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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
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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 🎉 I consider myself a young cinephile. I already have tickets for The Odyssey next week. You know a small detail I absolutely love in movies or TV shows? I love it when the last line in one scene announces the first character you see in the next scene without mentioning their name. See if you can spot it next time.
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LIFE
Free Willie
It was boiling in my room.
Every time summer time rolls around while I’m in America, I think about two things: 1) No matter how bad it gets, winter is worse, and 2) Why isn’t this weather normal?!
I say normal because in Uganda, most times, even on the hottest of days, you can stand under a tree and feel the coolest breeze frisk you intimately. You can open a button and a window and be fine.
This hasn’t been the case in any of the places I’ve lived in America.
The summers here are hot and humid, meaning you can just as easily faint on the pavement or under a tree. Rolling down car windows is purely performative, or a way to share your Spotify playlist. Certainly not for fresh air or reprieve.
I could go on. But I called a technician to fix whatever was broken.
***
“Everything you’ve just told me about this A/C Unit—how can I learn how to do this? Can you teach me?” I asked the 70-year-old technician dressed in blue overalls with the wrong name stitched on his right breast pocket.
Willie was a jovial Black man with a bald head invaded by scanty grey hairs clustered on his temples, and a yellow smile that missed a few teeth but delivered infectious good humor. He was the breed of old people I like—those who have boisterous laughs and can talk for hours if you let them, jumping from one story to another without any care for coherence.
“Well, they’ve got all these videos on the internet now, so you can learn how to fix most of this stuff online. But what I’m doing today, is experience. School can’t teach you this.”
“You remind me of my son. I got two of ‘em. One of them fixes units like me but the other one, the one that looks like you, is a cook booker. Err, a book cooker. He cooks books.”
“An accountant?”
“Hahaha yeah. People tell him what they wanna see, and he makes it happen.”
“I need me one of those. Why didn’t he choose to fix units like you?”
“Well…there's this gentleman who moved into a brand-new house in Maryland many years back. He was having problems with his A/C unit, and he had called many technicians but they failed to fix the problem. It would work fine for a while, but it would fail a few weeks later. Somebody gave him my number, so I went over to his house to take a look at it. It turned out that his unit was missing a part that cost 15 cents. In fact, when I ordered the part from the factory, they sent me a whole box cuz they couldn’t send me just one part. I fixed his unit, and he paid me. But he said he’d call back in a month, just in case. Cuz, you know, it wasn’t the first time somebody said they’d fixed it. After a month, he called me and said: ‘Listen, Willie, I’m so grateful. My A/C works perfect. Here’s what I’m gonna do for you. I’m gonna get your child a job.’”
The man was a high-ranking government official in the FBI. Such was the nature of Willie’s work. Because of his skill, he visited all sorts of homes, of all sorts of people, from all sorts of classes and backgrounds. But to him, they were all the same—”They all just people who don’t wanna be in hot in they house.”
“When my son graduated from college, I called up the man and told him about my son. He told me the person in the position he had available would need to carry a gun. When I told my son, the cooker booker, book cooker, about the opportunity, he said nah. He ain’t wanna deal with all that. He liked numbers. I always tried to give my kids a different life. More options. What do you do?”
“I work in global health policy,” I said, realizing by the lack of movement in his eyes that we weren’t going to dwell on that any longer.
“Most jobs nowadays don’t last more than 10 years. So I wanted my kids to do some other things to be safe. Fortunately, my daughter graduated a year later, and I called the FBI guy again. Next week, she’ll mark 19 years at the FBI. She’s so pretty and so cute, walkin’ around with that little side arm like she own the place. I’m so prouda her.”
“Right after I started my own company, ABC called. A-B-C as in ABC News in DC. They used to have an office over there on Connecticut Avenue. They was over there readin’ the news but it was hot as hell in that building. They’d tried so many guys, but they couldn’t figure out why it was so damn hot in there. I took a look at it, and guess what?”
He paused and looked at me. I assumed it was a rhetorical question, but the pause was too long. I responded, “Mmhmm?”
“They were missing a part, and you wouldn’t believe it, but the part cost $20. I ordered it, got a big ole box of ‘em, and fixed the damn thing. Problem solved.”
ABC hired him and doubled his pay.
“When I got the first check, I thought the extra money was a mistake, so I moved it to a separate account and kept it over there in case they asked for it. I wasn’t gon just tell ‘em about it now, hahaha. But I kept it. I did the same thing every month for a year. Nobody asked for the money back, though, so I figured it was my money.
He worked with ABC for three years.
“Do you know I met John F. Kennedy?”
“The President?”
“Yeah. He was a good man. A quiet man. He never did no chitchat with me or anything, but he always said hello. This one time, I was chillin’ on the block with my boys when I saw him driving down the street in his convertible. He loved to drive that little thing around. I wanted my boys to know I knew him, so I chased the car down the street. He was driving a little slow. I chased him down with my hand in the air to get his attention. He recognized me in his rearview mirror, and we locked eyes. He shook his head at me as if to say, ‘Don’t do dat.’ Once I saw that, I took a hard right and ran down the alleyway. He was always nice but he wasn’t chummy. But he always said hello.”
When Willie arrived, my housemate led him to my room. He mentioned Willie was talkative and almost trapped him in conversation, too, but he redirected him to my room. Willie fixed my A/C, but on that day, that was the second-best thing that happened. I was glad to meet him.
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THINGS
A quote
I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom.”
A picture
This was at Everyday People, D.C. this summer. A poor event all around, to be honest, but the company was A1.
WORK
Let’s link up
Did you know that when you have a table in Google Sheets, you can copy it…
You know you’ve copied it because of the appearance of the dotted lines around the perimeter.
…and paste it in a Google Doc, and link them:
Once linked, every update you make in the sheet can be updated in the doc. If you hate editing tables in Docs, which is a mess, you can format the table in the sheet and then “Match spreadsheet data and formatting:
I use this a lot.
Once you’re done and you don’t want to maintain the awkward spreadsheet, you can unlink it from the Doc, and then delete it.
PRODUCTS
A course
A guide
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> How to know whether to greet someone with a hug, handshake, or wave
> What’s your sleep type?
> Here’s a fairly challenging geography game
Have a great weekend,
— SO
