Blog News Ms. Career Girl is Getting a Makeover!

Blog News Ms. Career Girl is Getting a Makeover! Today Im writing with some exciting news.  Ive known for a long time that Ms. Career Girl needed to get a big makeover.  She needed (symbolically  speaking) everything from a dye job to a spray tan and a personal trainer.  I just wasnt exactly sure what she needed first. In twentysomething land, four years is a long time.  I was twenty four and single when I started Ms. Career Girl and often wrote about that crucial time between college graduation and starting my career in Chicago.  My life was filled with uncertainty, dating stories, utter career confusion, tons of networking, bad apartments, bars and over-spending. 2008 the year of too many vodka sodas. Riding a mechanical bull a great metaphor for ones twenties. Today my life looks a little different In the last 4 years I broke up with my old career and fell in love with a new one, leading me to leave Corporate America  (only to be laid off by a startup)  then to self-employment and today to a digital agency.  Its been my toughest chapter yet, but totally worth the journey. And, contrary to what many twentysomethings believe, Ive learned that picking the right guy can be the best thing that ever happened to your life AND your career.   Since starting Ms. Career Girl, my mind has shifted from renting to owning, from picking a career to being promoted in my career, from over-spending to over-saving.  Not to mention that the word baby has made its way into my vocabulary and the thought of embarking on all of THAT makes it feel like starting all over again So the question is, what does Ms. Career Girls next chapter look like? Well, Im not ready to reveal all of the details yet, but heres what I will tell you: Ms. Career Girl is getting a new look (bye bye fuchsia and sky blue!) Rather than being a mostly work-focused site, well have four categories of content: Work, Home, Self and +1 Youll be hearing a lot from my closest girlfriend, Katie Marotta Dawson Katie and I at our joint bachelorette party in July of 2012. Meet Katie Marotta Dawson Ten years ago, in January of 2003, I met Katie at our Kappa Alpha Theta sorority bid day.  She was 19, I was 18.  I totally remember the first moment I met her.  She announced to our pledge class (in what I now call her happy teacher voice) that she was from Nashville, was one of 5 kids and she wanted to be a teacher.  Thats a great one-sentence summary of Katie. Nice one-piece jumpsuit Kate. Her family is everything to her and for good reason.  The Marottas are the shit.  Seriously.  And now she has a new family member her husband Bobby Dawson.  Bobby is an adorable, sweet and kind southern man who couldnt be a better fit for her.  It really is so cool when your friends end up with someone who makes them the best version of themselves.   Meet the Dawsons! Katie has always taken her career as a teacher very seriously. She earned her masters degree in education  while teaching full-time and now works as a Reading Specialist.  I am totally fascinated that she can teach kids to read, many of which are way behind or have learning  disabilities. I dont think I could do it While planning our weddings over the last year (we got married 6 weeks apart) we bonded over our love affair with Pinterest and everything DIY.  When Katie and her husband moved up to the Chicago suburbs this summer from Nashville, we started taking our Pinteresting offline.  Most of our experiments were total flops (was it the wine??).  We also started having great talks about life as a twentysomething and what life as a thirtysomething would look like. Nasty ass coffee-cake-gone-wrong that tasted like salt and play dough.  Katie was genuinely pissed about it for at least two days. Recipe compliments of Pinterest. While racking my brain about Ms. Career Girls makeover one day, I realized that Katie could be just what Ms. Career Girl (and I) needed. In many ways our differences are our strength.  For example: Educator vs. business person Suburban vs. urban Martha Stewart extraordinaire vs. Owner of a cook book called How to Boil Water Southerner vs. Northerner Loyal DIYer vs. Loyal Spend-Too-Mucher (ok, thats not a word) Knows exactly what to do at Buy Buy Baby vs. Has NO clue what anything in that store is You get the idea. The new Ms. Career Girl whether were talking about todays working woman or the newest chapter of this blog comes in all forms and is influenced by all areas of her life, not just work. Plus, who wants to come home from work and read more about only work?! Us visiting our alma mater Miami University in honor of our friends 30th birthday. So, Welcome to Ms. Career Girl, Katie!  And thanks to all of you for sticking with this blog through the years.  We hope you like whats to come! Nicole