Benjamin Thomas's Blog

I’ve been to two professional conferences in my lifetime. The first – the American College Health Association’s annual conference, and PowerDMS’s Ignite conference. The first was in Washington D.C. in 2018 and the later was in Orlando in 2020 – yes, that 2020 when they were literally shutting things down as we were attending (story for another time). Anyway, I found out quite quickly that I was excited for the travel and, while initially excited about the conferences themselves, I hated them...

Okay, so that might be a gross oversimplification but the point stands: at a recently reached thirty-six years of age and an average distance of 584 million miles for each trip around the sun… well, you get it. And in those thirty-six years I’ve determined a couple hard truths:

Life is fucking weirdToo many people talk WAY too muchThere are more things on this Earth that I want to experience than I’ll ever have time toOne. Day. At. A. Time.One. Hour. At. A. Time.

I’m ...

I’m a little done with being sticky all the time. Or only being able to go for a half-hour run before I’m convinced that the air I’m breathing is really just transparent sludge.

But, in an effort to not wish away what remains of the summer, I’ll ignore it (or more likely, just shut up about it much to the delight of those around me).

Speaking of heat (heat not humidity!), thank you to everyone who came to the Adult Book Fair at Powder Hollow Brewery this past weekend. It was a pleasur...

So, for whatever reason, I’m a huge fan of stories and tales involving the May Queen. To the point where I’ve written (and humbly been able to publish) my own. There’s just something about the idea of the personification of spring, or any season for that matter. Because, in the eyes of the horror world, the May Queen, this representation of spring and rebirth, is an avenue for the world to strike back at us. To lull us with beauty and femininity before wrapping vines around our skin and pull...

March is easily the best time of year. I say that knowing full well that I love any time of year because the seasons, months, weeks, and days are all what you make them. But March truly is Madness, and if you’re into college sports at all, the past thirty-one days have lived up to their namesake.

For context, I live in the basketball capital of the world. The Connecticut Huskies, both the men and women’s basketball teams, have played their hearts out this season and it shows. For the fift...

So, I made it all of two months until I missed a scheduled post on this website revamp. Luckily for me, the deadline was purely one of my own making and the only person annoyed with my missing it? Me.

Which, let’s be honest, sometimes that can be worse.

But! Fear not my intrepid internal perfectionism, this is the year you shall learn to adapt. In order to do that, I’m going to take a page from the low-cost airline playbook… which ironically is nothing more than a scribbled note on a ...

A journey through the madman’s stories

A little background.

Jump in the time machine friends, we’re going back to middle school (which was about 23 years ago – yikes), to a time when I was obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe. Obsessed is not a hyperbole; when I was in seventh or eighth grade (I mean who can really remember that far back) I recited his poem ‘Annabelle Lee’ at some kind of school function. I doubt it was a talent show, but I remember the stage in the cafeteria-turned auditorium. I...

This post was originally scheduled for later in the week, however with the sad news of Toby Keith’s untimely passing and memories of singing this anthem more times than I can drunkenly count, it felt appropriate to adjust the schedule. Here’s to the fun nights. Rest easy country legend.

I’d like to make the case for dive bars. Hear me out. Sure, there’s something to be said for a nice sit-down dinner with fancy cocktails and oysters. And who doesn’t want to hang out at a brewery? Now com...

Quite the first month of the year. I’m fairly certain every part of the world has been the subject of abnormal weather (gee, I wonder why), and if you’re in my neck of the woods there’s a probable chance you had water in places water shouldn’t be. Which is ironic because there will inevitably be a war over water, and here we are dumping it out of our basements…

But whether you’re dripping with rain, buried beneath snow, or catching a tan when you should be wearing long sleeves and jeans, Janu...

An avid reader while growing up, I broke many rules: got caught reading with a flashlight under the sheets well past bedtime, dog-eared pages to the chagrin of most people who witnessed the heinous act, and read books well past age appropriateness (looking at you Flowers in the Attic) to name a few. Despite my flirtatious relationship with rule breaking, one thing I never did was annotate books. 

At all.  

Writing in books was a line only true, hardened criminals crossed. My book repor...