Sponsored by
Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
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.
Why should you subscribe?
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
I comb through tonnes of self-improvement content so you don’t have to, and I distill the content into bite-sized wisdom for you
I’ll occasionally make you laugh
If this sounds good, click the subscribe button below, add your email, read my welcome email (check your spam folder or “Promotion” tabs), and follow ALL the instructions. This is important so you don’t miss future posts.
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:
You can also skim the past posts here.
Otherwise, grab a seat 🪑.
HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 I hate to admit it, but my sleep has greatly improved since I bought an alarm clock and stopped sleeping with my phone in the same room. It feels a bit militant, and I feel like a prisoner in my own place, but the 7-8 hours of sleep are worth it.
TOGETHER WITH CATCH AGENT
The most trustworthy AI admin agent for busy executives.
Busy executive. Packed calendar. An inbox that never empties.
Everyone is talking about AI agents. Every week brings another promise of an assistant that can do it all.
Catch is the real deal.
A smart, proactive AI admin agent focused solely on taking administrative work off your plate.
It schedules meetings, triages your inbox, drafts emails in your voice, resolves conflicts, sends follow-ups, and handles the countless small tasks that consume your day.
Available wherever you work — Gmail, Outlook, Slack, WhatsApp, and even over the phone.
No setup. No training. No learning curve.
Catch learns how you work, takes action when it's confident, and keeps things moving without constant supervision.
From swamped to sorted in seconds.
Get started with Catch and have your assistant ready before your next meeting.
LIFE
As a man…
As a man, why do you have allergies?!
Some of my favorite social media jokes are “as a man” jokes. They satirize toxic masculinity and demonstrate just how ridiculous and fragile it can be.
Some of my favorites are: “As a man, why do you have asthma? Just breathe.”
Or this: “As a man, why are you a twin?! That’s just childish.”
One of the D.C. rites of passage I’ve yet to indulge in is riding one of the electric scooters scattered all over the city. When I first saw them—like I usually do when I encounter a new technology in America—I briefly considered what it’d be like to have them in Uganda, only to come up with several reasons why they’d be a disastrous failure.
Their implementation in D.C. is suboptimal, too, though: yes, you can use an app to locate a scooter, pay with your phone at the location, and speed off in under a minute. But you’re also supposed to park them safely in designated spots when you’re done, like supermarket shopping carts, but we all know how that goes. Instead, several scooters intrude on the sidewalks like weeds in a garden.
I haven’t ridden a scooter yet mainly because I haven’t had a good reason beyond curiosity.
But if I’m being honest, buried several layers beneath the excuses I’m proud to share is a little toxic masculinity. A part of me doesn’t think riding a scooter with my jacket tail flailing in the wind—with one of my legs bent backward at the knee—is manly enough.
***
I was having a bad day earlier in the week, so I went for a walk.
I used the farthest grocery store from my place as a landmark, and after remembering—the hard way—that they close earlier than every other store in the area, I used an alternative route to return home.
H Street is often vibrant—alive with electric trams, buses, and cars zipping back and forth with urgency. Both sidewalks are gentrified with supermarkets that sell more oat milk than regular milk, yoga studios, large-windowed apartment buildings with tenants who must be terrified of the price of curtains or don’t have a Black mother, a United Nations of restaurants, and human traffic ostensibly sponsored by Lululemon and Nike.
From my side of the street, under the brief slanting shade of an apartment building, I heard a mild chant in the distance that got louder as I advanced. I turned around quizzically and checked both corners, but I couldn’t locate the source of the growing sound.
I proceeded cautiously, summoning all my senses like someone who has heard an inexplicable sound in their one-bedroom apartment in the middle of the night. The indiscernible murmur was now clearly a laugh. No—two laughs, at least.
“WE DID IT AYEEEEEE!!!! WE DID IT AYEEEEEE!!”
Across the street, two merrymaking Black boys in their early twenties at most, rode past the fancy grocery store on an electric scooter together. Both were crowned with powder-blue graduation caps; both wore matching sashes hanging from their necks—one of the sashes trapped in the tiny space between them, and the other trailing in the wind. Both were chanting rhythmically and repeatedly.
“WE DID IT AYEEEEEE!!!! WE DID IT AYEEEEEE!!”
The scooter passenger’s hands rested on the driver’s shoulders, and you could see their teeth from across the street.
In a peak universal personal moment, everyone around stopped and found the two young men with their ears and then their eyes—initially perturbed but quickly uplifted by the recognition of this beautiful, infectious moment.
Watching those two triumphant boys made my day, and most importantly, it excavated any shred of toxic masculinity I summoned at the sight of scooters. Because, as a man, how could you not love that?!
TOGETHER WITH THE HUSTLE DAILY
100 Genius Side Hustle Ideas
Don't wait. Sign up for The Hustle to unlock our side hustle database. Unlike generic "start a blog" advice, we've curated 100 actual business ideas with real earning potential, startup costs, and time requirements. Join 1.5M professionals getting smarter about business daily and launch your next money-making venture.
THINGS
A quote
Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say.
A picture
I’d never seen a draw bridge before. This was during my trip to Palm Beach a couple of months ago.
The concept of the road you’re about to drive over folding upwards in front of you—with its streetlights—blew my mind and scared me a little.
WORK
The ampersand
You have data:
There are at least a couple of ways to get the full names quickly, but I’ll show you the one where you use the ampersand (&):
The ampersand (&) stitches characters together like glue, including spaces (if you wrap them in quotation marks.
PRODUCTS
A course
A guide
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> Money related questions to ask on a date (if you’re into that sort of thing)
> Guess the angle
> A World Cup predictor
Have a great weekend,
— SO
