🇺🇸 The 10-year challenge

I’m not the biggest fan into binge scrolling Instagram and/or Facebook. I don’t deny there was a time that this was a very frequent part of my life, but nothing relevant nowadays (I even forget to say happy birthday to my friends because I barely open Facebook). But today, January 12 (when I started drafting the text), in an escape to use the loo, I decided to take a look and noticed many people commenting about “The 10-year challenge”. It consists in showing a personal picture in 2023 and another one in 2013, and finally check how much you have changed.

I, personally, like this kind of remembrances of past times. I have this mania of being thorough with details while remembering what had already happened. It is fun, by the way, even my wife jokes when we’re telling a story to someone: “if you need details, that’s him, but if you want to go straight to the point, that’s me”. She sometimes even says: “you go because love details.”

Along the text I’ll show some picture dating 10 years ago, since this is what the challenge is about, but especially I want to remember some facts that have happened to me and how they have influenced where I am today. If you didn’t think about that, I challenge you to do the same!

Taking a look and choosing some photos, the first finding was: year of the chameleon 😂. From the hairy to the baldness. From a full beard to a mustache, then from the mustache to a baby face… a small difference. But looking at the photos made me remember, as well, some changes that happened during this time. The first big one was being transferred from one college to another. It was exactly here where my life would go through many “tumbles” (starting with doing 7 years study in a 3-year course).

I’m not the only chameleon. So is my sister!

Up to that moment, I was only a trainee at the local library at Cascavel, Paraná, Brazil. I was there, by the way, after an incident which made me be transferred from a unit to another (for the good of some colleagues and I). In this new college I had the biggest joy of having classes with the wonderful Ana Paula (teacher, if you’re reading this, I owe you the world ♥), who brought me the opportunity to give my CV, which at that moment it was nothing plus almost nothing. From this CV, I had the opportunity to enter an excellent language school in that same city, where I was a teacher for about 5 years.

First seminar in the new institution. Professor Sheila, so dear! Even pregnant (and with her belly almost exploding), she always gave the best in her classes.

It was fun that my “final test” to enter this school had more people involved than I’d like to, because they thought I had disappeared, been kidnapped or anything in this matter. In the end, it was only because I was in a different room than my phone. It was my brother who found me dressed as Santa Claus for an end of the year presentation.

The most underfed Santa you’re seeing today.

Entering this school made me pursue a career, for real, in the teaching area, especially with English language. After the 5 years I was in that language school, I’ve been to a regular school for 5 years as well. Finally, I changed to my actual job as pedagogical consultant of a solution which brings English (with extended class hours) for private schools all over Brazil.

The year of 2013 was the year when some friendships got stronger and hold up to today, mainly with my siblings, where we had an intensive life living in the lovely Bougainvillea building. I also had some delusions (which made me own a mug written SUPER FRIEND), but they made me more confident in how to approach and talk to other people.

In May 2013 I was celebrating my 20th birthday (which means that the 30th is now 😱). I have never expected that from 10 years forward I would be realized with my profession, married, living in a capital (I had panic crises when I needed to pass through or visit one) and happy. I guess that’s the highest point: being able to look what has passed and see that the changes were positive (even though there were some route deviations along the way). It’s just like that old skit from “Os Melhores do Mundo”: but life… ahh, life is a small box full of surprises.

Aloísio in 2023, now married. His dog Átila accompanies him in this photo, along with the first white-haired lines in his head and beard.

Hey! I’m Aloísio Junior. I’m 29, Christian, married and Pedagogical Consultant. Undergraduate in Letras Português/Inglês at Centro Universitário Assis Gurgacz (Cascavel, PR, Brazil), and Graduate in Língua Inglesa: Estudos Linguísticos, Literários e Culturais at the same institution.