A Quick Introduction
I’m Tommy Hensel, the author of Eating Adverbs. Before that, I spent decades collecting an unusual set of careers: singer, actor, director, dramaturg, floral designer, life coach, tarot reader, Feng Shui consultant, restaurant critic, cabaret artist, WSET diploma-certified wine professional, and arts presenter. Most of those happened at the same time.
When people meet me in professional contexts they tend to look at the list and ask if there’s anything I haven’t done. I’m still thinking about it.
How the Book Started
In October 1984, I was a sophomore at Florida State University. I showed up to a restaurant to meet friends who never arrived. I waited, wandered Spencer’s Gifts for longer than I’d care to admit, and finally walked back in and asked for a table for one. Nobody looked up. Nobody cared. And something, quietly, shifted.
It took forty years for that moment to become a book.
In the years between, I picked up degrees (a BA in communication, a BA in music, an MA in theater) and lived in seven states before settling in the Chicago area eighteen years ago. I kept doing things alone the whole time. That included most of my dinners, plenty of travel, and two trips to a surfing resort in Costa Rica, the second of which ended with a rogue wave, a broken tooth, and an unexpected Christmas Eve in a dentist’s chair in Nosara. (The full story is in the book.) Somewhere along the way I noticed I was choosing those things instead of falling into them, and getting better at it the more I practiced.
Eating Adverbs makes the case for doing that on purpose.
A Fourteen-Year Gratitude Practice
On Christmas Eve, 2011, I read a friend’s Facebook post listing five things she was grateful for that day. I copied the format the next morning. I haven’t stopped since.
That practice is now in its fourteenth year. Nearly five thousand posts. Almost twenty-eight thousand individual gratitude items, written one day at a time, through job changes, surgeries, a cancer diagnosis, a global pandemic, and a lot of ordinary mornings. Fourteen years in, the patterns are clear: home matters more than I expected, coffee counts, and the practice works best on the days I least feel like doing it.
The book draws on this work. Future projects will draw on it more directly.
What I’m Doing Now
I’m retired from full-time work in the performing arts. Over seventeen years at two community colleges I built programming that secured more than $1.8 million in grants from organizations including the NEA, APAP, and the Doris Duke Foundation, and brought artists like Chita Rivera, Olympia Dukakis, John Waters, and the Tibetan Monks of Drepung Loseling to Chicago-area stages. I stepped away from that work earlier this year.
Starting in June, I’ll consult part-time with Heartland Performing Arts, the nonprofit behind the Midwest Arts XPO. Most of my other time goes to the book, to wine writing (I hold the WSET Diploma), to reading more than I have time for, and to dinners out.
Where I Live
I live in Berwyn, Illinois, just west of Chicago, in a neighborhood with better restaurants than people expect. My Monday nights belong to a bar seat at fourteensixteen in LaGrange, where the bartender knows my drink and the regulars save my seat. That ritual took years to settle into, and it started with a single evening I wasn’t sure I wanted to show up for.
Stay Connected
The mailing list is the best way to hear from me directly. The eBook launches in late May 2026, and subscribers get the buy link before anyone else.
For coaching, head to the Coaching page. For media, podcast, or speaking inquiries, email me at EatingAdverbs@gmail.com.