Today I’m writing with some exciting news. For a long time leading up to MsCareerGirl.com’s FOURTH (?!?!) birthday in November, I’ve known it was time for Ms. Career Girl to get a big makeover. She needed, symbolically speaking, everything from a dye job to a spray tan and a personal trainer. I just wasn’t 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 one’s 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. It’s been my toughest chapter yet, but totally worth the journey.
And, contrary to what many twentysomethings believe, I’ve 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 Girl’s next chapter look like?
Well, I’m not ready to reveal all of the details yet, but here’s 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, we’ll have four categories of content: Work, Home, Self and +1
- You’ll 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. That’s 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 couldn’t 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 don’t 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 Girl’s 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 DIY’er vs. Loyal Spend-Too-Much’er (ok, that’s 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 we’re talking about today’s 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 friend’s 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 what’s to come!
Nicole