When I graduated from college, I knew I didn't want to stay in my small college town. I had interned with my company and received an offer and I was very vocal about wanting to relocate. When I approached them with Atlanta, they countered with Charlotte.When I graduated from college, I knew I didn't want to stay in my small college town. I had interned with my company and received an offer and I was very vocal about wanting to relocate. When I approached them with Atlanta, they countered with Charlotte. They sold me on all the usual strike-points: it's up-and-coming, home of many HQs and Corporate Offices, a great place to buy a home and raise a family, and it's diverse. I agreed to the move and a few weeks later I was packing my things and driving down Hwy 85.

My first month in Charlotte, my college belongings and I lived in a hotel that I swear was run by descendants of the Bates family. It wasn't the best of situations but since I wasn't sure where my office would be located, I didn't want to make any commitments and then have renter's remorse.

I found my future home (a renovated cotton mill) by accident but quickly knew it was love at first sight. Sandwiched in between an incomplete attempt at urban renewal and Uptown Living, I found a slice of Charlotte affectionately called "NoDa" (short for North Davidson). NoDa is a quaint area that is known for being the historic art district. So after weeks of being the proverbial chocolate chip in the sugar cookie, I was finally surrounded by the hipster crowd. These were the free spirits who didn't shower for days, did what they loved for a living, played bongos on the streets, and swung their dirty blonde dreadlocks to the beat. Ironically, these were the same dreadlocks that blew out the sunroof of their Audi's, BMWs, and pimped out Mini-Coopers…but I was okay with that! I felt at home.

My leasing agent was an absolute doll. She put me in a big, open space, with exposed brick, and a huge industrial sized door...that led right to the street. I moved in but soon thereafter called my parents back, held the mattress on top of Dad's Volvo, and moved right back out. I moved to another unit 500 ft away, upstairs, and away from the street. Once the excitement of moving for the 3rd time in 3 months and starting a new job subsided, I began to focus on forming my relationship with Charlotte.

The first few days I utilized MapQuest to get me where I wanted to go. But then I realized that in order to get to the bones of the city, I would have to cut my dependence on a URL to take me to my destinations. I began driving and driving revealed the good, the bad, and the ugly on a surfacy level. Once I knew where I was going, I began mingling and mingling revealed the good, the bad, and the ugly on a social level. Mingling in Charlotte was very different from mingling in Atlanta. Mingling in Atlanta reminds me of those corny Successories posters with the water droplet and the ripples. In Atlanta, everybody's connected so once you're in, you're in. When my little water droplet hit in Charlotte there were no ripples, just a "kerplunk". In fact, when people would ask where I was from, I'd say "Atlanta!" (with an obvious vocal exclamation mark) and 99% of the time their answer would be "Oh..." (yes, with obvious vocal ellipses). And the conversation would literally die off.

I learned very quickly that native Charlotteans are very protective of the Queen's City and they saw my infiltration as a threat. Now I understand why: with newness comes vulnerability. Charlotteans work very hard to make this a credible place to live and hesitate to open it up to visitors who have the potential to judge it. They'd rather keep it under wraps until it's reached its growth potential, then pull back the curtain, and say "take THAT Big City!" Unfortunately their attempt to protect their city didn't help me (read: the introvert) adjust very well. So I went back to my dependence on a URL and changed my Facebook profile to the Charlotte network, joined meetup.com, and even considered creating a MySpace page (the horror!). Despite my virtual efforts, I continued to struggle making friends, and as a result poured myself into my work.

As much as I tried to commit to Charlotte as my new home, I couldn't and I began to see other cities.

Every single weekend I had off, I would travel home to Atlanta. I would tell my tale to my friends and family and they would feed me home cooked meals and great socially accepted excuses to keep me going ("it takes time to adjust," "those people weren't meant to be your friend"). And I'd always respond with skepticism: Maybe Charlotte's just not that into me...

This battle went on for about a year until one day where my neuroticism manifested and I realized that Charlotte didn't have a choice but to be into me. People like me were its future! All of a sudden I became empowered and started trying to find genuinely good people to join in my crusade to help Charlotte with hostmanship. If they weren't into the same things I was, then I'd introduce them to new things and hope for the best. After I built my core group, I found people and places that made me feel good and started to build my routines around them: my hair stylist, my brow lady, my pedicurist, my nail salon, and local restaurants.

As much as I felt empowered by what I started doing, the real power didn't come until I stopped doing some things. I stopped thinking Charlotte could be the "perfect city", I stopped comparing it (and its inhabitants) to things I had experienced before, and I stopped aligning my networking goals to a damn mass-produced poster. My perspective on Charlotte soon found its way to other places in my life as I realized there's also no perfect job, perfect boyfriend, or perfect Kiersten.

Charlotte and I will celebrate our 2 year anniversary this month, and like any relationship we've had our ups and downs; but we've figured out what works for us.