Welcome to Unscripted — a weekly reflection on living without inherited stories, rigid identities, or predetermined purpose. Each Monday, I explore a different facet of this shift toward presence and clarity, one moment, one breath, one pencil stroke at a time.
Oak Hollow didn’t begin as a plan.
There was no mission statement, no long-term vision document, no intention to “build a place” for anyone else. What existed first was a piece of land and a growing awareness that life felt different there—quieter, less insistent, less arranged.
Not escape.
Pause.
Room to stop long enough to notice what was already happening.
Over time, that pause began to take shape.
A Place That Doesn’t Demand Performance
Oak Hollow sits on seventy acres in North Alabama. There are trees and trails, uneven ground, long stretches where nothing happens at all. There are dogs—rescued, stubborn, affectionate—who don’t care what day it is or what you planned to accomplish. There are cabins, a greenhouse, a workshop, a small library, and projects that move forward slowly, by hand.
Most days include quiet labor:
splitting wood
fixing something that broke
walking the land
feeding animals
sitting without doing much at all
None of it is optimized.
None of it is symbolic.
It isn’t curated for an audience.
It’s just life, lived close enough to feel.
Why Build Anything at All?
At some point it became clear that presence doesn’t survive easily inside systems designed for constant output. The modern world rewards speed, certainty, and productivity. Even reflection becomes something to perform. Even rest turns into a metric.
Oak Hollow emerged as a counterweight—not in opposition, but in practice.
A place where time stretches back out.
Where days don’t have to justify themselves.
Where work is physical enough to quiet the mind.
Where silence isn’t treated as a problem to solve.
The cabins aren’t being built to retreat from life.
They’re being built to return to it.
Philosophy Made Ordinary
Nothing here is meant to persuade.
The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t taught at Oak Hollow. It’s tested here, daily, in ordinary ways:
- Does presence remain when plans fall apart?
- Does clarity appear when there’s no deadline?
- Can meaning exist without externally assigned purpose?
- What happens when attention is allowed to settle instead of being pulled?
Some days the answer is calm.
Other days it’s frustration.
Some days nothing resolves at all.
That, too, belongs.
Oak Hollow doesn’t produce insight on demand.
It simply removes enough noise for what’s already present to be felt.
Not a Retreat—But Becoming Shareable
Oak Hollow didn’t begin as a retreat, and it still resists being packaged as one. It began as a place to live this philosophy day by day.
In early 2026, that life becomes shareable in a small, deliberate way—through the Threshold Cabin, the first space in East Hollow designed for presence rather than escape. What follows after that will unfold the same way Oak Hollow always has: slowly, attentively, and without a script.
There is no program here.
No transformation promised.
No version of yourself you’re expected to become.
Just a place where the noise is lower, the pace is honest, and attention has room to land.
A Living Studio, Not a Destination
I sometimes think of Oak Hollow as a living studio.
Not a finished space.
Not a solution.
Not a destination.
A place where life is lived close enough to notice.
Writing happens here, but it isn’t the point.
Building happens here, but it isn’t the point.
Even presence isn’t a goal.
The land doesn’t care what I understand.
The dogs don’t respond to philosophy.
The work doesn’t become easier because it’s meaningful.
That’s what makes it honest.
Why Share This at All?
Because some readers are looking for evidence—not evidence of ideas, but evidence that life can be lived differently without collapsing.
Oak Hollow isn’t offered as a model.
It’s simply evidence.
Evidence that a quieter life is possible.
That attention can be practiced.
That meaning doesn’t require a script.
That ordinary days are enough.
This isn’t a destination.
It’s a practice.
The pencil moves.
The work continues.
Life unfolds at its own pace.
The Pencil-Driven Life 