The Southern Summit Bloger

A excited to be presenting at the inaugural Southern Coterie Summit. It's May 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 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    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, 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 . In fact, I'm pretty proud that I've been able to maintain unabashed enthusiasm (Ok, sometimes it getsslightly 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 enthusiasmper respiratory infection. I'd pushed through two weeks of work, one on the road, and was going to see Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter with my friend Kelly. I knew that I was sick but if I could just get to one more important thing. And I did.The show was marvelous, and today I took time to rest, visiting with my doctor too for the obligatory Z-Pack and steroid shot.tly 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 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 wrmentioned 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 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. because what would travel be without me getting sick) and one big realization: my heart is inFlorida. bags to leave Alabama, with each successive trip to my home state . 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 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 m 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 ic 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. ime, I've wanted more. Why do I love Florida? For the same reasons everyone else does: it's hot, and beautiful, and wild in zy tales with subheads that read 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 in In the course of it all, I call my husband, sometimes several times a day, and proclaim: "Why did I onto the jet way. Then, in the airport, I run into someone I've always wanted to meet in Birminghammy husband, whom I have built a life here. The sun came out over the wee