6 New Things I Started Doing In 2020 During The Lockdown
By: Gabriel Morse
Tags: New Skills, 2020, Living Abroad, New Things, Lockdown

How hard was 2020 for you?

For me, it was such a difficult year. It was a year that pushed me so much out of my comfort zone in a way that I will never forget. I was away from my family and friends, and unable to do what I had planned for the year. But it was also a year that enabled me to use all my creativity to do fun things.

I’m very grateful that I had food on my table, a roof over my head, and I was healthy for the entire year. I’m also so glad that I did not catch COVID-19, and I was finally able to go outside after 4 strict months of being inside.

I had so many plans for 2020. But, for obvious reasons, I could not achieve any of them. I started the pandemic thinking that I wasn’t going to learn anything new and that I wouldn’t be able to do anything fun anymore. However, I had many surprises. Now, in December 2020, I’d like to share the 6 new things I started doing during the lockdown. I’ll share some of my very personal stories behind the pain of all these difficult times. You will know how this pain led me to do these 6 amazing new things in the midst of this chaos.

In 2018, I applied for a two-year international exchange program in the United States. Between 2019 and 2021, I’d be living in America working as an Au Pair, and taking classes at universities in the U.S. that would help me take my career as a translator and interpreter to another level.

I had so many plans on my bucket list for these two years as an Au Pair. I had both travel and study plans. During my first year, I was able to achieve so much. I took classes at Seton Hall University, and also at Pace University, and I traveled to a lot of different countries and states in the United States.

For 2020, I had planned to explore more places in the U.S. since I did a lot of international traveling during 2019. Most of that traveling did not happen in 2020 because of COVID-19. So, right at the beginning of the pandemic, I already felt that my year was going to be different, and my plans were all going to be turned upside down.

Then, as things started to look very different from what we used to call “normal”, I started looking at them from a different perspective as well, so I could make the best out of everything using the resources I had. That’s when I discovered new passions, which allowed me to start doing new things during these difficult times.

6- I started a PODCAST with a friend

In March 2020, right at the beginning of the first lockdown, a Brazilian entertainment magazine, Revista Over, reached out to me inviting me to join their podcast to talk about musical theater and how the pandemic was affecting Broadway. For those of you who don’t know, I’m an opera singer, and I am an aspiring Broadway actor. I’ve done huge performances back in Brazil, and I know a lot about musical theater. That’s why they invited me. I had so much fun while recording the episode with them. It was truly a remarkable experience for me. When the episode came out and people began to listen to it, I started receiving lots of text messages from people saying that they had loved it and that I should be in more episodes.

Then, in July 2020, Alex Holley, who is an award-winning TV anchor/host on FOX 29 News, went viral after she was caught dancing live on TV one of Beyonce’s songs from the new Beyonce’s movie Black Is King available on Disney+. As soon as that happened, Revista Over, the same Brazilian entertainment magazine which had invited me for the podcast, reached out to me inviting me to get in contact with Alex Holley so that I could interview her talking about this incident. The reason why I was chosen to interview her is that I am a huge Beyonce fan. Over 36 million followers that Beyonce has on her Instagram are Brazilians. We are and we have been her biggest audience since her I Am World Tour. I was so honored I was going to represent the Brazilian Beyhive during the interview. After the video came out, a Brazilian fan page on Facebook, with over half a million followers, shared the video, and I started receiving thousands of messages congratulating me for the interview.

The interview with Alex Holley for Revista Over

That’s when I said to myself: “Maybe I should create my podcast. You know, the lockdown is here, there’s so much I’ve done in my life. I’m an aspiring actor, I have traveled the world, and I am currently living in a foreign country. People will listen to me talking about my life experiences”.

Then, on a Sunday afternoon, I was on the phone with one of my friends who also loves Beyonce, and we were talking about Beyonce’s Coachella performance. After talking for hours, we said to each other: “this conversation would be a very fun podcast to listen to”. Then, at that very moment, we happily agreed that we should create a podcast together. And that’s what we did.

Tiquinho de Tudo Podcast is its name. This name can be translated into “a little bit of Everything Podcast”. It’s a podcast in which we talk a little bit about everything. We go from having conversations about pop music to having deep meaningful conversations about who we have become while living in a foreign country.

It’s been a great ride. We’ve had so much fun, and our listeners are loving it.

5- I started writing for my BLOG

Another awesome new thing I started in 2020 is writing for my blog. This has been one of my favorites.

This is not the first time I have a blog though. I firstly had a blog in 2015 when I came to the U.S. for the first time. I was working at a summer camp as a camp counselor, and a lot of my friends back home wanted to know how my experience was going. It was one of the greatest summers of my life, so I thought that writing about my camp experiences would be a really good idea.

I remember I wrote 5 articles, and people were loving them. However, because I got another job when I went back to Brazil, I ended up having a pretty busy schedule which made it difficult to keep writing for the blog. Then, one night, for some reason, I ended up deleting all my posts. But I still kept writing. I just didn’t share my stories anywhere. I had kept them all to myself.

Then, one day during the lockdown, I wrote an article about some lessons I learned while living in the United States. When I finished writing it, I shared what I had written so far with a friend who is a journalist, and as soon as I finished reading it to her, she told me I should post it on the Internet. She said my writing was so captivating, and my stories were very inspiring.

What she had told me pushed me into creating the blog again, and posting my first story.

Ever since I posted the first article, I have realized that people are loving to read about my travel stories, and that makes me very happy. It’s been a very therapeutic experience for me too, to be honest. It makes me happy to remember the experiences I’ve had as a traveler and to be able to transform them into stories that inspire.

4- I learned how to train dogs

At the beginning of the lockdown, my host family decided to get a dog. As soon as the dog came into the house, they asked me if I would like to learn how to train the dog. They would schedule lessons with a professional dog trainer, and I would be the one taking the lessons from her, and applying all that I was learning in real life. In other words, I would be the one in charge of most of the dog training in the house.

I was a little upset that I was going to be the one doing most of the work, but I decided to look at that as an opportunity to learn a new skill that I could benefit from in the future. Life is all about having the right perspective and making the best out of everything.

So, I read a book about how to train dogs, and I took the classes with this professional dog trainer. I learned stuff about dogs that I didn’t know before. The dog went from peeing every time inside of the house to learning how only pee outside.

I felt so proud of myself. I learned and helped the dog develop some of the best habits, such as holding her pee longer, not having accidents in the house, not chewing on people’s stuff, and so much more.

3- I created an online volunteer project

Before moving to the U.S. in 2019, one of the things I used to do back in Brazil was to teach English as a foreign language to Brazilians who wanted to pursue an international career.

I have some of the highest international teaching certifications. I’m a TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language to People of Other Languages) certified teacher, and I’m also a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certified teacher.

My life in Brazil was so great. My job allowed me to use my knowledge to help people achieve great things. As an educator, you have the power in your hands to inspire and to guide students to do amazing things. As a teacher, I felt like the purpose of my life was being fulfilled every single time I walked into a classroom. Being able to take a group of basic speakers to a level where they can do amazing things, such as watching a movie in another language is a beautiful thing. It makes me feel successful. It makes me feel useful. It makes me happy.

Then, since I moved to the U.S. to become an Au Pair, I have felt very useless. The routine is extremely exhausting but very basic to someone who has got the potential to do great things. A lot of Au Pairs come at a very young age. So it doesn’t make any difference for a lot of them. They graduate from high school, then come. To me it was different. I had graduated from college, I had worked as a translator, interpreter, ESL teacher. I had traveled the world already. I had done much already.

So, after being exposed to all these jobs that make me feel useful, helpful, and successful, while I was working as an Au Pair, I wasn’t feeling useful. I started feeling used, though. I feel like I’m used by the system that exploits foreigners to help white families maintain their white privileges.

So, it was a big move for me. I went from interpreting the largest international educational program in South America and teaching young professionals to acquire foreign language skills to babysitting in the U.S.

I’m not looking down on this job though. If there’s one thing I know for sure is that every job is important and valid. Everybody should be respected no matter what their job is. A job is just a title.

But to me, It’s all about what makes you happy.

I love working with children, this is why I initially came to the U.S. to work as a summer camp counselor. But I don’t like working as an Au Pair. I hate it, to be honest. I feel like I’m wasting all the potential that’s within me.

That’s why I went through so much while being here. I didn’t think I deserved this. I believe I deserve better. I deserve to work towards a goal that will truly help people who need help while making me grow as a professional.

During the pandemic, this feeling of dissatisfaction grew bigger and bigger since that was the only thing I was doing. My routine was serving my host family and going to my room during my time off. That’s when I decided to find a new purpose during the difficult times I was going through during the lockdown, so I created a project that I would teach English as a foreign language to Brazilian immigrants who came to the U.S. without being able to speak the language. I teach them 3 times per week, and most importantly: for free.

Along with teaching, I also have over 300 students who I weekly send lesson plans via email, and I help them achieve small goals towards fluency.

This has been my favorite part of the day. It’s the only thing I look forward to. Every evening I teach a new class, I feel I have come back to my roots. The place that allows me to grow professionally, and personally. A place that I am a source of help to those who need it.

This is my dream job. To work towards a life fulfilling goal, not to help the system benefit those who already have money.

2- I started running 8K 3 times per week

Because of the lockdown, I could not do anything I had planned for 2020. So, I decided to go on long walks during my free time while video chatting with friends and family.

Then, I decided to challenge myself. I decided to go running three times per week. And my goal would be doing 8k every time I went on a run.

I started with 5k, then quickly went to 8k.

It was also one of my favorite parts of the day. I would put on my headphones, and listen to Megan Thee Stallion, Beyoncé, Broadway, and some podcasts as well.

It helped me distract myself from the chaos we were living in at the beginning of lockdown, and to calm myself down whenever I had a stressful day.

1- I started writing my songs on the piano

And last but not least, one of the most special things I started doing in 2020 during the lockdown that I did not expect I would enjoy so much is to write my songs on the piano.

I’ve been playing the piano since I was 9 years old. I started learning because it would help me with singing.

Music is so important to me. Not a day goes by when I don’t listen to my favorite songs. I feel deeply connected to music. I feel connected in such a deep way that when I listen to certain songs, I can even cry because of what the melody and the lyrics mean to me.

As a piano player, singer, and actor, I’ve always dreamed of writing my songs. I remember I tried to write a song in high school, but trust me: it was terrible. The lyrics didn’t make sense, and the melody didn’t match with the lyrics. It was just all over the place. My first song lasted 8 minutes. As a result, because I thought I didn’t have any potential, I ended up giving up on it and I just kept playing every other song I like to play on the piano.

Then, in January 2020, I sat by the piano and started randomly playing all the notes. I said: “I will hit the record button, close my eyes, and I will just feel the moment. I will play whatever comes to my mind, and later, I’ll listen to it to see how it goes”.

That was the moment I said to myself: “I will write a song that represents my one year here in the U.S. It will be a song that describes everything I went through during my first year”.

One of my best friends who is a singer, songwriter, and music lover, talked to me a lot about songwriting, and our conversations inspired me so much to get started. I’m very thankful for her. Tamires is one of my best friends, and her songs were very touching. They made me feel like I belong somewhere in this world. They made me feel special. The fact that she shared her original material with me brought back to life my desire to write my songs.

Then, the lockdown came, my plans got all screwed up, and I didn’t have anything to do during my free time. That was the moment that I decided to start working on my songs.

It was a very important healing process for me. I allowed myself to listen to the melody that was in my heart, and get it out of my chest.

I poured all my feelings into the first song, and I loved it.

I worked hard on it for about a month, and I only shared it with this friend, Tamires. Then, because writing my songs felt so good, I decided to write more. I had a goal to write 3 songs by the end of the year. When I reached my third song, I extended my goal to 5 songs. When I completed my 5th song, I decided to write two more so I could have a total of seven songs. When I reached my seventh song, I decided to write more so I could have 12. And I’m still working towards this goal.

It’s been one of my favorite things to do. I love to think of a melody and put my ideas into real meaning. I love to create music.

All of my songs have no lyrics to them, but they all have meanings. I can tell you exactly what I was thinking and what I was feeling when I wrote them.

One day, I decided to share a little piece of one of my songs on Instagram. Then, I decided to ask the people who listened to it what they felt and what they thought while listening to the song.

In effect, I started receiving lots and lots of text messages, and videos of people saying what that song meant to them. It was so special to me. I was not expecting their feedback to be so beautiful. I hadn’t shared any of my songs before because I was a little afraid that people wouldn’t like them. But it turned out that everyone who listened to my songs found them beautiful, touching, profound, and great to listen to. I’m very grateful for that!

Some of the people who sent me video messages talking about my song

These were 6 new things I started doing in 2020 during the lockdown. They were all very important to me, and they all helped me get through the pandemic. Without music, running, my blog, my podcast, the dog, and my students, I wouldn’t have been able to get through the challenging times of 2020. These things brought light and joy to my 2020, and I’m eternally grateful for that. 2020 is a year that I will never forget.

I hope 2021 brings peace to those who were at war during these difficult times, healing to those who were in pain, and joy to those who were sad. Let’s keep our fingers crossed hoping for the best.

What about you? Did you start doing anything new in 2020 during the lockdown? What did you do? I’d love to hear from you!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today! I feel honored to have you here!

Don’t forget to check my other articles out.

See you next time!