Let people be wrong about you. Correcting every rumor is a full-time job with zero pay.

Reputation management is endless, because every correction creates new material and reaches a smaller audience than the original did. Most people who heard the wrong version were never invested and will have forgotten within a week. Chasing accuracy inside other people’s heads spends your energy in a place you do not live.

Choose in advance which two or three relationships are worth a direct conversation, and give the rest nothing. Say your piece once to the people who matter, then stop supplying the topic. Time and your ordinary behavior do more than any correction could.