SOCAP SOUL and Love

I attended the most amazing conference last weekend at the San Francisco Hub: SOCAP SOUL.

Here's the website description for those interested:

What if your job, your finances, and your  community  were all aligned with what you  value? SOCAP has created a special event, SOCAP: Soul, to help answer  that question.

Social entrepreneurs and investors, faith leaders and activists, cultural creatives, and thought  leaders are all seeking to align what they care about with their jobs, and with the way they spend and invest their money.

We’re coming together as a movement of people who see the intersection of money and meaning as imperative not only to business – but also for our families and neighbors, for ourselves and people around the world.

Be inspired by speakers who have made these decisions. Explore models and find others along the same path. Find a better way forward for this world and yourself.

The two words that keep emerging for me around it are "affirming" and "inspiring."  They had several panels of amazing people and a breakout discussion group of people in various points of transition toward creating more meaningful work for themselves.  I still need to type up my notes and plan next action steps, so more reflections to follow in later posts.  But WOW!

I feel such a mixture of feelings in my life right now, but on a Spiritual level, I am receiving a lot of positive information from various sources around the potential of creating new, more localized / meaningful / sustainable forms of economy and work.  I wish I were further along in the journey, but I guess that's typical!

Brief check-in on the man front.... S and I are talking (I know, collective groan), ha!  But we are not committed or "back together."

He said he was very mad at himself (along with me) about going to the unilateral decision place.  He expressed feeling overwhelmed and scared about me breaking up suddenly again and about whether he can do the work he needs to do on himself while in relationship.

We are working on staying a lot more connected when talking about difficult things by holding each other and breathing in a meditative way at the beginning of our meetings.  It may sound strange, but it has been a surprisingly helpful technique so far.

Perhaps oddly, I went on a date with a guy from Mat.ch on Monday night.  He seemed to like me and kissed me at the end of the night.  On my side, it was an interesting, pleasant time, but the kiss was too much.  It made me realize I'm not emotionally available to date other people right now, even if it makes part of me feel more protected and safe/less vulnerable.

S is away for the week at an NVC workshop at Esalen; a beautiful, blissed-out, hippie retreat center on the California Central Coast.  I have my appointment with a therapist next week, which I'm looking forward to...so perhaps this is a time of trying to work on ourselves and do some talking in a "no idea what the hell we are or what comes next" kind of place.  Yikes.