We Have a New Look-Upgraded LBN

Hi Life Before Nooners,

We have revamped our design and are excited to be blogging at our new site. Check it out! Unfortunately, we will be no longer be blogging here- so make sure you sign up for our feed to receive LBN updates.

Check out our new design. Subscribe to our feed. Check out our new About and Author pages.

We would love to hear your feedback– so email us with comments, suggestions, or just @ reply us on twitter!

Check it out and make sure you subscribe if you want to hear the latest from Life Before Noon.

Come find your Life Before Noon with us at www.lifebeforenoon.com!

Holiday Cheer from Life Before Noon

We hope you spent the holidays with family and friends enjoying the season!

Here is some holiday blogging love…Enjoy!

Thanks to a dear JMU friend for sending me this link.

-Carla

Changing the Direction of My Arrows

“Carla, don’t worry, you will be fine” said my friend. Fine…that’s just….fine.

Right. I know I will be fine. I know I can have a 9-5, a life and be fine. And fine is OK.

But OK is not the way I want to live. I want to live fantastically.

I want the things that really matter: a job I am passionate about, friends and family I care deeply for and a community online and off I can thrive in and make better.

Ok, Carla – cut the crap.

I’m a self-diagnosed YSWFITC. Yes, a Young Single White Female In The City. I’m 22 and I have a direction. Not a path; no defined, carved goals. I have ideas and grand schemes lined up in my head and scribbled on notebook paper stuffed into my purse. I have piles of business books, self-help books and trashy romance novels to help navigate through early-twenty something life. As much as I want the books to spell out my post-grad life, I still haven’t found the chapter entitled “Carla’s Post-Grad Life Choices Defined” (still searching, FYI).

It’s as if everyday I have arrows directing me, pushing me closer to where I want to be – my direction. I truthfully just don’t know where to start.

Lucky these arrows have already pointed me to be a part of the group blog Life Before Noon. In February 2008, when I became one of Life Before Noon’s founding team members, I didn’t realize that blogging-and the involvement in the online community-would be such a large part of who I am.

Blogging and being a part of an online community made me deeply and truthfully believe in myself. That the introverted, follow-the rule student, friend and daughter could be a little different. It made me believe that I could be an individual with valuable opinions who is an integral part of a community.

Through LBN and Brazen I have learned how to be a teammate and a leader at the same time. Blogging, and most importantly the community, has given me confidence to follow my direction. To speak up, take more risks, and be passionate. That as an individual part of a community, together we can make a difference.

Most importantly, blogging made me realize in something bigger than myself – in the value of connecting to build relationships. Blogging has given me relationship equity with some of the most intelligent people. Blogging has been such a postive influence in my life that I constantly encourage my friends to start their own blog.

But it’s not over. My blogging journey and my relationship with you, the reader, commenter, fellow blogger is just beginning. I truly believe that it is through our relationship and involvement in the community that we will be able to live fantastically.

Blogging made me realize that I can control my arrows. Let’s see where they point next.

-Carla

This post was entered in the Brazen Careerist SXSW Contest.