My Grown Up Life in St. Charles

At the mere age of 23, I’ve danced, learned to drive a car, tasted my first legal alcoholic drink, graduated from college, gotten engaged to my high school sweetheart, been an intern, had my first full time job experience and called St. Charles, Missouri my home.

I’m Kasey, a young, enthusiastic, fun, loving kind of girl who was born and raised in St. Charles. I consider myself to be a young professional, or, at least, that is what I am striving to be. Being only a year out of college I’m trying to find my place in my own hometown.

I’ve lived in St. Charles my entire life, and quite honestly, I did not think this is where I still would be by the time I reached my early 20s. When I was younger I thought I would be in New York City (or Chicago which many know is my dream city) working for a top magazine company by now, but then when I went away to college after high school, I realized that reality is a little different than a dream. Not in a good or bad way necessarily, just different. I wasn’t going to ‘grow up’ to live in my home town, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with New Town (it reminded me an awful lot of Pleasantville), I wasn’t going to have a little, yappy dog, and I wasn’t going to work for my dad’s company. I had all intentions on creating what I considered to be my own life.

I graduated from Francis Howell North in 2006, and a part of me wanted to stay home and experience college that way, but I knew deep down inside that what I really needed to do for myself was get away and experience life outside of this not-so-little town. I gave Mizzou a run for it's money, but I wasn’t satisfied. I then found my new home at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, MO, and by the end of my four years of school, almost wasn’t quite ready to come back home to St. Charles. I had just experienced the absolute greatest four years of my life. I was studying Public Relations and Hospitality Management, I was the president of my sorority (Alpha Delta Pi), I was actively involved in other campus organizations, I was an intern for the Southeast Missourian newspaper and I was living with some of the absolute best friends a girl could ever ask for.

But each time that I came back home to visit something inside me fell more and more in love with the place that I had called home for nearly 20 years of my life. I always said to my family and friends that I would live someplace else once I graduated from college, but something just kept pulling and pulling me back to home. I grew to respect St. Charles more and more every time I was back home. There was nothing that I didn’t like about it, per se, I just wanted to experience something different for a little while. It’s funny how being away for a while makes you realize how great something really is.

Well, here I am, one year after graduating from college, and I’m living in St. Charles (New Town as a matter of fact), I have a little yappy dog, Bentley, who was supposed to be not so little and yappy, and I am working for my dad’s company. The best part of it? I couldn’t be happier. Who knew?

Follow along as I try to find my place from childhood to adulthood in the place that I’ve called home for the entirety of my life. I’m making social media, marketing and PR my best friends, helping to make a business grow and develop, getting married, learning to live life on my own without mom and dad always by my side, becoming actively involved within the community of St. Charles in various organizations and really making living in my own city a meaningful experience. This past year living back in St. Charles after being away at school for four years has been full of changes, and I can only imagine what more is to come. Stay tuned as I try to find my place as a young professional in the town that I once learned how to ride my bicycle in. And yes, that bicycle had a pink basket on the front. : )