Give A Girl Some Space (Patreon)

Can I just start off with saying that I really miss running into you all. It’s been almost a year of wearing masks, and I can’t remember last time I got a random high five in the streets, or got to stop and chat about tools for a bit. You’re the best and I miss hanging out with you.

OK, with that out of the way: last week was an unexpected whirlwind of work and a mudslide of emotions.

If you’re on Twitter:
I’m really sorry for how much I’ve been spamming about the #Inspiration4contest.

If you’re not on Twitter:
Wow, good for you. ALSO CAN I TELL YOU ABOUT THE #INSPIRATION4CONTEST

Basically, Inspiration 4 is this big competition/fundraiser where they’re giving away three seats on a SpaceX rocket.

• One seat went to a woman who survived childhood cancer and who is going to be the youngest person ever to go to space.
• One seat will be given to a donor of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
• And the last seat is decided through a contest and will be given to someone who has an inspiring entrepreneurial story and posts an entertaining, viral Twitter video about it.

Looks at contest description.

Looks at self.

Looks at contest description again.

Yells “SO YOU’RE TELLING ME THERE’S A CHANCE” at self.

So with only a week left of a month-long competition, I got to work. And this Tuesday I uploaded my entry. You can watch it here. A big part of the judging criteria is how viral your tweet goes, so I definitely had a lot of nerves as I clicked “post”.

I’m not sure what I was hoping for. But no matter what it was, my hopes quickly became irrelevant as Twitter came bulldozing through the door.

When the competition ended last night, over 53 thousand people had retweeted my entry. I need to write that again: over 53 THOUSAND PEOPLE were like “heck yes lets send that Queen of Shitty Robots Simone [unpronounceable last name] to space, she seems like a good fit.”

The amount of support my submission received honestly made me speechless. I’ve been working on the internet for the last five years, but you truly never cease to amaze me.

With that said: I’m so fucking nervous. I haven’t been able to sleep all week. Almost every night, I wake up around 3AM and spend about an hour fretting about something random. Normally, it’s some email that I need to send, or someone that I’m convinced is angry with me even though they have given no indication that they’re actually angry with me. Swap those worries out for “I MIGHT BE SITTING ON A ROCKET IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS” and you have a great recipe for staying awake forever.

Fortunately, Scraps will happily provide her services as a head weight whenever my mind is racing.

They are going to contact the winner in two days (!!!) and it’ll be announced publicly sometime mid-March. There’s a panel of judges who decide who gets the seat, so now all I can do is keeping my fingers crossed. Do you think this constitutes as cheating?

Also how do you fit 53 thousand names on a shirt? Asking for a friend.

XOXO
Simone