Why Not?

I have been long fascinated by people. Sometimes I like to just sit and watch them; sometimes I like to take a step back and pretend I’m not there and just wonder what people look like from the perspective of someone on the outside. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if you could see what each person was thinking by reading a bubble above their head.

I find it interesting to watch children run around without a care in the world. That teenager walking with music blaring out of their headphones. Girls gossiping in groups. Tired looking business men with slumped shoulders, tired moms chasing after children, everyone. Absolutely fascinating! What is their story? What are they doing? Where are they going? What have they seen? Are they happy?

Everyone has in their mind who they are, how they appear, where they are going and what they can and can’t do. Right now I’m going to volunteer myself up as a case study for this.

Growing up I was very quiet, very shy. In my mind I was a princess, of the fairy variety. I had princess wedding aspirations, complete with a prince and then so many children I wouldn’t even know what to do. I had not seen very much, but I was bound and determined to be the coolest, cool mom and wear all the pretty dresses I could.

As I got older, I really started watching the skies. I wondered to myself: “where are the airplanes going?” and “what kind of people are on them?” I longed for palm trees and soft sand, but I’m Canadian, so there are no palm trees here. I was never ever going to live anywhere with palm trees. I couldn’t.

I finished elementary school and high school homeschooled, then enrolled in public college, completed year one, and liked it. Year two, switched programs. Year three, stopped liking it. The sunny skies had started calling. There I stood, with a job, a house, a boyfriend, family and friends, an almost done diploma. I wasn’t about to leave. I couldn’t.

Year four, hated it. Pretty sure it was all in Greek. But I wasn’t going to leave. I couldn’t!

Couldn’t I?

Maybe… just maybe, palm trees and blue skies weren’t just pretend in a land far away. Perhaps I could say a ‘see you soon’ to my family and friends (never goodbye, just see you soon). Could I find an alternative to finish my education? I actually could, maybe, take a leave of absence at one job and get a job near those palm trees, just for a while…

I mean… why not? So I did. I realized that in hesitation I am my own worst enemy. The only thing holding me back is the thought of “I can’t”, when really, maybe I am meant to be on an airplane, under palm trees, in the sand.

Over the past year, from both men and women of all ages, I’ve heard “Chelsea, if anyone can do it, it’s you! But IIIIII could never do what you are doing.” While this is flattering, it also makes me want to shake them: “why not?” I am just a normal girl. I’m no PhD scholar, hippy flower girl or super athlete. I like regular 23 year old girl stuff, do regular 23 year old girl stuff and am, really, a regular 23 year old girl. Travelling and new things make me excited, but they also terrify me. So why can I do it and not them? What makes me any different?

The last year has led me to decide that what I REALLY want to do is to inspire people to step outside their comfort zone to evict the “I CAN’T” phrase from their vocabulary and replace it with a “WHY NOT?” Seriously, if I can do it, ANYONE can.

My suggestion to everyone reading this is simple: take a step back, and watch people. Consider what others see in the little bubble above your head. Do you like it? Are you happy? Should you be doing something else? Because you CAN.

In the wonderful words of a hero of mine, Emma Watson: “If not me, WHO? If not now, WHEN?”

Why not?

Love always,

Chels

#RedefineRealLife

In the Beginning

A few Wednesdays ago, Chelsea asked me to come help her with a video she was making for a contest that, if she won, would have her join 2 men on a quest to get their Global Degrees, in turn earning hers as well. To get your Global Degree, you have to travel to every country in the world. No big deal. Once the video was accepted, we started cold calling news outlets, influential people and notable businesses all over Ottawa. We had one question: would you be interested in hearing about a woman from Ottawa trying to be the youngest woman to travel to every country in the world? To our surprise, basically everyone said no. Buzz kill. After a few calls we perfected our spiels and people started listening for two seconds instead of hanging up on us. A few radio stations and newspapers took our information and not much else. We exhausted our lists and decided it was time for some Starbucks. While in the parking lot, Chels gets a call from a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen.

Fast forward through the rest of that week: we were able to get Chels on 3 different radio stations both in Ottawa and Toronto (all of which called US for the story after seeing it in the Citizen), in the Ottawa Citizen both online and on Page 2, get Jim Watson’s (Ottawa's Mayor) explicit support and get over 300 likes on her video. It’s crazy how far a little positivity and hard work got us in less than a week.

Then, Wednesday (the day before the contest wrapped up) rolled around. The guys from Global Degree decided to extend the contest until the next Sunday. Honestly, we were pissed. What else were we supposed to do in the next 4 days that we hadn’t already done? We had annoyed and pestered everyone on Facebook for a solid week with just a little video and some links to radio interviews and newspaper articles. It wasn’t really an option to keep doing that for 4 more days unless we had something REALLY good to show them.

The two of us looked at each other—exhausted, crabby and baggy-eyed from the last week of little sleep and lots of promoting—and basically asked what was next. We needed wow factor and we needed it right away. We threw all the spare tip money in our wallets together and checked our bank balances. We had 500 bucks between the two of us that could be spared for an adventure. At first, we said Toronto. It didn’t feel quite right. We needed bigger. We pointed out that NYC is only an 8 hour drive away. Outrageous, but an option. We didn’t have time for Chelsea to travel to the exotic places in the world that the other competitors had been to. Maybe instead of traveling the world, we could go to where the world travelled to. Definitely wow factor. Could we just up and drive to NYC? Do people even do that in real life, let alone two 22/23yr old women? Why not?

Fast forward to 24 hours later and we’re on a full tank of gas in the middle of some miscellaneous US town with a borrowed video camera in hand documenting it all. We’ve kept our final destination a secret and have hyped it up enough that we’re being barraged with texts and notifications asking where we’re going. We get lost a few times along the way. We stop for some photo ops. We drive out of -25 degree weather and into what ends up being +4 degrees. We roll down the windows and open the sunroof and blast the tunes as we fly through Manhattan because 4 degrees is WARM. Americans are looking at us like we’re nuts because we are. The whole experience is nuts.

Eventually we arrive at our hotel in Queens, make friends with the front desk who offer us a private shuttle to the subway station which we somehow successfully navigate to land ourselves in the middle of Times Square. We head outside looking for our next goal. American Eagle Times Square is featuring people on their MASSIVE billboard. We literally run in, yelling, and tell the (terrified) greeter that some crazy Canadians need to speak with their manager. Next thing you know we’re posing for a photo and giving them our information. We’re buying Chels white pants and a white shirt so people can sign her in Sharpie. Our photo gets posted. People see it. Literally CROWDS of people gather around her to sign where they’re from and who they are and show that they support this crazy Canuck on her adventure. We're handing out literally HUNDREDS of sticky notes to everyone we meet with #‎chelsea4globaldegree on it so they can look it up and participate in the movement.

After a luxurious 3.5 hour sleep, we wake up at 6 and cab out to the Rockefeller Centre and sprint about 3 blocks to get to the Today show outdoor set. They give us weird looks when we approach, out of breath and with a huge sign, but they let us in behind the barricade. We’re early enough that we get the perfect spot, but also early enough that we commit ourselves to 1.5hrs waiting in the freezing cold (-15 degrees… the Americans are losing it) to keep the spot ours. During their little morning clip, we are RIGHT BEHIND THE ANCHORS and our sign is visible the whole time! Before we leave NYC we head to a lookout on the Queens side. Chelsea poses in the freezing cold with just her signature-filled white outfit on and Manhattan in the background. It’s pretty cool.

During that drive home, the two of us had a long talk about the whole experience that this contest had all of a sudden bestowed upon us. We didn’t just grow, we extrapolated. We went from a crappy 3 minute audition video to throwing some clothes and a cooler in the back of her little Volkswagon and heading to NYC at 4:30am. We went from cold calling anyone and everyone we could think of and getting rejected to people calling us and having a hard time NOT double booking interviews and radio appearances. We went from “please share our video” to trending an internationally shared hashtag and having total strangers physically sign their support onto a new friend in the middle of the biggest North American city.

We talked about all of this and decided that life was now different for the both of us. When you figure out that this kind of thing is possible in such a short time, it changes the way you look at things. We knew that regardless of the outcome of this contest, we were in it together now.

We have decided that they are still going to go to every country in the world. We have to try something outrageous but still reasonable to test the wild waters of world travel. Plus, before we take on such a big goal, we need to know they can do something like this without going broke or killing each other.

Stay tuned for our adventure announcement post and video coming soon!

Love,

Maddy

Former Campaign Manager turned Inquisitive Globe Trotter