One random note at a time: Notes spread hope at home and abroad
Gabrielle Bovard was 14 years old when she slipped a random note between the pages of a library book.
“I was feeling super insecure and I didn’t really fit in. I felt like, there’s got to be more than this feeling. Please tell me that it gets better,” said Bovard, an upbeat user experience writer from South Fayette. “I either have to accept that life, which they say is good, is actually really painful and uncomfortable, or I have to be somebody who goes out and makes it better.”
Bovard resolved to make the world a nicer place.
The Chartiers Valley graduate splashed colorful words of encouragement on notebook paper and printer paper. She’d stick her messages to telephone poles around Scott Township – where she grew up – with blue painter’s tape, or tuck random notes into library books.
Bovard figured if she was seeking a sign from the universe that every little thing was going to be all right, someone else was searching for the right words at the right time, too.
“I didn’t even realize that I was starting a movement. Something really simple becomes really powerful over time.”
For two decades, Bovard’s charming random notes have decorated parking meters, overlook handrails, light poles and other surfaces in the greater Pittsburgh region and beyond. The notes, written in Bovard’s small, cheerful font, encourage people throughout the United States and as far away as Australia (Bovard, a travel enthusiast, takes her notes on vacation) to “do the thing that’s been on your heart forever” and remind them that “you are so much better than you realize.”
“Notes have shown up in different places, notes have shown up in languages that I don’t speak,” Bovard marveled. “There’s been some in South America – I’ve never been to South America. One was found last summer in the UK. I’ve never been to the UK. Things like that are really, really cool. It always blows my mind. It doesn’t matter where I am; we all have the same things going on.”
After a run-in with a random note fan named Adam Conkey, a Carnegie Mellon grad who spotted Bovard taping positivity around Pittsburgh and told her she needed to brand the project, random notes moved online. Now, they live in both the real world and on randomnoteproject.com (Conkey graciously built the first iteration in 2011; now, Bovard, who graduated from Chatham, runs the website).
Since launching @randomnoteproject on Instagram in February 2021, Bovard’s account has amassed over 1,000 followers. People find random notes while hurrying from the coffee shop to their cars on weekdays, or during evening strolls, and share the wise words to social, often tagging Bovard’s Insta.
“It’s a good way to build community. They can share, comment, add them to their stories. It’s nice to be part of the positive social media presence,” said Bovard, who also hosts the Random Note Project Facebook page. “There’s good stuff out there.”
Folks also submit found notes – sometimes anonymously – through the website. From there, Bovard shares the person’s note and story to social media. She is honored that strangers around the world trust her to share their tales of the right words found at just the right time.
Once, a nervous woman with a heavy heart passed a random note as she headed to her first post-diagnosis cancer appointment.
“The note she found said, ‘You’re going to survive this,'” Bovard said, voice tinged with awe. “I don’t know her. Somehow, that note found its place to the place she needed to find it.”
A gentleman who lost his job during the pandemic went for a late-night walk to clear his mind. Suddenly, Bovard’s perfect penmanship told him, “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Bovard realized the impact of her passion project during a positivity-spreading excursion through Pittsburgh. One weekend, armed with uplifting words and painter’s tape (her perspective has changed, but Bovard’s methods have not, she laughed), Bovard hopped aboard a city bus.
She found an empty seat and struck up a conversation with the stranger beside her, who wondered what the spunky woman was doing out and about. Bovard explained her project, reached for a random note and handed the message to the gentleman.
“He held it to his chest and said, ‘This one is so special,'” Bovard recalled. “Later in the conversation, he mentioned to me he had been struggling a lot with suicidal thoughts. I’m not trained as a therapist.”
When the bus reached Bovard’s stop, she stood and said, “I hope I see you again here.”
Silence. Bovard started for the door. The stranger called her name.
“‘I’m going to see you next weekend,'” Bovard remembered him saying. “‘Your note said you have many beautiful days ahead.’ And I did: I saw him again the next week.”
Moments like that make the Random Note Project worthwhile. Bovard said friends often wonder if she’s bothered by the copycat notes that crop up throughout the area and the world.
“I always love when other people join in, because their perspective on the world is different than mine,” she said. “Anyone who’s able to join in, that’s always really exciting.”
She encourages anyone interested in spreading goodness to volunteer to pen their own random notes through the project’s website. The more people spreading positivity, the better.
Today’s world often pressures creators to dream bigger, and Bovard said several friends have asked her when she’s scaling up the Random Note Project, or if she’ll ever appear on “Good Morning America.”
“If it happens, that’s great,” she laughed.
But her main goal has been and remains making the world a better place, one random note at a time.
“So much of what’s going on in the world is so far out of our hands, and so big. There are people out there that care. There’s another way to see the world: It’s not all bad,” Bovard said. “We’re all kind of the same; we all need to feel connection. Life has hardships, but you’re here. You get to be a part of it. There is so much good out there. Wherever you are in life, it’s OK. Just keep going.”