NEXUS is a Nice Name for Know-It-All
In the past few months, I've been told something that I've heard for years. "You're just a fount of information." If the person is annoyed, then it's often more like, "You're just full of cr*p, aren't you?" But I've also had people take a moment to tell me that something I said in my blah-blah-blah really helped them. Because I don't just talk, I listen a lot too. Plus I read all kinds of things, in pubs, books and online. So stuff like this has turned out to help people.
- Melody emailed me to say an off-handed remark I made about how her 5-year-old coughed after eating a quesadilla at lunch was like the sharp barks I did when I ate food I was allergic to and it made my sinuses drain. So she checked with their pediatrician, did a limitation diet at his suggestion, and turns out M is allergic to cheese. Good thing to know early!
- When I congratulated Jane on how wonderfully her rom-com script is doing in contests recently, she said a post I'd made on our screenwriters' list caused her to enter the script in a different category. She'd always put it in "comedy" until she saw me tell someone else that a true comedy script has to have 1-3 jokes on every page. Otherwise, it's a dramedy (drama with a light tone). That made all the difference in how it was read.
- I met Karen-SF for a women's lunch at The Steeping Room back in March, where I enthused about having a place at the Domain with gluten-free food. How my allergies to wheat made it so hard to eat out because it's so insidious in the American diet. I noticed she wore a knitted hat, but didn't think more of it. Now she's written a feature about how eliminating wheat from her diet has cured decades of hair-loss, correcting a diagnosis of neurotic hair pulling. Her allergies made her scalp itch so badly she'd been yanking at her hair all this time, and the doctors thought it was all in her head.
- At work I saw a short report on an initiative our team in India was doing, so sent it to the special projects person in our department. Misti just emailed me that one of our divisions is picking up that project as a solution to highlight at events.