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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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I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
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I’ll occasionally make you laugh
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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 Some American suburban moms who love Lululemon, Stanley cups, and the odd labelless sneaker went to bed knowing the flailing company called Allbirds made sneakers. But when they woke up this morning, Allbirds had rebranded as Newbird AI, pivoting entirely to “AI products.” Several American suburban moms now know what gaslighting means.
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LIFE
I wanna be a billionaire…
An Angolan guy I met recently told me he dated this American girl from Indiana. They broke up, to paraphrase his account, his ambition outpaced hers while her expectations outpaced his.
To help me measure the gap between them at the end, he described her constantly asking him to take her on trips while also criticizing him for working too hard and not spending enough time with her.
Now, this isn’t a stage for a gender war. I took his account as seriously as you take a cab driver’s political conspiracy theories because there are hardly any victimless social disputes.
For me, the interesting part in all this is the difference I’ve noticed between most people born in poor countries who live in the diaspora (like myself) and most of the locals.
The Diasporans are constantly unsettled, constantly fleeing poverty like we’re being chased by a rabid dog in a fever dream because we know that ocean that separates us from home doesn’t untether us from the anxiety home instilled and continues to engender. I mean, after all, it doesn’t shield you from the ever-ill-timed exploits of the village idiot who impales himself on a branch or drunkenly stumbles into a ditch every time you come into some money.
Carrying this burden on our backs daily, we’re always dumbfounded when the locals are shocked by our ambition. By our desire to get rich.
In college when I told my friends I wanted to be rich, they’d ask me why, with discernible disappointment in their tone. They conflated my drive with the greed on display among America’s wealthy elite. But for me, beyond having nice things—which, make no mistake, I love—accumulating wealth is an escape chute for me and my loved ones. I always tell my friends that when I make it, the suffering must stop for all of us.
The locals are often baffled by this Diasporan drive because most of them were born into relative safety and stability, insulated from the worst of suffering and poverty. Meanwhile, the Diasporans remember poverty being outside the door, outside the gate, in their households, in their families—hard to expunge, like a stubborn stain.
Now… I have met many people in America from humble backgrounds who worked three jobs just to stay afloat. And even with those three jobs, they still couldn’t afford health insurance, and when they got sick, they were too terrified to take off work for fear of being fired. Some of these folks also have that Diasporan drive, but most of them just want to not have to struggle so much to live a decent life in a society full of so much excess.
I find that if you bleach away the stubborn stain, if you take away poverty, if you grow up without seeing it or feeling it—if you grow up in a world where it doesn’t exist—then more often than not, that Diasporan drive is redundant.
And I think we’d all like to get to the point where the Diasporan drive is redundant.
Which is why, though I get it, I despise the notion of rationalizing the investment in social services via economic terms. Despite studying the blood magic of health economics, I despise the talk of cost-effectiveness when referring to life-saving treatment with little to no alternatives. It’s absurd because we know people must be healthy before anything else, yet we still have to justify this to big capital.
Ultimately, we all want to wake up, eat, drink, and laugh with our loved ones; walk about in nature; eat, drink and laugh with our loved ones some more; and go to bed. We all want, as William Shoki put it, the right to live a boring life.
In all things, prioritize people and justice. Break the bank if you have to. The bank will probably be okay if the people are okay.
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THINGS
A quote
I don’t believe this absolutely, but I think it is right a good chunk of the time.
Anxiety is what happens when your brains are bigger than your balls.
A picture
Remember the friend of mine who got me a plane ticket? He stopped by to watch me work as I sold baskets at a flea market in D.C. I’m so blessed to know him. What a guy! Oftentimes we want good friends, but we ought to think more about being good friends.
WORK
Find me #3
So, you’re in your Google Drive and someone shares an important document (which you can’t edit) with you and you want to store it somewhere where you can find it quickly.
You can add a shortcut:
Your Drive should have a “Quick Access” folder
This is what my work Google Drive looks like.
In the “Quick Access” folder, you can add shortcuts to files (which are saved elsewhere or owned by someone else) you need to reference quickly or regularly.
Right click the file > Organize > Add shortcut > All locations (if desired folder not listed) > My Drive > Quick Access
PRODUCTS
A course
A guide
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> How to use a computer as anonymously as possible
> A global database for snacks (if you want to search for your name)
> A pitch trainer to tell you how bad you are at singing
Have a great weekend,
— SO
