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#111: Dope disappointment
Shem Opolot
March 07, 2025
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Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 This week I reflected on the fact that perhaps we weren’t supposed to look at ourselves as much as we do? There were entire generations that existed before mirrors were created, and reflections were only observed through the distortions bodies of water offered. Obviously mirrors didn’t invent vanity, but like…how did people learn they were attractive?
Okay, let me pass the blunt 🚬.
LIFE.
Dope disappointment.
When I lived in New Albany, Ohio, twelve years ago, one of my favorite people was a 40-something-year-old Mormon man named Bill. Bill fascinated me. Not because of the tenets of his faith that piqued my interest. Nor the smile he always wore. But because of his response whenever I congratulated him or consoled him:
“Is it good? Is it bad? I don’t know. We’ll see…”
Several years later, I think I get it.
***
I don’t remember much about 1997, but I remember Vimto, which walked so Mirinda Fruity could fly, and Voltron on KTV. I don’t remember much about Buganda Road Primary School, but I remember the canes, the large classrooms of 100+ kids, and my first and last fistfight, which I lost, by the way. Badly. I remember the hard-to-wash but easy-to-soil brown uniforms, the delicious lunchtime chips bathed in tomato sauce and stuffed in polythene bags, and the mangoes from the lady hawkers who flanked the staircase at the school’s entrance—their lush yellowish-orange insides; the slices that favored the communal effort of consumption; the ounce-perfect salt pinched onto the mango tip; the salmonella my mum warned me about. The childhood disobedience.
I guess I do remember quite a bit.
I loved Buganda Road, but in July 1997, my parents transferred me to Lohana Academy in a move fueled by their academic and future aspirations for me, Daddy finally getting the ka money he was expecting, and fealty to Mr. Almeida, an icon of Uganda’s vestigial public school system.
I hated the change, but Lohana changed my life forever. I still walk through doors Lohana Academy opens for me.
***
August 2016. With only my master’s research and a few elective courses to complete, I was about to be one degree hotter. But a few weeks before my last academic year started, the U.S. Embassy denied my visa, forcing me to miss a semester and stay in Uganda for five more months than I’d planned.
I was depressed.
But while I waited for Uncle Sam to open the gate, an old acquaintance wrote a book, and I platonically slid into her DMs to get on the waitlist for a hard copy. I’d attend the book launch a few weeks later because I had the time, and our conversations had organically leapt out of the Twitter DMs and onto WhatsApp.
That author is now the mother of my children.
***
November 2022. The Kampala sun was upset at us again.
I got one of those phone calls that come when your hands are occupied and you’re frazzled and sweaty, but you fiddle to answer anyway. That’s the difference between answering calls in Uganda and the US. In Uganda, I answer calls from unidentified numbers; it could be about money. In the US, I barely answer calls from numbers I recognize.
“Hello! This is Andrew from Bella Uganda.”
“BELLA?”
“BAYLOR UGANDA,” Andrew repeated more audibly.
“Aaaaaah Baylaaaaa!” I said, recognizing the name.
You see, I’d applied for a job at Baylor Uganda and forgotten about it.
“Are you able to come to our office tomorrow for an interview?” Andrew asked.
I couldn’t make that slot, so I asked Andrew if the interview could wait until I returned from my scheduled week-long trip. But he offered no assurances. I never heard from him again.
A week or so ago, Baylor Uganda shut down.
“Is it good? Is it bad? I don’t know. We’ll see…”
I get it now.
I learned something: the next time something you consider a failure or a disappointment happens to you, write it down, but leave two spaces below it. One space to fill in what you learned, and the other to write a good thing that happened because of that failure or disappointment.
Don’t waste your failures.
THINGS.
A plug.
That cute author from my Twitter DMs created a new, positive vibes-only community for beauty enthusiasts. If venting about the extractive cost of Korean skincare products, learning how to get your skin to just pick one color, or figuring out if drinking water is the answer sounds like your jam, then fall in.
A tweet.
being annoyed is the price you pay for community.
it means having guests when you'd rather be alone. it means letting someone live with you even when they get on your nerves. it means showing up for events that you'd rather not go to. it means turning the other cheek.
— Divya Venn (@divya_venn)
5:26 PM • Mar 1, 2025
Watch this.
I love a good medical drama, but there’s a lot of fluff out there (I’m looking at you, Grey’s Anatomy and newly aired Watson). The Pitt is one of the best ones I’ve watched in many, many years. And one of the main characters is an alum of E.R., one of the best medical procedurals of all time. Need I say more?
A picture.
I miss my babies.
WORK.
Change your perspective.
You have data:
But you want the years to be where the continents are and vice versa.
ENTER—The TRANSPOSE function.
FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ A literature clock? I’ve seen it all now.
✅ Find the mysterious animal.
✅ A list of reads that CEOs and editors say will help you understand today’s world.
✅ How to tie every kind of note.
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Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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