Everyday People: Transcript with Amanda Adé

Coming to the end of the year, It's only right to look back and reflect on the challenges and experiences we had to face through people around us; most that we couldn't be in touch with for obvious reasons. Lockdown and inability to stay in touch has made it easy to feel like the only person going through alterations in life. 2020 had made a huge impact on every type of person. We will be exploring stories from different type of people; be it artist, business owner , college students and also person in the frontlines in the health department. Today, its Black and Irish host, Amanda Adé who has had a pretty impressive year but went through similar odd changes like everyone else. We discuss, feelings, challenges, successes and methods of adjusting with her.

Photographer Evan Doherty (IG: evndoherty)

If you could put your whole covid experience into a couple words What would they be?:

Challenging in a good way? I feel like I've learnt a lot. It was difficult trying to navigate with this “New Normal” that we’ve been thrown into. Everything that’s been familiar has almost gone out the window so trying to centre and find a new sense of purpose.

Humbling, number 2, I’ve realised I don't know as much as I did. Last couple of months have just made me be like “Yo relax”. It made me less reliant on myself alone and that's one thing that I’m going to be really cautious of going forward, and I guess that's understanding the importance of collaborative work. Realizing how interconnected we are as people and how much we really do need each other. When the world is so busy and everyone is busy doing their own thing, it’s very easy to become self centred and feel like you’re in your own bubble and everything is about you

Number 3; I don't have a specific word for it; but like created opportunities for myself? It opened my world up a bit more, It's made me more confident to actually go for things I want to go for. I’m more conscious of time and realised our time is limited. It has motivated me to do more with my time.

Take me back to March; What were your thoughts and feelings

I was in my final year, mid thesis; My immediate thoughts were panic, How am I going to write my exams? Am I going to finish this year? The media wasn’t helping at the time. The first couple of weeks I was very much consumed in all of that. Afterwards I was like nothing's gonna change, panicking won't help anything, Now that I have time for myself, How do I want to come out of this? I started trying to be more intentional with how I spend my time and try to make it as productive as possible. So then I was like "yo, I’m going to start a podcast!", this was something that has been on my mind for probably about a year and a half. My excuse was always, I didn’t have the time but now it's like so what's your excuse? It was a time of trying to be productive, intentional and discipline myself.

What was your lockdown experience like? What kept you going?

For me personally, I know its not everybody's experience, but mid lockdown; last week of May; The whole BLM movement kicked off with the murder of Geroge Floyd. That was a central topic in my personal lockdown. I remember when that happened, it produced a lot of emotion in me, seeing people's reaction pushed me to be more vocal and addressed people directly.

Did you ever feel everyone having to stay home, will result in the most vocal people have been regarding issues of our world today?

Two things; with human beings;

Number 1; if you tell them turn left, they’ll turn right.

For a lot of people, its like you can't tell me to stay home

On the flip side, I think the fact people are at home meant people couldn’t distract themselves from these things, none of this is new, a lot of issues that people are vocal about now have been happening, people have always had a way of distracting themselves. But now when you are stuck at home looking at the same thing, you have to address it because there is no escaping from it anymore, there’s no running away. People were forced to look at the ugliness that was already there. 2020 has been a big mirror to the world like this is who we are and stepping out it's like okay, who do we want to be.

The protest was one of the amazing moments of my life, it was like a picture of what we could be. There were moments I’d look out and start tearing up, I remember there was a moment when everyone was like taking the knee. I remember looking out and seeing all the different types of people that were there; different age groups, races, different sexual orientations, it was such a diverse group of people all there for the same thing.