- The Friday Fix
- Posts
- #66. Love yours.
#66. Love yours.
Shem Opolot
April 05, 2024
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 was curating news for TLDR Weekly the other day, and an otherwise sad headline cracked me up. Ukraine lowered its conscription age from 27 to 25 to recruit more soldiers to the frontline in the war against Russia. Now imagine being a 25-year-old strapping Ukrainian man. One day, you’re contemplating starting a podcast, and the next, the patriarchy is forcing you to patriarch.
I’m happy to announce a new partnership with The Phoenix Project, the brainchild of a good friend of mine. The Phoenix Project will take over the quotes in the “Things” section until further notice.
Also, the next CareerLab session is on April 27, and there are only 4 slots left, so sign up today!
Also, also, after listening to one song on Beyoncé’s new album, the algorithm reminded me of how many country classics I love. So today’s playlist is the oddest but best medley—assuming this is a judgment-free zone, of course.
LIFE.
Love yours.
Am I going to stay married to the same woman forever?
The pockets of personal space tacitly protected by passengers on the train in D.C. perfectly portray American individuality.
I climb onto the train, tired and cold from a lost battle with the elements on the day. But I scan the train car for vacant seats, and there are so many options, but none at all.
The train car is mostly white, and ads and instructions decorate its walls. And occasionally, through some formula I haven’t hacked, a screen shows whether you’re on track for your stop or need to panic like I did last week.
The seats are blue, and a circulatory system of silver poles beg to be held on to. Sometimes, when I’m well-fed with no papers due, I pretend the poles are stripper poles and chuckle to myself before locking eyes with the older man sitting across from me.
He’s where fun goes to die.
In each train car, there are two columns of seats separated by a space a taxi conductor would patrol to collect the fare, and more silver stripper poles stick out of each aisle seat to offer support to the conductors.
Each column has a row of two seats, and more often than not, if there’s at least one person in a seat in a column, that entire column is considered full. Colonized.
This is an unspoken rule.
I don’t know if the ladies can relate to this, but imagine walking into a bathroom with three vacant urinals next to each other. Which one do you choose? There’s only one wrong answer—the middle one.
Now imagine using one of the peripheral urinals, and a guy walks in, ignores the other peripheral urinal, and picks the middle one right next to you.
This happens a lot in Uganda, and it infuriates me.
Speaking of infuriations…
When I decided to get married, I wrote everything about my wife that infuriated me on color-coded sticky notes and placed them on a whiteboard.
Okay, that happened in my head, please. I’m not completely neurotic.
But why, you ask?
Because I believe the key to longevity in marriage is to adore and then endure. The things you love will remain and maybe even increase, but the “bad” things…the “bad” things will also multiply. So make sure you can tolerate the “bad” things.
Imagine being hot and annoying. Yeah? Great.
Now imagine being old, grey, saggy, markedly less attractive, and ten times more annoying than you were 30 years ago.
So yes, I’ll be married to the same woman forever.
And yes, I know it’s not all up to me, but shoosh!
THINGS.
A quote by the Phoenix Project
Be brave enough to suck at something new.
A relatable tweet
My most millennial trait is big purchases must happen in big laptop screen
— II HANDS II HEAVEN II FURIOUS (@JCov1)
4:36 PM • Apr 2, 2024
A picture
I get to see my babies next week, and I’m so excited!!!
WORK.
There’s an app for that.
I know, I know. We don’t download new apps.
But this is what I do. I find cool things, and I share them with you.
You know those bookmarks on Twitter you think you’ll get back to? The memes you save to drop in the group chat later? Or that article you read that you want to refer to repeatedly? Or that pair of shoes you saw on an obscure site that you want to buy when you get the money?
What if all those things could live in one place, and you wouldn’t have to worry about organizing them?
This app does that.
FUN.
The Friday Fix Playlist
Name an English word of more than 2 letters that both begins and ends with the letters "he" in that order. There are two possible answers. "hehe" is not acceptable.
Answer below
Shem’s picks
✔️ Bookmark this one: Compare the pros and cons of every airline, airport, and airplane model with this tool
✔️ Might be better on a laptop: Play this game which is all about getting your dog’s poop into a trash can
✔️ Watch: what the world could look like in 2050.
Answer: Headache or Heartache.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
Reply