This Post Will Self-Destruct
"Good morning, Mr. Puckett. Your mission - should you decide to accept it - is to remove any references to Alcoholics Anonymous in your blog.
This post will self destruct as soon as you delete it."
In the June AA Grapevine, there's an article that says that GSO says that a blog is a "public medium of communication".
Therefore, we're not supposed to include full names and pictures if we mention our AA membership.
This is a bit confusing to me, since I tend to think of a blog as a conference call - in other words, you folks come here to listen to what I am saying, knowing full well that I'm Jim Puckett and that I'm in AA; just as if (for instance) you were all to come over to my back porch and watch Ethel beat me in pool while I rambled on about my day.
I don't agree with GSO's decision; I actually think that I know more about the Internet - mechanisms and practices - than they do (this may be presumptuous of me, but I do sorta work at Go Daddy :) However, part and parcel of the whole "group conscience" thing is that we go along even when we don't agree.
Therefore I'm going to be going back through this blog and removing any posts that actually reference my AA membership (including this one). The reason that I'm posting this one is because I know that there are those of you who, like me, are AA members and might wonder what happened to such-and-such a post (yes, I can see how that might be very unlikely, but I also am pretty darn surprised when I see that there have been eleven hundred page hits on Fat Charlie posts in the last week. They can't ALL be by my mother - especially since she doesn't have a computer).
In addition, I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing with posts that reference my OA membership, just because I tend to take a less-is-more stance with respect to how I implement the Traditions in both fellowships - I don't want to have to figure out which one wants me to do which :)
I might consider creating a separate site that doesn't mention my full name or have any pictures or identifying info, and putting 12 step stuff up there, if there's any interest in such (not you, TwoBuddha. I know that you're not actually interested in 12 step discussions that are clear-cut, concise, and hardline. Go on back to your fuzzy meetings and burn some incense for me, too :)
But here's an interesting question - do I have to pull out stuff that says something like "I did a Fourth Step this morning", since the Twelve Steps are so ubuquitous, and since membership in any Fellowship is not required for anyone to work the Steps? That's a good question.
I would ask GSO, but I don't think that they are thinking too clearly right now :)
Anyway, this post will be disappearing shortly.
I'm curious to see how you "blog" your life without mentioning AA since it is obviously such a big part of who you are. I will stay tuned for further developments.
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That's actually a very good question.
Ethel suggested that I just go back through old posts and do a global search-and-replace - XX for AA. I find such a suggestion to be beneath my dignity : )
I have created a new blogspace, http://ClearCutInstructions.net, for this purpose. Let's see how that works.
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I'm confused....
I don't remember ever seeing any full names or pictures or any such references to actual identifiable people (other than yourself) who are in AA.
No only that, but I thought that's why you always are using cute nicknames for everyone: to keep people's real identities secret. even the people that, presumably, aren't in AA.
Is it against the rule to hint that such an organization does indeed exist? If so, how does anyone every get in?
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NOT THAT I'M trying to tempt you away from doing what you see as right... no, not at all.
I enjoy the blog. You make it the piece of art that you want it to be with/without corrections deletions, etc.
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Chris -
Actually, yes. You most definitely have seen full names and pictures of another AA - Ethel, her own self
(And she's been sober two years longer than I have, as she likes to remind me).
And I don't have cute nicknames for anybody - Silas is, after all, Silas (and Ethel is Ethel's real name; she just spells it Kim, just like Prince used to spell his name as 0->@/, or whatever it was
No, it's not against any rules to say that AA exists. It's against the rules for us members to PUBLICLY IDENTIFY OURSELVES. This is actually intended to "protect the fellowship against our damn-fool egos", as Dr. Bob said.
How many times have you seen some movie star get sober, then two weeks later have interviews and give all the credit to AA - then three weeks later get drunk and get arrested? That doesn't help AA. (And the very fact that said movie star was blabbing about his membership in the papers means that he wasn't listening in meetings, so we couldn't very well get either the credit OR the blame).
My sudden decision to pull AA (and OA) content from this blog (and move it over tohttp://ClearCutInstructions.net, thank you very much for the opportunity to say that, although that link too will disappear from this blog when this page goes
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