Life Update: I quit my job to travel through South America and maybe find home?
This article was originally published in October 2024 on my blog the passionate wanderer.
On the outskirts of Pisaq Perú, shortly after being informed that alpaca’s don’t like the color red. Alejandro’s side eye says it all
There are few feelings I find more exhilarating than walking down a busy street in a foreign country, feeling my feet reverberate on a ground sacred and strange in its newness, welcoming me, holding me. There are places I have felt this feeling more strongly than others like wandering the grandeur of Paris and in the metros of Tokyo where the morning commuters form a staccato symphony of uniformed steps. So too, in the chilly streets of Stockholm and on the turquoise malécon of Cádiz brushing against its cobblestone interior. In my own country, I have felt the electrifying pulses of the gritty concrete of New York City and the sepia tinted streets of New Orleans.
I have even felt this feeling in Boston where this story actually begins. The city of clam chowder, wicked smaht, and in my opinion surprisingly pleasant people. I’ve visited the city twice, each time for my job’s annual team meeting; a welcomed change from our typical Microsoft Teams interface. The first visit during September 2022, was quite the surprise. I had just been hired some two weeks before and had returned to the US just two months before that after teaching English abroad for three years. I was an Enrollment Coordinator working for the largest and longest running non-profit study abroad organization in the United States. With my team, I helped thousands of teenagers experience the life changing impact of travel and the beauty of intercultural exchange through scholarships for summer study abroad programs. While I occasionally visited schools and was assigned one international work trip per year, the vast majority of my days consisted of me sitting at the small desk in my home office also known as my bedroom. Glued to my laptop with my headset, I answered customer service calls or what I call playing Russian roulette. Although it was a non-profit, we still had recruitment goals so I was essentially in sales and learned how to skillfully coach students and parents into committing to the opportunity of a lifetime. During the sales season, my main responsibility was making as many calls to applicants as humanly possible, sending e-mails and texts, and managing the general customer service phone line.
My first year I happily worked 10-12 hours on the busiest days, on fire for the mission, fueled by every phone call and email that was changing lives. Truly, I could not have dreamt of a more perfect position after having recently moved back to the US. Being connected to something international provided a sense of expansion beyond the four walls of my bedroom. Leading teenagers of all socioeconomic backgrounds to travel experiences filled me with a sense of interconnectedness and purpose. Speaking with Black and immigrant families, I saw myself and my family in their stories and understood their hesitancies. They often shared the same hesitancies I heard from members of my own family before moving to a different country by myself at 22. I labored to convince worried, sacrificing mothers that their baby would be safe in Seoul and Copenhagen for example (in English and Spanish).
My hard work my first year was rewarded with a healthy commission check and a work trip to Morocco that summer. It may be surprising to state but my role was in fact an entry-level position. As far as my typical salary, I was only comfortable financially because I was a child-free individual living at home without rent to pay. Nevertheless, the perks felt almost like the Wolf of Wall Street. To this day, I’m still awed and endlessly grateful of the experiences the position gave me especially during a pivotal point in my life. However, as summer drew to a close, these feelings of pride, luck, and gratitude began to fade into apprehension. While the first year I went in blind, this next year I knew what was coming. I dreaded the mounting pressure as well as the hundreds of monotonous conversations that were to be made as the application deadlines neared. In retrospect I think it was my soul whispering to me, but I wasn’t yet able to hear what she was saying.
how is one supposed to think about work in these rooms?
Landing in Boston for the second time, I made my way to the same modern hotel as the previous year where the compact rooms had glowing LEDs lights that made it impossible, but to think of only one thing. Boston was full of itineraries, complimentary wine, and nighttime karaoke with my colleagues. One thing about my former company is that it attracted the most passionate and kind-hearted individuals. On the last day, we pressed through the last of the trainings and presentations, readying us for the year ahead yet a weight in my chest was growing. It may sound dramatic but by the last breakout group, I began to hear the music from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when Patrick Bates was getting ready to surprise the guest in the shower.
Gazing about the room, I felt like I was playing a role and that I was astonishingly out of place. I had this arresting conviction that my gifts and what I had to offer the world were never going to grow in that environment. I wasn’t being seen for all that I was and I wasn’t able to show all who I was. I knew I was more than just an entry level worker on a sales team. I thought about how short life is and how easy it is to get stuck or even comfortable in the same place, telling ourselves that there is always tomorrow or next year or the next few years then never and that scared the shit out of me. I needed fertile ground for myself. I needed to make promises to myself and dream again.
Waiting in the airport on my way back home, I called my mom, asking her if I should quit. She had been in the corporate world for decades and validated what I was feeling. She advised not to make any rash decisions. Some weeks before, my therapist had shared with me the value of understanding our emotional mind and our logical mind, and the alchemy of combining the two to create our wise mind. With no exact plan plus therapy and insurance at stake, I decided it would be best to continue in my role with one caveat. I promised myself I wouldn’t be in Boston next September.
Sitting in the JFK airport almost two months ago in August, I re-read the Notice of Resignation email I typed out some days before. I was returning from Tokyo and cloud nine after my month-long work trip there. I looked over my words of gratitude and my words detailing what was to come. Interestingly enough, one of my colleagues, a young Egyptian woman who made Tokyo her home, looked me in the eye towards the end of my time there and said to me that she didn’t see me working in an office because my aura was too free. Upon hearing the announcement that my plane was boarding, I inhaled and hit the send button. There was no turning back.
So here I am, currently seduced by the Pacific ocean in Perú’s capital city, typing from the bed of my Airbnb listening to Dianna Lopez’ ethereal guitar strumming. It is spring here in the Southern Hemisphere. Lima’s sky is silver and I find the grayness to be reassuring. It’s as if the Earth is giving me permission to rest. I spent the last three weeks in the Valle Sagrado (the Sacred Valley) of Perú as a student training to be a teacher. Of course, I will share more about this very soon, but I am now officially certified to teach yoga! It has been a dream and I am humbled that the Universe, that Spirit, that Life trusts me enough to let me live within my wildest dreams.
Walking in Lima’s historic center a few days ago, I felt that feeling I talked about at the beginning of this piece. The feeling of my feet reverberating on the ground. It feels like confirmation that my feet are exactly where they are supposed to be. Sometimes the feeling is only perceptible for some seconds, like a breeze, but it doesn’t matter how long, as long as it comes. When I feel it, I feel like I could fly. It makes me lift up from the base of my spine. As a child, my grandmother always expressed how important it was to stand up straight when walking. Partly for posture, partly to be a “lady”, but mostly to have pride in who I am. In elementary school, if she caught me walking across the living room in a slouchy way, she’d have me re-walk again with my heart up and out. Throughout the years, she’d remind with conviction that “You are just as important as anybody” and in university, she’d end many of our phone calls with “Always remember who you are.”
This advice plays in my head on repeat these days. As a solo-female Black traveler, there are times where I can feel especially subconscious when wondering how I’m being perceived in new environments, not to mention my own insecurities that accompany me. It’s a constant practice of getting out of my head and being present with my surroundings and not the narratives conjured by anxiety when exploring new places. In my yoga teacher training, one of the things I decided to leave behind was meekness so I’ve got no choice but to walk and move with conviction. I breathe and remind myself we all love, bleed, go through heart breaks, laugh, and look up at the same moon at night.
For these next months, there is a plan but there also isn’t a plan. I fly to Colombia very soon where I will volunteer in a hostel for free accommodations. I guess the plan is to be open and to go where my heart and life are leading me. I do have some dreams I want to bring into reality and they are as follows:
I want to dance. In my room, dancing alone in the dark, my hips tell stories. I feel the serpent energy and it is primal and hypnotic. I want to be fearless enough and at home in my body to do that anywhere.
I want to learn Portuguese. I have been saying for years, I want to learn four more languages. I’m incredibly proud of myself for accomplishing my dream of becoming fluent in Spanish. It was my 10 year goal in high school. I can’t stop there though. I’ve been dreaming so it’s time to do.
I want to find opportunities to teach yoga (or have those opportunities find me). Even if just every now and then, it’s a practice I want to grow in and use as an expression of creativity.
I want to write and write and write. I have more time than ever to pour into this gift of mine. There’s so many ideas flowing through me as well as visuals like photographs and videos. There’s so many creations in my head asking to be born so I must release them. I think it’s part of my dharma.
I want to fall in love when the time is right. I’ve never been in love. It makes me feel like a little girl when I say that because it’s so pure to admit. I want a love that feels like poetry, warm honey, and a full moon night. Maybe it’ll be on the beaches of Brazil or maybe in the mountains of Vietnam if I make it there. I want someone who can show me new worlds around me and within myself.
I hope to find home. This is what most inspired me to make this shift. I want to find a place where I can put roots down and grow for at least three to five years. Since first moving back to the US, I knew I wanted to put roots down abroad. I’m open to anywhere (ideally walkable and with great public transportation) so I trust my path will lead me to the place that’s meant for me.
In bliss, during a cacao ceremony during my yoga teacher training. Shot captured by Celia Cueto, a photographer in Peru’s Sacred Valley.
Again, there isn’t really a concrete plan for the next few months so I have no idea where life will lead me. It’s a beautiful and scary thing. There are times when I am walking and I look around and wonder what I’m doing with my life. I wonder if I’m stupid or naive to uproot my life in the way that I have. I wonder what it means to fail and if three months from now I’ll be back in my mom’s home, jobless and unrooted. I also imagine the inverse. I imagine running into oceans and climbing up green mountains and hosting dinner parties with people who hold pieces of my heart and having cats to scratch and endless hugs and sunsets and late night metro rides and life-changing kisses and contentment and inner growth like an eternal spring.
A dear friend of mine reminds me of the important, playful, and holy practice of keeping an unrestrained imagination where we create our ideal universes. I’m going to make sure to set aside time to day dream. Maybe we can all day dream together. We can all dream and do together. Dreaming and doing has been my personal motto for almost 10 years now. I think we owe it to every version of ourselves to dream and do to our hearts content. To know our worth and what we deserve and to chase after it all with reckless abandon. I keep receiving reminders that the journey is the destination. I am trusting and free falling with my eyes closed and my heart opened. I feel the Universe catching me in her hands.
My life has been anything but conventional.
