Summary

Do you feel stuck in a job or situation you hate, wish you could start over or walk away from it all? This week Alea Simone from Travel Taurus discusses what freedom feels like and why she quit her job to travel and live without fear. We are not telling you to do anything drastic. We are all about holistic living and taking care of one’s self. Maybe you need a break. Either way follow Alea Simone the Travel Taurus on Instagram @ TheTravelTaurus, on TicTik @ TravelTauruss. Check out her website here.

Enjoy and tell us what you think about today’s episode here — Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/teaoverinteriors/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/teaoverinteriors/support

Transcription

Should I quit my job and travel?

[00:00:00]

Alea: Opening:

Dee: I’m Dee

Alicja: I’m Alicja

Dee: And welcome to another episode of ,Tea Over Interiors. Today, I am so excited to have a guest with us, Alea Simone.

Alea: The Travel Taurus

Dee: The Travel Taurus! We are going to chat today about travel and how she develops her wellness around that.

Where are you by the way, Alea?

Alea: I am in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.

It’s nice here because it’s been raining.

So it’s 80 degrees but a cool 80 degrees.

Dee: That brings me to my first question. I follow you on Instagram since last year, sometime. I noticed on one of your posts, you mentioned that you moved to Mexico. So I was dying to find out.

How do you describe home and what made you move to Mexico?

Alea: Well, I’ve always wanted to, ever since I started traveling like internationally hardcore, which I guess would probably be a 2019.

[00:01:00] I have been wanting to move outta the country. I don’t wanna live in America. Everything’s so expensive there.

And it’s really, really hard to come back to paying those types of prices when you pay literally nothing in other countries.

So it’s just, I don’t think I’ve ever actually gotten used to being back in America since 2019. So I’ve been trying to leave ever since, but of course we have the pandemic, so nobody could go anywhere. So I got kind of stuck and now since I kind of have the chance, I decided I should go and try it out.

Alicja: And what do you think?

Alea: Oh, I love it here. I’ve been here for about a month.

I really love Mexico. I wanna go check out some other areas in Mexico though. So I’ll be here for about two months and then, because traveling is my job, which I’m sure you might get to later. I do have to go to Asia in July and August, so I’ll be gone for a month and then I’ll probably come back to Mexico and [00:02:00] check out another area of Mexico.

Dee: How does that work with visas? Or is it because you’re just constantly moving around that you don’t really need a visa or green card. I don’t know what they call it in other countries.

Alea: Yeah, it works out well for me, because for U.S. Citizens in Mexico, you get 180 days, but I won’t be here 180 days, so I have to leave and come back anyway.

So it’ll just restart. When I get back, we just caught a regular flight, literally planned this all out within a week. And we just came down here, had my dog with me. We got him on the plane and it was very easy process to bring a pet down here. So I’m happy about that.

Alicja: What do you do for Housing?

Alea: Airbnb and how we did it was I actually talked to the owner of the Airbnb I just sent him a DM and was like, “Hey, we’re trying to come down there and rent your apartment for a month.” So I kind of got him to cut a deal $600 a month.

Alicja: Good. Yeah.

Alea: That’s a couple hundred dollars off a little [00:03:00] monthly discount.

So we’ll be here for a month. I told him I’ll make a video about the place when I leave and post it on my social media so people can know where I’m staying at, it’s a really affordable, it’s $20 a night. If you break it down that he’s renting it on Airbnb, but yeah, I mean, $600 a month is pretty good. And there’s a lady that comes and cleans the room.

And it’s pet friendly. I didn’t have to pay anything, extra. Electricity water, all of that’s included internet included.

So it works out. I haven’t rented since 2019.

Dee: That’s amazing. You’re a full time travel expert, right?

Alea: Yes. Travel expert, travel influencer travel writer, travel blogger, whatever people wanna call it.

Dee: When you’re in all these different places, because they’re not your permanent dwelling.

How do you make it feel like home? Or do you constantly feel you’re just in a vacation rental or Airbnb? How do you create [00:04:00] your wellness around your space that you live in?

Alea: Well, it’s really just about the things that I really keep with me since I am moving around a lot. I always have certain things on me. I carry around crystals and pyramids and just having my stuff with me.

This will be the longest that I’ve been anywhere since July of last year. So, wow. Yeah. So it’s about as home as it gets for me.

Dee: What made you decide that travel was what you wanted to do? Was there a life changing experience you had?

Alea: No, I think I’ve always liked to travel I actually took my first international trip while I was in college.

We went to Egypt for two weeks , it was 20 students and we had some adults with us. Well, I did that, and that was really fun for me. Definitely learned a lot during that trip. But other than that, I didn’t really start traveling internationally, heavily, until I said 2019.

And that was when I quit my job. I went to travel full time. I sold all my stuff, took whatever [00:05:00] money I had and I just left for four months.

Alicja: There was no catalyst? There was no something that occurred in your life that gave you that license to make the assessment that living in the manner in which you live now was the more preferred way for you to move your life forward?

Alea: Oh, for sure. Travel just in general, I had always been traveling. So when I did decide to quit my job and just go full into it, I had already been traveling probably once a month. And that was with having a full time job. They were little trips. I would go maybe to LA or I might go to Las Vegas or I might go to Cancun or I might go to places that really weren’t far.

I knew I wanted to do travel full time. I wanted to be content creator, but I didn’t really know anything about it. It was a very new at the time that people weren’t really making money doing it unless you were on YouTube. Instagram was really new at [00:06:00] the time. This, was like, I wanna say May, 2016 or something that 2017, there really wasn’t much going on with social media back then. Right. It’s not as big as it is now. Once people started doing it more so on YouTube, I was saying that’s kinda cool. People were quitting, their jobs and traveling. I didn’t know people were doing that. I was saying, I really wanna do that. That sounds great.

Cuz I did not like my job at the time. I had a really nice apartment. I loved my apartment. I had a nice car, lived in a great area. I had

friends ,

dating life through the roof. But I hated my job. And just living was so expensive. So I would have my full-time job. And then I had a part-time job and I was always broke.

That was the problem I was like, how am I always working? But I still don’t have no money. Exactly. Very frustrating for me. And I didn’t even like my job. I didn’t feel I was good at it at all. I don’t wanna work here. And I remember one day I had submitted leave cuz [00:07:00] I wanted to go out of town. I was traveling often. Even with the fulltime job.

So I submitted to leave and this was in October of 2018 and my boss had the nerve to decline it. Mm-hmm look, that was the first time that ever happened to me. I didn’t know how I was gonna quit the job. I didn’t know if I was gonna go get another job or anything in my head.

I was thinking most people tell you, oh, don’t quit your job until you have another job or right? That’s what people tell you. So I was like alright, well maybe I should look for another job. And I started looking for other jobs. It just was not looking good. I read the job description. I was like, this looks terrible.

It sounds like torture. I don’t wanna work there either. I literally cannot figure out what to do with that. I just know I didn’t wanna work at that job. And then a couple months later, my dad ended up passing away.

Alicja: Mm.

Alea: And I was just like, dang, this is crazy. You could just die any day. I really had to look in the mirror and be like, what are you doing with your life?

Are you just gonna [00:08:00] waste it away? And I started looking at the other people around me and my coworkers and stuff, and they were miserable.

Alicja: Exactly.

Alea: I started looking at people like, you know, when you walk into work, you ever just look at people. I just started looking at people, looking at them in the elevator, looking at them, walking into the building and stuff.

They look like they didn’t wanna be there. And then I realized, nobody wants to be here.

Alicja: Right.

Alea: I was thinking, well, no one’s making us be here. No, one’s really making me be here.

Alicja: Right.

Alea: So I remember I was talking to one of my friends one day and I was just like, I cannot take this anymore. I do not wanna be here.

I just wanna quit. I don’t wanna have another job. I just don’t even wanna do it at all. And she was like, what do you wanna do? I wanna go travel. That’s what I was do. I wanna just quit. And I wanna go travel. Cause people are doing that. And I had heard that this really famous YouTuber this guy, he quit his job.

He didn’t make it as long as I did, cuz I’ve been outta college nine years. He only worked for six months and he was like, I can’t do it no more. So he quit his job. And he only had [00:09:00] $5,000 and then he left and went to Asia for six months.

Alicja: Wow.

Alea: That’s really not even that much money. So I was telling my friend that, well, this guy, he quit his job. He only had $5,000 and she was like, well, how much money do you have? So then we started breaking down how much money I had and actually had more than $5,000, and then she was like, you could actually do this.

I could actually do this and that was about March. My dad passed away in January. So this was a couple months after that, but I was like, yeah, I really could do this. I was thinking I wanted to still do social media, but I didn’t really know how you do that. So I just went and I traveled and I did two months in Europe and two months in Asia. It was a total of 17 countries I traveled to but not that I traveled through, I traveled through about 20 countries, but I traveled to 17. So, I came back I had $40 leftover.

Dee: Okay. And what did you do? Like you leave me on a cliff [00:10:00] hanger.

What did you do?

Alea: Oh, well I came back home. One bucket of money I did not touch was my retirement. I didn’t take it out when I quit my job. So it was still there. So that was the first thing I did. I took it all out it was mine, I worked for it and that’s how I paid my bills with that money. Probably lasted me like a good year it was $20,000 I did end up traveling a little more after I came back from that really long trip, I was staying with one of my friends and I traveled to, where did I go? We went to Vegas. That was free though. She won a contest. I went to New York. I went to Guatemala. I did that by myself.

Alicja: I hear it’s friendly for single women traveling alone.

Alea: Oh yeah. I’ve been there twice by myself. So I went this past November too. I love Guatemala, Guatemala is a great place. I went there and then right before the pandemic in February, you remember everything got shut down in March.

So in February actually went with my friends and [00:11:00] we back packed Europe. A little over two weeks. We went to five countries. I spent a couple thousand dollars doing that .

Alicja: We’re all about wellness and, holistic living and lifestyle. This is the big question in my spirit when you did the first jaunt right. The first big stepping out on faith. From a spiritual perspective, if you can speak to this, what changed energetically and Spiritually, for you in those two months when you were away for two months, you said, right?

Alea: Yeah. When you actually start meeting other people. Okay. First of all, Just before you even go and do something crazy, cause it is kind of crazy.

You do have to be willing to take that risk. So it’s kind of a quantum leap and I kind of feel I’m doing that again with what I’m doing now. It’s just, who is it that you wanna be and what, and who is stopping you from being that person. So I know for me, I was a really shy person and I will also [00:12:00] have to say that I had never traveled by myself before I had been on planes by myself, but I had never actually taken a trip by myself before I did that.

So it was kind of scary and it was kind of, are you sure you’re doing the right thing type of deal, but also at the same time I also learned is. There’s not really a wrong decision that you can make when it comes to life. Because at the end of the day, the universe gonna put you in the right direction.

You just gotta go with it. So it doesn’t matter. Whatever decision I made was the right decision. That whatever period of time that was okay. Because that is the way that it was supposed to go. So that was one thing I kind of learned is that trying to control the situation is something that I try to just steer clear from just in general in life.

And then also just the fact that kind of the unknown, people are scared. of the unknown me and the unknown we kind cool [00:13:00] now.

Alicja: I love it. I love it.

Alea: I’m cool with the unknown, cause it’s not scary for me anymore. It’s just kinda, ooh, what’s gonna happen next type of thing. So it’s really about perspective.

You can see one situation one way or you can see it another way. So that’s the other thing I let my life flow and that’s just something that I learned and I try to not control situations too much, but try to cover the foundations, try not to do too much. And oh, and the other thing is just meeting people.

So when I actually started traveling by myself, I found out there were a ton of people doing that. I was 31 when I did this.

Alicja: Right.

Alea: And there are kids 20 years old, 21. I met one kid at 18, 19, and they’re out there and they’re traveling by themselves dang, they’re really doing it.

Alicja: Yeah.

Alea: I’m like, okay, okay. Now if they can do it that gave me a lot of confidence too. So if these kids can do it, I know I’m a lot smarter than them. [00:14:00] I got way more life experience than they do so I should be able to handle whatever comes my way.

Alicja: So what I wanna know is yes, I expect people in their twenties and thirties to take that risk.

Dee: Because you’re fearless in you’re twenties.

Alicja: Yeah, girl. I was everywhere. But in your forties and fifties, it’s a little different cuz now you got a lot to lose. Did you see more mature people out there too?

Alea: Yeah, I did. I met some people who were older doing these things, but a lot of them were retired I will say.

When it comes to life in general, what I’ve learned is that, I don’t know, people think that they’re gonna lose something or whatever it is. They’re worried about losing things and stuff like you don’t really lose stuff. Anything that you really, really lose that doesn’t come back to you is not supposed to be there anymore.

Everything doesn’t last forever relationships don’t last forever and money doesn’t last forever. People don’t last forever. So you gotta be willing to let go of some stuff, if you wanna [00:15:00] make room for new things and life experiences. So that’s the other thing about traveling because people go, how do you travel?

Because that’s what I focus on. That’s why I’m able to travel. Other people are focusing on, oh, I need to buy a house. Alright cool. But that’s your travel money? I’m just saying there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s wherever your priorities are. If your priorities are I wanna do that, then you can do that.

it’s gonna be harder for you to do the other things. So, I mean, you kind of gotta choose. And my thing is, I always tell people , I only travel for four months. I saw 17 countries. I could have saw a lot more, if I was a little bit more organized, but I wasn’t I went to a couple places more than once just cause I liked it.

But I could have went to more places. And that was only four months. So people need to stop thinking or getting in this mindset that everything is permanent. Oh, you moved to Mexico permanently. No, I moved to Mexico till I feel I wanna live somewhere else. I feel people really need to realize that.

So when was saying about the losses, you say you have a lot to lose, [00:16:00] do you really though? What’s really important here if it’s really that important to you. And if it really is that meaningful is that something that you would really lose? And I know it can’t be money. I know you can’t be talking about money cause that just comes and goes.

You gonna spend it anyway so that when people always talk about their scared of money, why are you scared of money? Money comes and goes. You’re gonna spend it. If you keep a bunch of it, then everybody knows that’s bad. Anyways, you get money. You’re supossed to spend it. That’s the way it goes. So how are you gonna spend it?

What are you gonna spend it on? So are you afraid of losing relationships? Oh, if someone’s really mad at you, cause you decided, you wanna travel somewhere, they dont wanna be your friend anymore. They weren’t your friend. Are you gonna be afraid you can’t find a boyfriend? Oh, ladies. Don’t get me started with that.

Come on. There’s a lot of men they’re everywhere. You can meet a new one out there who likes to travel, just like you. What is it that people are really afraid of? What is really gonna happen? You’re not gonna be able to pay your credit card bill. Well, what’s gonna happen if you don’t pay your credit card, bill, they’re gonna come over and find you while you’re vacationing [00:17:00] in Thailand.

No, they’re not gonna do any of that. Cause they ain’t got your phone number. They don’t care. These people do not care. What are you really afraid of? What is it that you think you’re gonna lose, that you don’t think you can get back later on?

Alicja: Well, I think you’d said it about 20 minutes ago.

Control. They’re afraid of losing control, right? Because people we have this false sense that we have control over something. We have control over nothing, nothing. Zero control.

Dee: Leah has a growth mindset. She’s like, what? Anything is possible? Things change.

Alea: Yeah. Especially if other people are doing it.

I say, when I see other people doing stuff, I’m like, okay, well they’re doing it, I know I can do it too. That’s how I feel about things. So I see people doing wild things. I’m like alright well ,maybe I might do that one day.

Alicja: Right? Right.

Dee: Alicja and I, we wanna start traveling places so we can drink different tea and stuff and bring it back to our podcast.

Alea: Ooh, that’d be cool.

Dee: When you start taking people again, you may have to sign us up.

Alea: Yeah. I need to start doing some research where all the tea places are. [00:18:00] I think Vietnam is one of those places. They have a special tea there. Vietnam is inexpensive to go to. I stayed at a hostel for $4 and this place was nice.

Y’all love that place. I think I, I was there for two weeks. I think I spent a total of $300 and I went all over the country. I went to five different places. I got on buses. I took flights and everything, and the food is real cheap there. I’m talking like under a dollar .

Alicja: And good though, right?

Alea: Oh yeah. Yes, I did a food tour there for $25.

It was real good a college student he took me to all these different little spots. I got on the back of his little motorbike. I loved it. Yeah. Vietnam don’t see a lot of black people. They look at you funny. It’s real nice there though.

Alicja: Wow. Very, very inspiring. I must tell you super inspirational though. Thank you. You can ignite something in someone and it’ll just give them enough motivation to pull a plug on some foolishness.

I’ve done it several times. And Dee will tell you, I used to be, yeah, nah, I’m out, [00:19:00] in a heartbeat. But as I’ve gotten older, I have more attachment to things and, and that I’m working on it, but that will hold you hostage. That kind of stuff will hold you.

Dee: Alea, Simone, is that your first and your last name? Do you prefer to be called Alea Simon?

Alea: That’s my first and my middle name. That’s what I go by. I don’t put my government name out there . It’s my mother’s idea. So I’ll let her know

Dee: It’s, a pretty name.

How can our audience find you? Because you give great travel tips. You have to see her videos on Instagram.

Alea: You can definitely find me on Instagram at the Travel Taurus. So that’s the Zodiac sign, cuz I’m a Taurus I just had a birthday, Travel Tauruss with an extra S on TikTok, that’s where all the fun goes down.

So if you guys are on TikTok, that’s where you need to follow me . We have the most fun on TikTok and then you guys can go to my website. That is http://www.thetraveltaus.com. And I have travel guides on there and blogs [00:20:00] and photos. And you can book an appointment with me. If you want me to help you find a travel deal.

Now I’m not taking clients right now, but I will later on I do TikTok coaching, and social media consulting.

Alicja: Very nice.

Alea: Expect more Bali content. That would be the next place that I go after Mexico.

Dee: Thank you so much.

Alicja: Thanks for making the time for us.

Alea: Absolutely. No problem. Love chatting.