As you all know by now, I entered a competition hosted by the wonderful My Destination team to win a trip to travel to 6 different continents for 6 months.
The winner will be announced in 3 days!!!

When I first applied for this contest, I was pretty confident in my entry. I thought I did a good job showing what plain-jane Phoenix, AZ has to offer: my video was fun, personable, upbeat and local. I thought it was unique! But as the end of the competition came, I saw better and better videos!!! By the last day for entries, I am pretty sure there are about 2,000 entries the poor team has to plow through. And to be honest, many of them were AMAZING! I don’t know why I expected any less. Everyone has a unique story to tell. Some of contestants lived in BEAUTIFUL place like Barbados or Australia. And I had PHOENIX…. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COMPETE WITH THAT?? hahaha :)

So the Top 10 will consist of  5 winners picked by the public vote and 5 picked by the judges. I was banking on the judges to pick me because I knew I could never beat out these crazy famous bloggers and social media gurus.
The contestants with the most votes got almost 30,000 votes!!!!!
How is that even possible???

I got 129… *cricket chirping in the background*

I honestly think I could have gotten more votes had I spammed/annoyed people to votes for me daily.

But I didn’t. I wanted the judges to pick me for me:

• because I can be one hell of a blogger
• because I can make a big story out of anything
• because I have the skills to make videos for the world to see about my adventures
• because I am connected in all aspects of social media
• because I don’t have too much “traveling experience” I will be able to tell my audiences the do’s AND dont’s of travelling from a whole new perspective.
• because I will be able to relate to many different demographics
• because I can immerse myself in an experience or culture
• and because they think I have what it takes to fulfill the BIGGEST, BADDEST BUCKET LIST!

So as you go over my entry, I hope you keep these pointers in mind. :) Plus I really would like to finally meet Anna and Hannah and the rest of the team! You seem like a fun crew.  :)

BUT even if I am not picked as the winner (or the top 10 for that matter) here are a few lessons I took away from this experience:

• I have a surprisingly extensive and loving support system that wants to see me succeed.
• My Mother will support all my dreams no matter how bizarre they are!
• I can be passionate about more than one thing.
• I might want to shift my focus from being an entertainment reporter to a travel reporter/writer.
• No dream goal is too crazy to be accomplished!!!

Thanks for hearing me out!

And for other contestants: