For much of my life, I lived inside stories I didn’t write.
Beliefs inherited from Southern Baptist fundamentalism. Identities shaped by culture and career. Expectations formed long before I had language to question them.
I didn’t realize how narrow that space had become until doubt—quiet and unannounced—let in a little light.
What followed wasn’t a dramatic collapse. It was a slow loosening.
Certainty softened. Purpose dissolved. Identity stopped insisting.
In the space that opened, something simple emerged: presence.
Not a spiritual practice. Not a new belief system. Not a philosophy to memorize.
Just the felt experience of this moment—unassigned, unhurried, and real.
Over time, that way of living became something I now call The Pencil-Driven Life.
Why a Pencil?
A pencil is tentative. It makes light marks It erases easily.
It invites exploration rather than commitment.
For me, the pencil became a symbol of living without dogma or rigidity—of moving through life with openness instead of answers, curiosity instead of conclusions, and awareness instead of fixed identity.
A pencil doesn’t demand certainty. It encourages noticing.
You don’t need to be a writer to live this way—only willing to let your life remain in draft. The pencil is a metaphor, not a method.
What Living Without a Script Means
Most of us follow scripts we didn’t choose—religious, political, familial, cultural. We defend beliefs we inherited and perform identities we never examined.
The Pencil-Driven Life begins when we gently step outside that script and notice what remains.
What I found wasn’t emptiness.
It was clarity.
Clarity to see what matters. Clarity to question what doesn’t. Clarity to let the moment speak without forcing it into meaning.
Life begins to unfold one mark at a time—without a storyline to protect.
Where This Practice Lives
Much of this shift has taken shape on a stretch of rural land in North Alabama we call Oak Hollow.
Here, presence isn’t an idea. It’s ordinary.
Walking at sunrise. Building cabins board by board. Listening to dogs breathe at rest. Letting days open without agenda.
Oak Hollow is not a retreat or a concept. It’s simply the place where this way of living is being practiced in real time—as land, paths, and quiet spaces slowly take shape.
How Writing Fits
Writing has accompanied every stage of my life, but it no longer serves as proof, product, or performance.
It’s awareness.
Each sentence is an act of seeing. Each revision a reminder that nothing is fixed—not words, not beliefs, not identity.
Writing isn’t the purpose of the Pencil-Driven Life. It’s one of its clearest expressions.
What You’ll Find Here
This site is a place for reflection rather than instruction.
Through essays, fragments, narrative work, and the ongoing series Unscripted, I explore:
- stepping out of inherited stories
- letting certainty loosen
- living without assigned purpose
- allowing rather than striving
- noticing instead of believing
- writing as attention
These are not teachings. They are observations from a life no longer organized around belief, identity, or outcome.
At the Center
The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t a system or a doctrine.
It’s an invitation.
Let your life remain unwritten. Let the next mark be light. Let the moment show you what’s already here.
A pencil makes its mark by touching what exists. So do we.
The Pencil-Driven Life 