The Open Door

If your question fits nowhere else, it fits right here.

Do not go away discouraged

Perhaps you have glanced over the other sections and thought, none of these is quite my question. If so, this is the section I wrote especially for you. Please do not go away discouraged.

The truth of my whole working life is that the most interesting questions almost never arrive in a tidy box with a neat label on the side.

An argument against boxes

I have always been an argument against narrow boxes. Time and again I was called in for one problem and left having quietly helped with three others no one had thought to ask about.

There has always been a place for the generalist, the person you bring a puzzle to precisely because it does not seem to belong anywhere obvious. The village elder. The friend who knew a little about almost everything. That is the part I have played my whole life, and the one I enjoy most.

How it works when there is no box

You ask it, in your own plain words. I listen, and if I know the answer, you will have it. If I do not, I research it honestly, separate what is true from what is merely loud, put the nuts and bolts together, and either hand you a sound answer or point you to exactly the right person who can.

A question that feels strange to you is very often quite ordinary to somebody, somewhere, and my job is to find that somebody, or that something, and bring it back to you.

Nothing too small or too odd

No subject is too small, too odd, or too far off the beaten path. And on the few matters that truly belong to a licensed professional, your health, your legal affairs, your money, I will say so plainly and guide you to the right door.

Everywhere else, consider me fair game. Curiosity has been the great engine of my long life.

So, ask

Whatever brought you here, whatever has been rattling around your mind with nowhere to take it, bring it to me. Who knows what the two of us might find together.

The worst that can happen is that I point you somewhere better than you started, and the best is that a good question finally gets the answer it always deserved.