Latest / The Unfiltered Tea with Evie / Come With Me to Portugal - Full Holiday Recap
Transcript
- Evie Tavares: This is a little bit of a different solo episode and I'm not entirely sure how it's going to go. I don't have like super high expectations of how it's going to turn out, but my vision for this is a little bit of like an audio blog into my taking three weeks off of work. So in case you didn't know, we have had this trip booked. It's, been in the works and then not in the works because of like work and life so many times. And now the trip is finally happening. It is currently Saturday and we are leaving on Wednesday night. My office is full of so many different things, clothes, ⁓ carry-on bags, chargers, electronics, medicines, souvenirs for family in Portugal, camera. There's so many things in here right now that I'm looking at, but let's rewind a little bit, because I'm getting ahead of myself. So we are going to Portugal with my ⁓ husband, my two kids, my in-laws, my sister-in-law and her family, my brother-in-law and his wife, and my other brother-in-law as well. So there's a lot of us going. And this is actually our third time going to Portugal. ⁓ My husband and I have been twice with his family, but this will be the first time with kids. So we're super excited for them to be able to experience it, to see a different country and see the different culture and all of those things. And my father-in-law has family in Portugal as well. ⁓ he moved here when he was 18. He's got family just outside of Porto in the North of Portugal. ⁓ So we've met them when we've gone previously, but it's been a long time. ⁓ Like I said, this is the first time going with kids. So it's been like six years. I think I was pregnant with my oldest the last time we went. So it's been over six years since we've been there. So, and there was kids that were really little when we were there who are now bit grown up. There's new kids, like ⁓ families have been growing on both sides. So we've got some little Canadian souvenirs to bring for them. I've got some like maple lollipops to bring because that seemed like super Canadian. So yeah, so we are going for, I believe it's 16 days altogether. And we're doing the first half in the north so that we can spend time with family. And then we're spending the other half in the south in the Algarve, which beautiful, like honestly, the most beautiful beaches. But I would say I'm, I'm most excited like for the country as a whole, just like the relaxed atmosphere, that easygoing European vibe. I'm so excited. ⁓ that being said, I have my own business. So obviously taking a trip like this involves some time off and some pre-planning and lots of pre-planning actually. ⁓ and It, I've ended up because of when we're leaving, we're leaving on a Wednesday and I was like, I'm not going to want to work the Monday and Tuesday before that. And we fly back in on a Thursday afternoon and I'm probably not going to want to work the Friday. So that means I am taking three weeks off of my business. The most I think I've ever taken is one. ⁓ I mean, I think over like the holidays stuff kind of shuts down, but like I'm still. like checking emails, I'm still posting, I'm still like, ⁓ you know, doing the things that business owners like to do. But my vision for this trip was to take three weeks off. ⁓ I've been doing a lot of prep work for that. I ⁓ have my monthly retainer clients that I write blogs and emails for them every month. And so what I did in April is I doubled up. So I wrote their April and their May content in April. can you go out, please? Can you go out? So I all of their content for two months in April. I have my corporate client ⁓ that we wanted to squeeze in a couple more projects in the month. we are in the process. There's the final, final feedback going in on one of the videos that we're doing. ⁓ I had to do the first draft for a newsletter for June so that they can take the month of May to go over it. or the three weeks that I'm gone to go over it and ⁓ add their feedback. And we also did a last minute film last week. That was about two or three hours away. So I was gone for the full day for that. But we filmed it, which means that now it can be edited while I'm gone, which is amazing. And we also booked another one for June. So that was some of that groundwork, that prep work. The other thing I did was made sure that my assistant Serena was all set up. ⁓ She's actually, I feel like I have a bit of a leg up on this. She's obviously one of my good friends. So all I'm doing is giving her my laptop and I do have an out of office set, but I didn't want it to be like, I didn't want to set it and be like, Hey, my house is empty for three weeks. You know what I mean? Cause you never know who's going to email you. But anyway, I didn't want that. So I just said it as, ⁓ I'm out of office until this date. ⁓ Serena's checking or my team is checking the emails every 24 to 48 hours and will reply if it's urgent, if it requires a response, that kind of thing. But otherwise you'll hear from me ⁓ on June 1st. And Serena is just gonna have my laptop and she's just gonna check it every so often. I told her it's not a big deal. ⁓ I also have somebody coming to water my plants because I did end up planting my garden. Yeah, just like letting all of my clients know any agencies that I work with. I've let them know that I'm not going to be available during this time. But then there's also like the whole Instagram thing. ⁓ I always go into trips. I have a few posts scheduled ⁓ because I didn't want to just completely go dark for three weeks. And it's not that hard to like prep a few posts and get them in there. So I did do that. As far as stories, like I do post on stories quite often. That's a big part of my marketing, but it's also something that I kind of enjoy doing. Like I love sharing experiences with people, ⁓ with my community. And I'm not going in with any expectations, similar to this podcast. ⁓ My goal is ⁓ with this podcast to maybe record a couple times while we're there or, you know, whenever the time feels right, if I have something that I kind of want to talk about. ⁓ during the travel, then it can be like that little bit of a vlog or a blog. and I've done this before with a trip where I'm like, I'm not going to not let myself post. You know what I mean? Like if I feel called to share a moment, if I feel called to pop on and say hi, like whatever that looks like. But I'm also not holding myself to going on ⁓ either. Like I'm not holding myself to being on there. I want to be as present as possible on the trip, obviously. And even when we were looking at the phone plants, because I think you can get like e-sim cards or whatever. We ended up doing, ⁓ and we were back and forth on whether to do both of our phones on a Rome-like home. Obviously we're going with a lot of other people. We need to be able to use maps. We have our own car. We need to be able to stay in communication with each other. And we were back and forth on whether to put like a Rome-like home plan on both of our phones. And the thing that I was hesitant about is I don't know if I want access to my phone the whole time. ⁓ I find that that is kind of the nice thing about going to like an all-inclusive where you're just on Wi-Fi. So like when you're on the beach, you can't check anything. You can't check your messages. You're not getting notifications. ⁓ So that was something I was kind of hesitant about, but at the same time, like I think once I'm there, it'll just be really easy to unplug. And I also have my brick ⁓ that I can like lock and unlock. certain apps on my phone. if there's like, if I want to have it brick during the day and like just checking at night, like, I don't know. Like I said, there's no expectations. There's no set rules. Obviously I want to be as present as possible and whatever that looks like I'm happy with. So, so yeah, my, I, I'm just packing. ⁓ I think that's all I have to share right now. Like I said, I'll kind of try and pop in whenever the time feels right, whenever there's like a little moment or anything that I want to share. I think it might be fun to kind of share some of the experiences and that kind of thing. I did finish off yesterday, so my out of office officially started like today on Saturday. And I did have one, I had the last, guest episode of season one with Pooja that I had to edit and just get scheduled for Monday. But that's literally it. Like that's, I had a little bit of client work left to do on Friday. I finished that and now there's nothing. It's like, I kept giggling because I feel like when we're business owners, we have a to-do list and the to-do list just keeps running. Like we keep adding to it that's okay. Like that's fine. But in this case, there was a to-do list and once the to-do list was done, it was done for three weeks and that feels weird. There was a lot of emotions this week because I'm also like a very anxious traveler. So like the whole thought of traveling ⁓ already gets me like in the feels and like a little bit ⁓ anxious and, and so it was weird, ⁓ signing off and like saying goodbye for three weeks basically. And, but I'm excited. I'm super excited to spend the time with my family. I'm super excited to see Portugal and just take the time to just relax. And I have a little journal that I can, if anything comes up, any ideas, anything like that, I can just write it all down. So stay tuned for more. I'll check back in when I can, but yeah, we'll chat soon. That's it. That's it for part one.