Welcome to Unscripted, a weekly reflection on what it means to live without inherited stories, rigid identities, or predetermined purpose. Each Monday, I explore a different part of this shift toward presence and clarity—one moment, one breath, one pencil stroke at a time.
Most mornings at Oak Hollow begin the same way.
Not because I planned it that way, but because repetition has a way of finding you when you stop resisting it.
After the early hours of writing—after coffee, pages, silence—I step outside and walk the runway.
It’s a long, simple strip of grass cut into the land years ago for a different purpose. Once, it existed to lift something into the air. Now it exists for something quieter: walking, noticing, returning.
There’s nothing symbolic about it when I start walking. No intention to practice awareness. No goal to “be present.” I’m just moving my body across familiar ground.
And that’s the point.
A Practice Without Ambition
The word practice usually comes with expectations attached. Improvement. Discipline. Progress. Outcomes.
This isn’t that.
Walking the runway isn’t about achieving a state of mind or cultivating a particular feeling. It’s not meditation in disguise. It’s not exercise pretending to be spiritual.
It’s simply walking the same stretch of land, day after day, long enough for the mind to lose interest in performing.
At first, the mind does what it always does:
- It narrates.
- It plans.
- It revisits old conversations.
- It anticipates what comes next.
I don’t correct it. I don’t argue with it. I don’t try to replace it with better thoughts.
I keep walking.
Over time—sometimes minutes, sometimes not at all—the noise thins. Not because it’s been defeated, but because it no longer needs attention.
Awareness doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It shows up quietly, like noticing you’ve already been breathing.
The Runway as a Container
What makes this walk different from any other isn’t the scenery or the distance. It’s the container.
The runway doesn’t change. The trees don’t rearrange themselves. The path doesn’t offer variety or novelty.
Because the space stays constant, what changes becomes easier to see.
Some mornings:
- the body feels heavy
- the mind resists movement
- the walk feels pointless
Other mornings:
- light filters differently
- birds are louder
- the body moves without commentary
The runway doesn’t respond to any of this. It doesn’t reward effort or punish distraction.
It simply holds whatever shows up.
That steadiness is what allows awareness to surface—not as an idea, but as direct experience.
Awareness Is Not Something You Add
One of the quiet misunderstandings about presence is the belief that it’s something you do.
As if awareness is a skill to be developed, a habit to be installed, a discipline to master.
Walking the runway has taught me otherwise.
Awareness isn’t added to the walk. It’s what’s left when nothing else is required.
When there’s no destination, no performance, no improvement to chase, attention naturally returns to what’s already happening:
- the rhythm of breath
- the feeling of feet meeting ground
- the way light shifts as clouds move
None of this needs interpretation.
The runway doesn’t ask me to understand it. It asks me to notice it.
The Body Knows Before the Mind
There are days when thought remains loud the entire walk.
Even then, something else is happening underneath.
The body walks. The arms swing. The breath adjusts.
The body doesn’t wait for clarity to proceed.
This is one of the quieter lessons the runway offers: awareness doesn’t depend on mental quiet. It depends on contact.
Feet on ground. Air on skin. Movement unfolding.
The mind may comment, but the body is already here.
A Ritual Without Meaning
I don’t walk the runway because it represents something. I walk it because it’s there.
Over time, the routine has taken on a shape of its own—not as ritual, but as rhythm.
Not sacred. Not symbolic. Just familiar.
That familiarity becomes an invitation. Not to transcend daily life, but to inhabit it more fully.
Walking the runway doesn’t make the day better. It makes the day real.
How This Fits the Pencil-Driven Life
The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t about adding practices to an already crowded life.
It’s about noticing where awareness naturally appears when you stop demanding meaning from everything you do.
For me, awareness shows up:
- while walking the runway
- while stacking wood
- while feeding dogs
- while writing early in the morning before the world asks anything of me
None of these moments are optimized. None are performed. None are shared to prove anything.
They are simply where attention settles when the pencil is allowed to move on its own.
If You’re Looking for a Runway of Your Own
You don’t need land. You don’t need a routine as specific as mine. You don’t need to call it a practice.
What you need already exists:
- a path you walk often
- a movement you repeat
- a space that doesn’t demand improvement
Let it stay ordinary. Let it remain unremarkable.
Walk it without expecting awareness to arrive.
If it does, fine. If it doesn’t, fine.
The walking is enough.
A Closing Thought
The runway doesn’t teach me how to be present.
It reminds me that presence was never missing.
It was only waiting for me to stop trying to get somewhere else.
I walk. The mind talks. The body moves. The day begins.
That’s the practice.
The pencil is already moving.
The Pencil-Driven Life 