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- #35: The righteous budget
#35: The righteous budget
Shem Opolot
September 01, 2023
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Happy Friday 🎉 I’m interrupting the regular scheduled banter in this section to talk to you about Viola.
Viola is one of the nicest and kindest people I know—a sweetheart with an elastic heart of gold that always finds new room for others.
Viola also happens to be married to Sidney, an old friend of mine whose high school basketball teams lost way too many games to the teams I played on.
Viola and Sidney have a beautiful son named Liam.
Unfortunately, Viola was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, and together, their little family is battling tough odds. Your support could change things for them. You can donate online, or to the following numbers registered to Rhoda Byoga: 0781057524 or 0750970715. For the mobile money donations, please include the reason: “Viola’s fundraiser.”
Thank you for showing Viola and her family kindness and generosity.
Estimated read time: 6 minutes
💡 1 thing I've learned
The currency of conscious spending
You know that nap where you wake up with red eyes, dazed and confused, with some saliva on your forearm? In class? No? Neither do I 😅.
Well, last week, this perfectly lovely social worker led the most numbingly boring session on a topic I don’t remember, and my spirit left my body.
When my spirit returned, the pale hairy white right hand of the colleague to my left invaded my peripheral vision with a shot of 5-hour energy in hand.
“It works,” he said, winking at me.
I shook the confusion out of my face and kindly declined because I fear the quick fixes America foists so freely.
But shortly thereafter came Dr. Wendy Ellis. A journalist turned public health professional, Wendy packed an impressive double punch of presence and perspective.
Wendy was my 5-hour energy shot.
Wendy deconstructed structural racism better than I’ve heard it before, placing narrative front and center.
But fear not; this story isn’t about my brushes with racism in America.
While scampering over the bloody history of America, Wendy made a brawny statement about budgets. She said budgets were moral statements—statements through which organizations, companies, governments, households, boyfriends (I added this one), etc., show what they care about.
And I agree.
So, do you know what you spend most of your money on? Presently, I don’t.
So let’s do some homework: let’s record all our expenses in a spreadsheet for the next three months. Everything—the 1K you slip that Askari to park illegally outside the bar, the stack of coins you give the street kids at the Wampewo/Upper Kololo Terrace junction. Everything.
After three months (I’ll check back), you’ll find out what you spend most of your money on, and if you’re happy with what you learn, great. But if you’re not, change it to reflect the person you want to be.
Because you spend on the things that hold your attention, and remember, energy goes where attention flows.
🔌 Shameless plug
Am I running out of superlatives to describe TLDR Weekly? Maybe. Will I stop telling you to subscribe to it? No. But seriously, it’s great. Check it out.
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🎁 My favorite things
A quote
Science is not “truth.” It’s good-enough-for-now. Anyone saying, “Trust the science,” is only saying, “I buy the bullshit of the group I identify with.” Science is a process that seeks to undermine its own findings – that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. It’s not a set of beliefs. No one should trust anyone saying you must believe in the current findings of science.
An article
The eight shapes of stories
A video
A (very) short video about a critical part of leadership
A picture
2 things about this pic: (1) I was so excited to go to the park and kick about with Zi, and (2) I wish we had more public recreational spaces in Uganda. See this place? Taxpayers’ money pays for it. It’s free to visit.
Not messing about with Project Mbappe
🚀 Pro tip
5 tools you should be using at work:
Gamma for presentations.
PDF24 can do ANYTHING you can imagine with PDFs.
Wiseone extension for summarizing articles and text.
Forest extension to temporarily block sites you don’t want to access while you focus.
Super Agent to remove those annoying cookie alerts on websites
Perplexity AI is a fantastic Google alternative that gives you more direct answers than the litany of links Google spews out.
🧩 Where fun goes to flourish
The Friday Fix playlist
Brain teaser
From Braingle.
When you behead a word, you remove the first letter and still have a valid word. You will be given clues for the two words, the longer word first.
Example: Begin -> Sour, acidic
Answer: The words are Start and Tart.
1. Percussion instrument -> Distilled spirit from sugarcane
2. Unit of musical rhythm -> Consume
3. A note raised by a semitone; crisp -> Angelic instrument
4. Music with several solo parts; hilarity -> Downwind
5. Numbered musical composition -> Fluid from an inflammation
6. Major or minor octave arrangement; manner -> Formal lyric poem
7. Property of sound based on frequency of vibration -> Rub; urge
8. Rapid alternation between notes a semitone apart -> Small stream
Answer below
Shem’s picks
📚 A free book for optimizing your use of ChatGPT
🎳 A game about 4-letter words
🤖 A sub-reddit with some great life and professional tips
Brain teaser answer
Answer:
1. Drum -> Rum
2. Beat -> Eat
3. Sharp -> Harp
4. Glee -> Lee
5. Opus -> Pus
6. Mode -> Ode
7. Pitch -> Itch
8. Trill -> Rill
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
🤝🏾 How I can help you
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