When I was five years old, my parents took me to an assessment day for incoming kindergartners where I was tasked with doing various activities, including building a block house up to code with the instructions provided to me.
“Here are some blocks, now use them to build this house,” I was told, and I proceeded to build the house while the supervisors were checking on other kids.
When no one came back right away, I tore down the house and began constructing my own concepts.
I knew they had only wanted me to build the pre-designed house, but I was bored and the square house was hardly a modern architectural marvel.
Eventually an assessor returned, took one look at my custom stack of blocks and marked on my sheet that I was unable to perform the task.
That event is one of the reasons my parents decided to homeschool me. I think it’s also a pretty good anecdote for explaining at least one aspect of who I am.
I am naturally, irrepressibly curious; I love to tinker with things to see what they’re capable of, even if such tinkering is discouraged or unwanted.
It’s that curiosity that led me to a career path in journalism. Journalists have to be nosy and stubborn, sometimes to the point of being annoying (and in rare cases we can get downright obnoxious).
It’s not a nosiness born from pessimism, cynicism or spitefulness; rather, it’s a nosiness born from a passionate desire to see how things work and understand them for what they truly are.
I’ve got that nosiness in spades, and I’m excited to put my curious nature to work for all of you in Lincoln County.
I have covered some Lincoln County stories intermittently for the Advocate-Messenger and I spent two years as the paper’s Garrard County reporter, so I have a few connections and know a few names, but I’m still essentially a newcomer to the county.
As a newcomer, allow me to share a few details about my life so Lincoln County can get to know me as I get to know it better.
I have a wife, Amanda, whom I met while working at my college newspaper. We actually grew up in our high school years befriending all the same people without ever meeting. While I attended the Methodist church in Richmond, she attended the Baptist church across the street and knew all the kids in my youth group from her high school classes.
Amanda is a teacher at heart (she has a bachelor’s in elementary education and will finish up her master’s in zoology this December) with a golden eye for photography.
We hope to adopt a shelter dog soon, and are on the lookout for a home where we can have some trees and plant a garden. We’ve been excited to see curbside recycling bins sitting out in some of the neighborhoods where we’ve been looking.
We share a love of excellent deals — after discovering the Stanford Goodwill and its massive selection of clothing a couple years ago, we deemed it the “good Goodwill” or alternatively, “Greatwill.”
We have immediate family members from both our families living in Berea, Richmond and Lexington, as well as other family living throughout central Kentucky and beyond, from Cincinnati down to Monticello.
It’ll take me some time to learn the who’s, what’s and how’s of Lincoln County, but I look forward to settling in and getting to know who lives here, what’s going on and how things operate.
I’ve got a lot of learning to do to get to that point, which you can help me do if you stop by the IJ office and introduce yourself or shoot me an email at ben@theinteriorjournal.com.
