One of the best parts of social media -- one of the most important -- is when social becomes actually that. In real life, people having conversations, piecing together the world.

A few weeks ago I was reminded of how small this world, linked by ping backs and status updates, can be. 

It started when I posted something to Facebook about Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In." Specifically, I wrote that I wanted to start a discussion group, to which a number of friends -- some I know in real life, some strictly through the computer -- responded. Among the responders was David Griner.

David and I have been in similar orbits for a long time. We both have journalism backgrounds and are digital and social media folks. We're both based in Birmingham and engaged in work that takes us around the country -- he in advertising, me in magazines. We're both writers (check out his excellent piece "Why Aren't Video Game Actors Treated Like Stars?")

I've always admired David and his work, but we never had a real conversation.

It was only when he commented on a Facebook thread I started about Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" that we decided to meet.

***

We met for lunch, and were driving down Columbiana Road when David showed me a photo. It was me, on a horse, in 1998. Me on a horse. From 15 years ago. What?

Turns out that summer we were both interns at The Arizona Republic. We didn't spend much time together because we worked in different offices, except for this trip and a handful of lectures. 

So how would we have put it all together? We didn't for many years. Until a few weeks ago. When relaying the story to one person, I heard, "That shows social media's shortcomings."

Maybe.

Or maybe not. We decided to meet (after exchanging Facebook messages). Then David looked at my LinkedIn profile, where he picked up on the internship. Yes, it took some old fashioned sleuthing for him to identify that ball cap, acid-wearing jeans girl in the photo (hey, it was the 90s). But social helped piece things together. Pretty cool. 

We had a great time getting to know one another after all those years. Journalism, digital, social. 

What's the takeaway? Well, obviously, always be nice to people you meet every step along the way. Because you just should. 

• But you also might be sitting next to them in 15 years in a setting you can't even imagine at the time. 
• Be open to surprises. That morning I was coming from giving a talk, and a little tired. I had no idea of the joy of making this connection. 
• The most important part of social media is the "social" part. 

Oh, and my new/old friend David and I are going to host a "Lean In" discussion group -- soon. Let me know if you're interested in attending. You don't even have to wear acid washed jeans. 

Turned into a spontanous homage to Wilco. Nate is currently obsessed with becoming a drummer. "Should I put on 'Heavy Meatal Drummer?'" I asked. "Um, it's my theme song, isn't it?  

Then it turned into a dance party in which both of us were asking for Shane to video the episode. The apple does not fall far.  

I never intentionally thought about becoming a mom, and that was not high on my list of priorities. Till about August 2005. Surprise!

And here's that little lima bean dancing in the Swiss Chard during our field trip to Jones Valley Teaching Farm on Friday.

Tomorrow, on Mother's Day, I will celebrate the amazing women who paved the way for me to become a mom. My mom, Rosemary, who taught us about unconditional love:

And my grandmother Catherine (my Dad's Mom). She was so encouraging of my career and all my dreams, even before I knew I had them:

And my grandmother Emily, who married my grandfather despite her parents' wishes. (He was Catholic; they were Protestant. And the rest is history.)

Tomorrow I'll be thinking of all the great moms of my friends, those who are with us and those who aren't. Of all the ladies who are moms or act like moms. Here's to them. 

I spoke about SL's digital evolution. I get real joy sharing best practices on blogging, social media, and storytelling in general. And I learned just as much from the business owners, bloggers, artists, and creatives who swapped stories over barbecue and Goo Goo clusters. Seriously, we had a Goo Goo Cluster pie break. How great is that? And yes, after all the delicious snacks they served, I'm wearing my stretchy pants.

Major kudos to the founders of the Southern Coterie, Whitney Long and Cheri Leavy. They founded the Southern Coterie as a place for women to connect and share their love of all things Southern, and the summit as a counterpart. There's a magic when people have a chance to connect online and then forge relationships in real life (stay tuned for another blog post about that coming shortly).

Whitney, Cheri, and their team made that possible for a whole bunch of creative business women and doers. (And are going to do it again at two upcoming gatherings -- one in Athens and one in Nashville.)

Bonus: Whitney hosted the Summit wearing what? A different pair of gold shoes every day. (Her foot above). I knew I'd like her! 

Among those touchstones is Mad Men, which of course premiers tonight in its sixth season. So imagine my delight when @scstreet shared this Tweet with me. He has a minor  major crush on Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant (who it should be noted is a fellow Southerner). I have nothing but the deepest of respect for Ms. Bryant as well. 

She's been pivotal in bringing 60s style to perfect life in Mad Men, with much-documented attention to detail, from undergarmets to broaches. 

I've collected vintage clothing and accessories long before I knew what "vintage" was (scouring neighborhood garage sales for box purses and pillbox hats, which was ripe for the taking in Central Florida). When I'm traveling for work, I always make it a point to stop into vintage shops to bring back treasures (see: 5 Vintage Clothing Finds and Chattanooga: House Frock and Accordion Necklace.) 

Usually I'm smuggling house frocks and go-go boots back in my suitcase. But not anymore. Behold, the Twitter conversation between my husband, Janie Bryant and one vintage-loving lady who has now been totally validated. Janie, from the depths of my heart I say: thank you!

I shall wear vintage tomorrow in your honor.

(And I can't wait to see what you've done for Season Six ...) 

Here, where the the roses on our trellis bloomed. (And yes, I need to fix up those container gardens. If only I knew a place to find such ideas. Ha.)

Lola pug, getting over a cold, soaked herself in the sun that comes through our windows. One thing I like about our house is all the natural light. So does she:

I shared an epic day with Nate, who started out our adventure by scoring three goals at his first soccer game. A few hours later in New York family and Celtic supporters gathered to honors his great great grandfather, the famous Celtic soccer player Charlie Shaw. More on this later. We thought it was cool Nate had such a strong showing the same day fans from all over the world gathered to honor his forefather.

Later in the day I dressed him in this ridiculously oversized rain coat (oops, accidentally ordered the adult size) for dance recital pictures. We are nothing if not diverse. It was sunny and gorgeous, but we were getting our 'brella, 'brella, 'brealla on (yes, he is performing to the Rihanna classic.)

We are nothing if not diverse.

So there it is. There's pollen in the air, tasty cocktails in our Tervis Tumblers and the possibilities of spring our minds. It's a very good thing. 

I was boarding a plane today when I saw a status update from an acquaintance say something about how she doesn't understand how an avatar about gay marriage means anything. She said of course she supported gay marriage, but said something along the lines of "How are you affecting change by posting an avatar?"

I get that, really, I do. The thought crossed my mind last night when I saw the red square with the bars and wondered, "Is there really any point in changing my avatar?"  Maybe there's not. Or maybe there is.

The thing is: changing an avatar is extremely personal for me. It means that I support that my brother, and his partner (pictured above at dinner tonight) can get married if they want to. Or not. The fact is, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments that will lead to decisions that will affect my family.

So yes, it's personal. But even if it was not, I would still change that avatar on my profile photo. 

Yeah, I get it: changing an avatar isn't exactly an act of political uprising. Point taken.

The back story: my brother has pretty much always been out. Heck, my parents accepted all of us from the moment we were born. We were very lucky. Not everyone is as fortunate.

My family has also been the family that's taken in gay teens and adults when they were rejected by their own, and by the people who were supposed to care. My parents set that example.

So please excuse me while I indulge in a red avatar with an equality sign. 

Maybe it's pithy to you. 

But honestly, that's your problem.

Tonight at dinner, enjoying dumplings and noodles, my brother and partner and I talked about how fantastic it was to see our social networks light up with red. We're at a monumental time of change. Is it a huge political act to change an avatar? For most of us, not really. It's a click. But you know what? In this sea of red, change is happening. Sorry if it's beneath you.

It's fair to question what those of us with these avatars have done in the non-social media realm. For me, it started when, 20 years ago a scared friend asked me to go to Denny's, where he shared for the first time, that he was gay. I reached across the table and said, "OK. I still love you." It wasn't a brave thing for me, it was a brave thing for him. Facebook had not been invented. There was just Denny's coffee and fries. 

But, it's those conversations I hold dear my heart when I change my profile avatar to red. I changed it for one of my best friends, whose partner is in Spain, waiting for these laws to change. It's for my college professor, whose wedding I attended a decade ago but whose marriage is not recognized in South Carolina. It's for my mom and dad, who have proudly raised a gay son. Why can't he have the same rights as me and my spouse? 

It's for my son. It's for sons and daughters whose names I don't know. 

It's for all of us. 

Yes, clicks are easy, action is much more difficult.

But today, my avatar has changed. And it's no small thing.

I'm so excited to be presenting at the inaugural Southern Coterie Summit. It's May 1-3 on beautiful Jekyll Island, which (gasp) I've never visited. I know, go ahead and revoke my traveler card.

It's going to be a fantastic event for bloggers, business owners, designers, creatives, and those of us with a keen interest in all things digital, stylish and Southern. 

Here's a post I did for The Daily South that explains a bit more. 

Among the reasons I'm excited to participate is that it's not going to be a ginormous conference where you're overwhelmed in a cavernous conference hall. Instead, it'll be an intimate gathering amongst friends, with learning taking place on wraparound porches as much as in the sessions. I like that.

Excited to learn from fellow presenters, like keynote speaker K. Cooper Ray of Social Primer, Chassity Evans of Look Linger Love, and Stanfield Gray of DIG South. 

And also to learn from attendees. Feel like there are going to be a lot of new friendships made, glasses raised, and projects launched. Here's to that.

Join me for a Twitter Chat about the Southern C Summit Friday, March 15, noon-12:30 Eastern. Follow The Southern C on Twitter; chat and hashtag summit are #tscsummit.

I was reading this post on the Personal Excellence blog about a defining moment in her career when she realized she needed to stop complaining and change her perspective. I think her point is a good one, and you should read her post.

It got me thinking about a time earlier in my career that I had a similar standing-in-the-shower-everything-is-awful moment. It really wasn't, but I can see that 10 years later. But I did get the worst career advice, and that post got me thinking about how I flipped it on its head. 

At the time I was working my way up the non-profit ladder, doing PR and fundraising for a research institute and hospital I still love. I met weekly with my boss, going over status updates on each project, carefully written in my black binder. One day, seemingly out of the blue, he turned to me and said with a straight face:

"You know what your problem is? You have too much passion. You get too excited."

I was speechless, mortified as he spoke about how my face got flush when I was excited to share something new I was trying with our magazine, or an idea for a project to help our patients. (Yeah, looking back it was pretty mean.)

It made me feel awful. Someone had discovered. I was enthusiastic.

There's something you can take to prevent face flushing -- beta blockers. I did take them for a while, but I got tired of keeping up with having medication in my purse just in case I got excited and my poker face wasn't up to snuff. I was done with that by the time I left that job. 

The memory has popped into my brain a few times times lately. It makes me laugh now. What bad advice. 

At this point in my career I realize how uncool it was to treat an employee like that -- especially a young, formidable one. I learned from him, alright -- learned to never hide my enthusiasm. 

In fact, I'm pretty proud that I've been able to maintain unabashed enthusiasm (Ok, sometimes it gets slightly bashed. Never said my name was Pollyanna).

Perhaps at points people, like this old boss, thought it was naivety, but it is not. It is most certainly not. Enthusiasm continues to work for me, extending far past work. Enthusiasm gets me out of bed when I have a 13-hour day ahead. Enthusiasm keeps me focused on the big picture.

It does help to have more years behind me, more life experience. If someone said something along these lines today I would laugh. Really loud. "Now about your abundant enthusiasm, Ms. Shaw Street." 

Am I a little flush? You'll have to forgive me. It's the enthusiasm. 

The show was marvelous, and today I took time to rest, visiting with my doctor too for the obligatory Z-Pack and steroid shot.

So back to last night, walking too my car, feeling this heaviness and thinking, "I'm so being challenged." In every single area. And, "I am so being blessed." It is simultaenous. And neither come from me. But things I have waited for are coming true, even as I walk to my car late every night, recently coughing and trying to roll up at home in time. Trying to keep everything in perspective as waves of change roll all around me. 

We each have our own path to walk, our own set of "how am I going to get through this," and then abundant blessings. And sometimes they happen at the same time. This is where I am. 

This year flies by. The calendar is being filled with color coded commitments, color coded so I can keep them straight. Out-of-town meetings, summer camp sessions, swim lessons and story deadlines. Parent-teacher meetings, the dishes that need to be done, the bills that need to be paid. I've pulled back from overcommitting outside my work and my home, because the roles of being a wife, a mom, a daughter, and a friend -- and inhabiting my work -- are all-consuming. 

There are trips to take, the ones for work and the ones to satisfy my soul. The intersecton of both. Trying to carve out personal writing in the middle of the 24/7 professional pursuits. Have I mentioned trying to stay healthy?

How to do it? With a lot of prayer, a therapist on speed dial, and support from an extended support system of family and friends.

Sometimes the heaviness is overwhelming. Yesterday I got an email about a meeting in which wires had been crossed. Scheduling errors. I was turning into Birmingham Southern for a field trip with Nate and wanted to cry. There is only so much space in my head. There was simply too much going on.

Heaviness in my chest.

But I got to hang out with these guys at the Southern Environmental Center as they learned about recyling and Birmingham being home to the Watercress darter. An endangered species, Etheostoma nuchale is a small, colorful fish, found only here. Things only found here. 

I walk to my desk and find this note from a co-work that makes me laugh. (My office is covered in images of Elvis, two of which are life-sized.) It makes me laugh. Things only found here.

I hang out at the dining room table watching my family play "Clue" for the first time. Things only found here.

All of these challenges, and blessings, are things found only here, this week, today, this season. And while no human experience is unique, the construct of these days are ones I believe that are custom made, challenges and opportunities for me to meet with what I have been given. I rest in this.

"This one is made for you. You got this," whispers a small voice. And yes, yes I do.

I'm back from a reporting trip to Orlando, armed with a bunch of stories, a lingering sinus infection (because what would travel be without me getting sick) and one big realization: my heart is in Florida.

Oh how original -- you love a sunny, wonderful land of palm trees, right? It's a little more than that. And though I'm not packing my bags to leave Alabama, with each successive trip to my home state I realize that it's there I feel most at home. 

This year I will be 37. Having living in Florida my first 18 years, this is the tipping point, in which I've spent more time out of the Sunshine State than in it. It may also be the year that I realize I would like to return.

***

We all must escape where we're from to learn to appreciate it, right? Growing up 10 minutes from the beach in 72 degree weather was not appreciate by this child. The landscape was flat, the buildings were replaceable, and I wanted out. Escaping to the *very far* land of South Carolina for college, I shivered in the cold, a first glimpse of appreciation for what I never knew to appreciate. A whole lot of heat.

In my early twenties I made a brief return to Florida, during an ill-fated year in Sarasota. I was a restless 22-year old, pushing my shopping cart behind snowbirds in Publix, sitting in my apartment by myself. When the chance came to move to Birmingham to be closer to my parents I jumped at it. The future was a wide open blur, and it seemed there would always be time to return. 

In Alabama, people asked questions like "Where do you fellowship?" and "Did you go to Auburn or Alabama?" An awkward outsider at first, I stumbled over my differences, but then, building a career and a family, I became knitted in to Birmingham. I learned the Deep South traditions unfamiliar to a Yankee from the geographic but not cultural South. I started writing for the perennial Southern publication. And, fast forward these years later: a husband, a child, a career. Florida had become a distant memory, save for a quick weekend in Miami or Clearwater. 

But in the past three years I've been brought back, for reporting trips and photo shoots and meetings. With each trip I turned my eyes to learn about the state I'd not understood as a child, or as twenty something. And each time, I've wanted more. 

***

Why do I love Florida? For the same reasons everyone else does: it's hot, and beautiful, and wild in parts. It's where people go to escape from the brutal winters and their former lives. It's polished in places, it's rugged in others. An in the best parts it's all of these things at one time. It's a history of citrus stands and drag queens and cortaditos and sunsets that people line up to watch. It's mangrove trees and strip malls and crazy tales with subheads that read "Only in Florida." I sometimes think I could spend a life writing about this state, this literal and metaphorical state.

Exploring Orlando (the non-Disney parts, which yes, there are a lot of) with bare legs and my huge sunglasses, I fall into a rhythm that is comfortable and familiar. I walk into shops with decorations from my Florida childhood, mid-century modern that's come back in 2013. (This one is 1618 Something Different Retro in the Ivanhoe District.)

I walk around downtown Lake Eola, watching the geese. It's the closest I come to the water, but I'm decidedly happy. Did I mention that I was walking in a skirt in February? 

I go to a lounge in a Best Western. Sadly, one of the lounge singers has died the week prior, but there are still women in snakeskin alligator pants and beehive hair, over 60. I love this state.

(I explore many other things involving fine eating, shopping, and exploring, and those things will go in the magazine, so shhh, for now.) 

In the course of it all, I call my husband, sometimes several times a day, and proclaim: "Why did I ever want to leave?" and "I can see myself here again." I get on the plain sad to leave. I am still wearing a skirt when I arrive in the Atlanta airport, where it's raining outside, and I can feel the rush of cold air getting onto the jet way. 

Then, in the airport, I run into someone I've always wanted to meet in Birmingham (that's another blog post). I drive home and sneak into my son's room, where he is sleeping. I talk with my husband, whom I met in Birmingham, and with whom I have built a life here. 

***

The sun came out over the weekend. I've been corresponding with a new friend in Orlando, who is visiting Birmingham to learn about our community this week. And in the middle of doing that, typing away restaurant recommendations and spots to see the city, I think I'm glad that I landed here. But I also think I have another home, and that one day, I will return.