Cell Phone Ringers And Their Disruptions

It’s definitely no secret that I struggle with how everyone seems to becoming incredibly preoccupied with his or her cell phones. Besides the fact that they are being utilized so frequently that it’s causing people to detach from human interaction, I see a larger issue beginning to emerge. As the technology of mobile phones has evolved over time, so has the volume of their ringers. While that may not create any disruptions when they go off in someone’s private spaces such as a car or at home, I’m noticing how many they are creating in plenty of other situations.

Have you ever been at the theater when someone else’s phone suddenly starts to loudly ring? Or has that ever happened to you at some type of important meeting you were attending? Or maybe it’s happened to you at an intimate restaurant you were dining at? In each of those cases, can you honestly say it didn’t disrupt your experience on some level? I have witnessed all three of these situations and many others as well. The latest of which totally baffled me when it happened during a funeral service a few days ago. I really thought that people would never bring their cell phones into a funeral service, let alone leave them on. But sure enough, over the course of its one-hour duration, I counted at least five separate ones that rang quite loudly. Funerals are generally meant to be a time to grieve. But listening to one of the latest Top 40 songs emit from a phone as it rang made that pretty hard to do. Instead of being able to stay in my heart and let my sadness out, I found myself looking around the room trying to find the source of each phone when it rang.

All of this has got me wondering why people are so afraid they’re going to miss out on something if they don’t carry it everywhere and leave it on the entire time. Ironically, what they don’t realize is that they truly are missing out on something, but it has nothing to do with their mobile phone. It has to do with whatever is right in front of them that their phone is taking them away from.

Whether I’m in a movie theater, a meeting, a restaurant, a funeral, or any other venue where other people are around me in intimate spaces, I always make sure my phone is set to silent, turned off, or left in my car. First of all, I don’t want to ruin anyone else’s experience because of my loud Knight Rider ringtone. Second, there was once a time when I’d go an entire day without a phone call because the only one I had was at home. So why are a few hours of silencing it or shutting it off that big of a deal? Lastly, I’m also trying to not take away from my own experiences as I engage in whatever they are. For any of the times where I’ve left my ringer on in any public situation, it’s always been due to my own selfishness and self-centeredness, and the fact that I thought I was going to miss out on something. Thankfully, I’m doing a lot better with this today.

So hopefully the next time you’re at the theater, a meeting, a restaurant, a funeral or some other type of public venue, you’ll make sure that you too will silence your cell phone like I know I will be doing. That way we won’t be creating any disruptions for ourselves, nor will we be creating them for anyone else as well.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Outed And Unaffected

There was a time when I extremely afraid of the world knowing I was gay. In fact, before I ever came out of the closet I was completely homophobic and even used racial slurs against those whose sexuality was no different than mine. But even after I did come out of the closet, I still struggled to be honest with the world around me about my true sexual preference. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore and that became quite evident lately when I was outed by a friend of mine at one of my AA home groups.

I belong to two recovery home groups in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in Toledo, OH. One strictly caters to the LGBTQ community, while the other is not specifically geared towards any specific subset of recovery. To put it rather simply, one is really gay, while one is really not. Obviously the meeting that I was outed at was not the one predominantly attended by gay people. Ironically though, that meeting is nonetheless attended by a small number of gay people who are also members of my LGBTQ home group. One of them is relatively new to recovery and is the same one who outed me during his share the other day.

Up until the day it happened, I had never actually talked openly in that group about my sexuality. There were several members who did know though only because they had either (a) read my blog where it’s discussed pretty openly, or (b) learned it through general conversations with me. Anyway, as my new recovery friend shared during one of those meetings only a few days ago, he spoke of our LGBTQ-based AA meeting and how happy he was getting to know others in it. Suddenly, he spoke of those he was referring to, one of which was I. In the past, this action would have utterly horrified me. Most likely, I would have felt like a tortoise that wanted to quickly crawl back into its shell. I might have even gone so far as telling white lies to disassociate me from what he had said. But I did none of the above when it happened. In fact, I did nothing at all other than take part in the meeting as I normally do. By the end of the meeting, I had completely forgotten about it until my friend approached and profusely apologized for outing me. I reassured him that everything was fine and that I wasn’t upset on any level.

I’m amazed sometimes when I take a look at how far I’ve come in just a short period of time, especially when it comes to being as open about my sexuality as I am now. The truth is that I don’t really care anymore what people think when it comes to my sexual preference. Ironically, I actually have compassion today for those who struggle accepting homosexuals, because there once was a day when that was I. I also inherently have found that the more I’m comfortable with that part of me, the more all others seem to be too, but the less I was comfortable with it, the less that others seemed to be as well.

I’m so grateful that I’m much more comfortable with my sexuality today than how it used to be for me. I no longer feel the need to cover up that part of me, neither do I feel the desire to use any bi-sexual or my jokingly tri-sexual (I try anything) labels I once used regularly with others due to my fears.

Life sure has changed when it comes to how I handle my sexuality nowadays. I’m quite thankful to my Higher Power for helping me get to this point in my life where a random outing in a predominantly heterosexual meeting did nothing more than show that fear no longer controls that part of my life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Social Media And Me

Just last week I decided to return to Facebook after leaving it several years ago. In addition, I activated a twitter account, much to the surprise of my spiritual teacher. While I also have had a Google Plus page for some time now, none of these social medias are being utilized by me for what one might think.

The truth is, the only reason why I have any of them today is to support this blog. While the main purpose of why I started writing was to help myself heal, it seems as if my words have also been helping others to heal as well. With that being said, I know how important it is in today’s day and age to use social media to reach greater numbers of people, hence the reason why I’m now using Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on automating this blog’s posting process to publish the links to my posts simultaneously on all three. Beyond that though, I have no desire to utilize any of them for what so many others are these days.

Since the emergence and explosion of social media, the planet seems to becoming more and more immersed into living in a bits and bytes world. While I only enjoy using the Internet and its social media for research and to publicize my writings these days, there was a time when the majority of my life was spent on them.

I was once guilty of taking “selfies” constantly and posting them. I was also notorious for placing my status out there of where I was at any given time. But all of that behavior just made me a lot more selfish and self-centered to be perfectly honest. It also often got me in trouble when I posted my harsh opinions about various things out there for everyone to see. The worst part about it though was that I became more interested in living a digital fantasy life than I was in connecting with others in person. And sadly, all of these things are the unfortunate side effects to what the social medias and the digital age seem to be doing to society now.

While it’s my hope that greater numbers will find my blog now that I’m more connected on these social medias, I refuse to allow myself to use them for any other purpose other than this. I really don’t want to ever return to that old life where I made myself believe I was that important solely because I had hundreds of friends connected to me online. I also don’t want to go back to posting throughout the day where I’m at, what I’m doing, or about any of my other day-to-day things. I really don’t believe that my life is meant to be important on that kind of a level, but I do believe the spiritual words I write have far greater depth and weight because they continue to not only help me heal but others too.

Hopefully I can stick to my words and keep the promise to myself that I won’t let the social medias take over my life all over again. And hopefully people will find my blog a little better now. But what I really want is to continue experiencing the majority of my life outside of this bits and bytes world, and thankfully, I’m still doing that.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson