't look myself in the mirror any more.
So I began starting non-courtslip signing meetings. But after a few weeks about 20 people would start showing up and vote it a court slip signing meeting and continue to show up to enforce it.
Finally I simply quit starting new meetings.
I felt that I had to believe as the new people did or I could not serve.
I went back to area only to find they had had enough of me. They voted into the guidelines that each and every meeting on the area would be courtslip signing.
When I pointed out that each meeting was autonomous, they all began screaming "Principles before personalities".
Now, in case anybody out there is looking to learn something, here is a true gem. I learned this from almost three decades of intensive service work. If you go to say, area, and you have some idea like, why don't we bring a cooler of sodas to area and sell them for 50 cents or you say, "why don't we have a picnic/speaker meeting in the park" or "Why don't we have an assistant chair and let them preside over part of the meeting a few times just to get your feet wet". Then if people begin screaming "Principles before personalities", this means they have no real argument against it and all they can cone up with is screaming "Principles before personalities" at you.
If this happens, you probably have thought up a great idea. You have probably really hit pay dirt. So just when they try to shut you down, you need to really nurture that great idea you had.
Of course they could be saying you are self willing things but usually in that case they say "you are selfwilling things".
So there I was. In order to continue to start
meetings, I must change my beliefs of twenty years to their beliefs with no real convincing on their part. I had years and years and years clean when they first showed up and now they were informing me that I knew nothing of the basics of NA.
And, to rub a little salt in the wound, just to remind me that now there was a new sherriff in town, I was embarrassingly absent from any speaker pannels or history of NA speaker events. I was the bitter oldtimer who was out to kill courtslippers.
So what to do? Well, I went back to my early teachings. My first sponsor said "Just burn up meetings if in doubt." I bought a new Q45 with a sunroof and a kickass stereo and started driving. I went to meetings from Reno to Monterey.
My second sponsor said "If you are having trouble, get a new sponsee". Of course no o e in the fellowship would ever ask as I was the newcommer killer.
But I had been going to H and I in a mental institution and I got a sponsee there who did not know that I was a bad person out to kill addicts. He and I became buddies.
And that is enough of my story,