The Pencil-Driven Life

A Change in Where I’m Writing

For a long time, my writing has lived in several places.

Some of it was about belief.
Some of it about purpose.
Some of it about craft, or questioning, or simply noticing what it feels like to be alive in an ordinary day.

Over time, I began to see that what mattered wasn’t the category — it was the practice underneath it.

I’ve moved my primary writing home to a new place called The Pencil-Driven Life on Substack.

It’s not a rebrand.
It’s a narrowing.

The Pencil-Driven Life is where I’m now writing about attention, work, and ordinary moments — noticed as they happen. Sometimes through story. Sometimes through reflection. Sometimes through questions that don’t ask to be resolved.

If you’ve been following my work here, nothing essential is being left behind.
It’s simply being gathered into one place.

You can find it here:
👉 https://thepencildrivenlife.substack.com/

I’ll continue to let the pencil move.

Unscripted — Week 7–Seven Dogs, Zero Agendas: Lessons in Unfiltered Living

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.

There are seven dogs at Oak Hollow.

They arrived at different times, from different places, carrying different histories. Some came timid. Some loud. Some cautious. Some hungry for attention. None came with a plan.

They don’t share a philosophy. They don’t know the language I use to describe this life. They don’t care whether I’m present or distracted.

And yet, they may be the most reliable teachers of presence I’ve ever lived with.

No Narrative, No Improvement Plan

The dogs don’t wake up wondering who they should be today.

They don’t rehearse yesterday. They don’t plan tomorrow. They don’t carry a storyline about progress, productivity, or meaning.

They wake up. They stretch. They step into the day exactly as it is.

If there is sun, they notice it. If there is food, they eat. If there is movement, they follow. If there is rest, they take it.

Nothing is optimized. Nothing is withheld. Nothing is postponed.

Their lives are not efficient. They are complete.

Attention Without Agenda

One of the quiet surprises of living with animals is how differently attention behaves.

When a dog looks at you, there is no strategy behind it. No expectation. No story.

The attention is total, but uninvested. Present, but unattached.

They don’t want you to be better. They don’t need you to change. They don’t expect a version of you.

They simply register what is.

Being around that kind of attention has a way of stripping things down.

The mind, so used to narrating and evaluating, slowly loses its footing. There’s nothing to perform for. Nothing to explain. Nothing to manage.

Just contact.

Time Without Measurement

Dogs don’t experience time as a problem.

They don’t divide the day into productive and wasted hours. They don’t rush toward the next thing or resist the current one.

A walk is the walk. A nap is the nap. Waiting is waiting.

Time isn’t something they spend or save. It’s something they inhabit.

Watching this, day after day, begins to loosen the grip of urgency. Not dramatically. Not all at once.

Just enough to notice how much of human life is lived somewhere other than where the body already is.

Relationship Without Identity

Each dog has a personality, but none of them carry an identity.

They don’t introduce themselves. They don’t defend who they are. They don’t live up to a role.

If one is cautious, it’s cautious. If one is playful, it plays. If one needs space, it takes it.

There’s no tension between who they were yesterday and who they are today.

They don’t remember themselves.

That absence of self-story creates a surprising kind of freedom. Not freedom from constraint, but freedom from commentary.

They live without an inner narrator explaining their lives to themselves.

Presence That Doesn’t Try

What makes the dogs such effective teachers isn’t that they are wise or calm or enlightened.

It’s that they don’t try to be anything at all.

Presence isn’t something they practice. It’s simply the condition of being alive.

Living alongside that kind of unfiltered existence does something subtle to the human nervous system. It lowers the volume. It shortens the distance between thought and experience.

You stop asking: Am I doing this right? What should this mean? Where is this leading?

You just notice: This is happening.

How This Fits the Pencil-Driven Life

The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t about becoming more disciplined or more intentional.

It’s about removing the extra layers we’ve learned to carry.

Dogs don’t erase. They don’t revise. They don’t reflect.

They simply move.

And in that movement, something essential is revealed: life doesn’t need a storyline to be fully lived.

Sometimes the clearest way back to presence isn’t through effort or insight, but through proximity—to beings who never left it.

A Small Invitation

You don’t need seven dogs. You don’t need animals at all.

But you might notice:

where attention already rests easily
where time doesn’t feel pressured
where you aren’t managing an identity

Stay there a little longer than usual.

No lesson required. No meaning extracted.

Just notice what it’s like to live without an agenda—even briefly.

A Closing Thought

The dogs don’t know they’re teaching anything.

They don’t care whether I understand them. They don’t need me to apply the lesson.

They simply live.

And in their living, they quietly remind me of something I keep forgetting:

Presence isn’t something to achieve. It’s what remains when nothing else is required.

The pencil is already moving.

Unscripted — Week 6 – Walking the Runway: A Daily Practice of Awareness

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.

Unscripted — Week 5: Life at Oak Hollow: Why We Built a Place for Presence

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.

Unscripted – Week 4: When Life Unravels Slowly — And Why That’s a Gift

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.

Most of us expect change to announce itself. We imagine turning points as moments—sharp, dramatic, unmistakable. A decision. A crisis. A breaking point. Something that clearly divides before from after.

But for many of us, real change arrives differently.

It comes slowly. Quietly. Almost politely.
So gradually that we don’t recognize it as change at all.

This is the kind of unraveling that doesn’t destroy your life.
It loosens it.

And that slow unraveling, uncomfortable as it can be, may be one of the greatest gifts life offers.

The Myth of the Sudden Awakening

We tend to believe that meaningful transformation should be obvious.

That when something is truly ending, we’ll know.
That when a belief no longer fits, it will collapse under its own weight.
That clarity arrives in a single moment of insight.

Sometimes that happens.

More often, it doesn’t.

More often, life unravels in small, almost forgettable ways:

a question that doesn’t go away
a certainty that feels slightly hollow
a role that requires more effort than it used to
a belief that still works on paper but not in experience

Nothing dramatic breaks.
Nothing visibly fails.

But something quietly loosens.

When the Old Story Stops Carrying You

There is a particular discomfort that comes when a familiar story begins to lose its grip.

Not because it’s been disproven.
Not because you’ve rejected it.
But because it no longer carries the weight it once did.

You may still speak the words.
Still perform the roles.
Still meet expectations.

And yet, something underneath has shifted.

What once felt solid now feels effortful.
What once felt motivating now feels heavy.
What once felt certain now feels… thin.

This isn’t confusion.
It’s misalignment.

And misalignment doesn’t demand immediate action.
It asks for attention.

Why Slow Unraveling Is Kinder Than Sudden Collapse

A sudden collapse forces change.

A slow unraveling invites it.

When life unravels slowly, you’re given time:

time to notice
time to grieve without drama
time to loosen without tearing
time to let clarity emerge on its own

Nothing has to be burned down.
Nothing has to be replaced immediately.

The Pencil-Driven Life trusts this pace.

Just as a pencil erases lightly—without ripping the page—life often revises us gently, one line at a time.

Living Through the In-Between

The most difficult part of slow unraveling is not knowing what comes next.

You haven’t arrived somewhere new.
But you can’t fully return to where you were.

This in-between can feel unsettling.

There’s less certainty.
Less motivation to defend old positions.
Less urgency to prove anything.

And yet—more honesty.

More listening.
More willingness to pause.
More openness to not knowing.

This is not stagnation.

This is presence learning to lead.

What Presence Reveals During Unraveling

Presence doesn’t rush the unraveling process.

It doesn’t demand answers.
It doesn’t force conclusions.

It simply notices what no longer fits.

Presence allows you to stay with the discomfort long enough to learn from it—without turning it into a problem to solve.

In this space, you may begin to see:

which beliefs require constant reinforcement
which roles you’re performing out of habit
which identities depend on external approval
which expectations no longer reflect who you are

Nothing needs to be resolved immediately.

Seeing is enough.

Why This Phase Is a Gift

Slow unraveling protects you from trading one script for another.

It prevents reactionary change.
It discourages certainty dressed up as freedom.

Instead, it creates space.

Space to respond rather than react.
Space to let go without replacing.
Space to trust what’s unfolding without naming it too quickly.

This is the gift:
you’re not being pushed forward.
You’re being invited inward.

Letting the Pencil Move

The pencil doesn’t rush revisions.

It pauses.
It hovers.
It adjusts lightly.

Living without a script doesn’t mean always knowing where you’re going.
It means staying present while the next line reveals itself.

Slow unraveling teaches this better than certainty ever could.

Because it asks you to stay with what’s real—
even when it hasn’t resolved into something neat.

A Closing Thought

If your life feels like it’s unraveling slowly, gently, without spectacle—nothing may be wrong.

You may not be losing direction.
You may be loosening a story that no longer fits.

Stay with it.

Notice what’s shifting.
Notice what no longer needs defending.
Notice what feels truer when nothing is forced.

The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t built on sudden awakenings.
It’s built on honest noticing.

And sometimes, the most meaningful change arrives quietly—
line by line—
as the pencil moves.

If you’d like to receive new entries from the Unscripted series by email, you can subscribe here. Occasionally, other reflective posts may appear as well.

Unscripted — Week 3: How Inherited Stories Shape — and Shrink — Our Lives

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.

We rarely choose the stories that first shape us.

They arrive quietly—through family, culture, religion, education, praise, warning, repetition. By the time we’re old enough to question them, they already feel like truth. Not stories at all. Just “the way things are.”

This is how inherited stories work.
They don’t announce themselves as narratives.
They present themselves as reality.

And because of that, they shape our lives far more than we realize.

What I Mean by “Inherited Stories”

An inherited story isn’t a single belief.
It’s a framework—a background script that tells you:

who you are
what matters
what success looks like
what failure means
what you’re allowed to want
what you should fear
what must never be questioned

Some inherited stories are explicit.
Others are absorbed through tone, silence, or reward.

“You’re the responsible one.”
“Don’t rock the boat.”
“Good people don’t think that way.”
“This is just how life is.”
“You should be grateful.”
“That’s selfish.”
“That’s unrealistic.”

Over time, these stories stop sounding like voices.
They start sounding like you.

How Stories Begin to Shrink a Life

Most inherited stories begin as protection.

They keep families stable.
They maintain order.
They offer certainty.
They reduce anxiety.

But what protects early on often constrains later.

A story that once helped you survive can quietly limit who you’re allowed to become.

You may notice it when:

curiosity feels dangerous
rest feels irresponsible
joy carries guilt
silence feels unproductive
stillness feels wrong
your body says “no,” but the story says “push”

This is not failure.
It’s friction between lived experience and an outdated script.

Why These Stories Are Hard to See

Inherited stories don’t shrink us through force.
They shrink us through familiarity.

They feel normal.
Responsible.
Mature.
Even virtuous.

And because they’re often rewarded—socially, emotionally, morally—we rarely pause to ask:

Is this actually true?
Is this still mine?
Does this fit the life I’m living now?

Instead, we try harder to live inside the story.

That effort is exhausting.

The Cost of an Unexamined Story

Living inside an inherited story comes with a quiet cost:

chronic tension
a sense of never being “enough”
constant comparison
fear of slowing down
fear of disappointing others
fear of disappointing the version of yourself the story requires

You may appear successful.
Capable.
Put together.

And yet feel strangely absent from your own life.

This isn’t because something is wrong with you.

It’s because the story is no longer aligned with reality.

The Pencil as a Tool for Seeing

This is where the pencil matters.

A pencil invites examination without commitment.

It lets you write something down without declaring it final.
It allows erasure.
Revision.
Curiosity.

When you put an inherited story on paper, something subtle happens:

It stops being invisible.

Writing doesn’t judge the story.
It simply makes it visible.

And once visible, it can be questioned.

A Simple Way to Notice Your Stories

You don’t need to dismantle your life to begin.
You don’t need to confront anyone.
You don’t need new beliefs.

Just notice where tension appears.

Some gentle questions to explore—not answer all at once:

What do I feel pressured to be?
What am I afraid would happen if I stopped trying so hard?
What feels “not allowed,” even though no one is forbidding it?
What voice appears when I rest, slow down, or change direction?
Whose approval am I still seeking?

Write whatever arises.
No fixing.
No correcting.

The pencil moves.
You watch.

Seeing Without Replacing

This part matters.

The goal is not to swap one story for a better one.
Not to adopt a new identity.
Not to declare independence from the past.

The Pencil-Driven Life doesn’t ask you to replace inherited stories.

It asks you to see them.

Because when a story is seen clearly, its grip loosens naturally.

What once felt absolute begins to feel optional.
What once felt mandatory begins to feel negotiable.

And space appears.

Living Without a Script Begins Here

Living without a script doesn’t mean living without values or structure.

It means no longer mistaking inherited narratives for unquestionable truth.

Presence allows you to notice when a story is operating.
Clarity allows you to decide whether it still belongs.

And often, nothing dramatic happens.

You simply:

respond instead of react
rest without explanation
choose differently
let go of a role
stop defending an identity
breathe more easily

This is not rebellion.

It’s alignment.

A Quiet Invitation

You don’t need to name every story today.
You don’t need to confront the biggest ones first.

Start small.

Notice the sentence that appears when you slow down.
Notice the feeling that says, “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
Notice the voice that insists, “This is just how I am.”

Write it down.

Not to judge it.
Not to erase it.

Just to see it.

Because the moment a story is seen clearly, it stops running the show.

And in that space—
something wider becomes possible.

*Next week in Unscripted:
*”When Life Unravels Slowly — And Why That’s a Gift” — grounding the philosophy in your personal experience without rehashing the past.

Unscripted — Week 2: Presence, the Quiet Skill You Already Have

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.

Presence is often spoken about as if it were rare, advanced, or difficult to attain. Something earned through discipline, training, or years of practice. Something monks cultivate and the rest of us chase.

But presence isn’t something you acquire. It’s something you notice.

You already have it.

What most of us lack isn’t presence—it’s permission to trust it.

What Presence Is (and Isn’t)

Presence isn’t calm. It isn’t silence. It isn’t the absence of thought. It isn’t a permanent state you arrive at and stay in.

Presence is simply being aware of what is happening right now—without immediately trying to fix it, explain it, judge it, or escape it.

It’s the moment you notice your breath without controlling it. The instant you realize you’ve been lost in thought. The pause before a reaction. The awareness that you’re thinking.

Presence is not the elimination of noise. It’s the recognition of it.

And that recognition is already happening—whether you’re aware of it or not.

Why Presence Feels Elusive

If presence is already here, why does it feel so hard to access?

Because we’ve been trained, from early on, to live one step removed from direct experience.

We’re taught to interpret before we feel. To evaluate before we notice. To assign meaning before we sit with what’s happening.

Most of our lives are spent inside commentary:

What this means
What this says about me
What I should do next
How this fits into a larger story

Presence doesn’t live in commentary. It lives before it.

And the mind is very good at pulling us back into narration.

Presence and the Pencil

This is where the pencil matters.

A pencil doesn’t rush. It doesn’t jump ahead. It moves line by line.

When you write with a pencil—physically or metaphorically—you’re forced to slow down enough to stay with what’s here. One word at a time. One stroke at a time.

You can’t write tomorrow’s sentence today. You can’t revise what hasn’t been written yet.

The pencil keeps you honest. It keeps you present.

This is why writing—journaling, reflecting, sketching thoughts—is such a powerful doorway into presence. Not because it produces something, but because it requires attention.

Presence Is Not a Performance

One of the great misunderstandings about presence is the belief that it should look a certain way.

Calm. Peaceful. Centered. Spiritual.

But presence includes:

restlessness
frustration
boredom
doubt
fatigue
grief
joy

Presence isn’t a mood. It’s a relationship to whatever mood is here.

You don’t become present by fixing your inner state. You become present by seeing it clearly.

The moment you notice, “I’m distracted,” presence is already operating. The moment you realize, “I’m anxious,” presence is already here.

You didn’t fail. You woke up.

The Skill You’re Already Using

Think about the last time you caught yourself daydreaming. Or replaying a conversation. Or worrying about something that hasn’t happened.

What noticed that?

That noticing didn’t come from thought. It came before thought.

That’s presence.

You don’t need to build it. You don’t need to strengthen it. You don’t need to protect it.

You only need to stop overlooking it.

Presence is not fragile. It’s constant.

What comes and goes is attention.

Presence and Living Without a Script

Living without a script doesn’t mean living without plans or structure. It means not confusing your plans with reality.

Presence keeps you grounded in what’s actually happening, rather than what should be happening.

When you live from presence:

you respond instead of react
you listen instead of preparing a reply
you notice when a belief no longer fits
you feel when it’s time to let something go

Presence doesn’t give you answers. It gives you clarity.

And clarity changes everything.

Practicing Presence (Without Making It Another Task)

Here’s the paradox: The moment you try to do presence, you lose it.

Presence isn’t practiced by effort. It’s practiced by noticing.

A few gentle invitations—not instructions:

Notice when you’re lost in thought.
Notice the sensation of sitting where you are.
Notice the sound furthest from you.
Notice the impulse to move away from discomfort.
Notice the next breath—without changing it.

Nothing to improve. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to achieve.

Just noticing.

And when you forget? That noticing is the practice.

Presence Is Enough

Presence doesn’t promise happiness. It doesn’t promise peace. It doesn’t promise certainty.

What it offers is something quieter and more reliable:

honesty.

From that honesty, life begins to untangle itself—not all at once, but moment by moment.

The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t built on constant awareness. It’s built on repeated noticing.

A thousand small returns.

You don’t need a better technique. You don’t need more discipline. You don’t need to become someone else.

You already have the quiet skill you’re looking for.

It’s here— now.

And now.

Unscripted — Week 1: What It Means to Live Without a Script

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.

Why losing the old storyline becomes freedom rather than loss

For most of my life, I lived by a script I didn’t write.

Not a literal script—not words typed on a page or spoken into a microphone—but a story that explained who I was supposed to be and why. A story that laid out what mattered and what didn’t. A story filled with expectations, obligations, and roles assigned long before I ever had the space or courage to question them.

You probably have a script too. Most people do.

It’s the quiet narrative running beneath everything: This is who I am.This is what I’m supposed to want.This is why my life matters.This is what success looks like.This is what I must protect at all costs.

Scripts are powerful in the way gravity is powerful. You don’t notice them until you try to step outside their pull.

For years, I didn’t. I followed the story I had inherited, edited it lightly at times, rearranged chapters here and there, but never questioned its authorship. It felt like life. It felt like purpose. It felt like meaning.

And then one day—quietly, without drama—the script stopped working.

Not because of a crisis. Not because of a grand revelation. But because something inside me simply saw through it. The storyline I had used to understand myself suddenly felt too small, too tight, too noisy. And once that unraveling began, it didn’t stop. What once felt like identity now felt like confinement.

That unraveling is what eventually became The Pencil-Driven Life.

And this post—this first post in a new chapter of writing—is an attempt to name what it actually means to live without a script.

Not as an idea. Not as a philosophy. But as a daily, lived experience.

The Feel of Life Without a Script

Most people hear “living without a script” and imagine chaos or impulsiveness or aimlessness. But it’s none of those things.

Living without a script doesn’t mean abandoning your life. It means no longer forcing life to match a predetermined storyline.

It means dropping the old belief that you must always be “on track.” It means letting go of the constant self-surveillance that comes from comparing your real life to the fictional one in your head.

It means waking up without the burden of being someone.

When you live without a script:

You don’t need your life to make sense on paper.
You stop trying to justify every choice.
You don’t spend your days defending an identity.
You no longer audition for approval—your own or anyone else’s.
You begin to notice what’s actually happening instead of what “should” be happening.

Freedom doesn’t arrive with fireworks. It arrives quietly, like a breath you didn’t know you were holding finally releasing.

When the Old Storyline Falls Away

Losing your script doesn’t feel like liberation at first. It feels like disorientation—like stepping outside in the morning and noticing the temperature has changed without warning.

You reach for the old storyline out of habit. You try to reassemble it. You try to reason your way back into certainty.

But eventually you see the truth: What you lost wasn’t security. It was constraint.

The old storyline told me who I was supposed to be. It told me what a “good life” looked like. It told me what counted and what didn’t. It told me what to chase and what to avoid.

Letting go of that storyline didn’t erase meaning. It revealed meaning.

Meaning wasn’t in the script. Meaning was in the moment-to-moment clarity that emerges when you’re no longer trying to live in a story.

Life as It Is, Not as It Was Written

One of the surprises of living without a script is how ordinary it feels.

Not dull—ordinary.

The ordinary becomes spectacular when you are not reaching past it for something shinier or more “meaningful.” You begin to see:

The way the light falls through the window in the morning
The simple pleasure of making coffee
The breath of a dog sleeping beside you
The grain of a board you’re sanding in the Hub
The frost on the runway at sunrise
The stillness of a cabin before the fire warms it

None of these are “achievements.” None belong in a résumé. None advance a storyline.

But they make up a life—one that unfolds with quiet clarity when you stop trying to force it to behave like a three-act structure.

And here’s the strange part:

When you stop trying to control life, the day seems to cooperate on its own terms.

You’re not fighting with time anymore. You’re not measuring yourself against an imagined version of who you “should” have been. You’re not chasing a purpose. You’re living.

Fully. Simply. Honestly.

The Script Was Never You

It takes time to see this clearly.

For years, I thought the story I had inherited—religious purpose, professional identity, certainty—was my life. I thought stepping out of that story meant stepping into danger or meaninglessness.

But the script wasn’t me. It was something placed on top of me.

When it fell away, I didn’t disappear. I appeared.

Awareness remained. Presence remained. Life remained.

The script was the illusion. The clarity beneath it was the truth.

The Pencil-Driven Life Begins Here

Living without a script isn’t rebellion. It’s not self-improvement. It’s not minimalism or philosophy or technique.

It’s the simple recognition that life does not need a storyline in order to be meaningful.

Life is meaningful because you are here to witness it.

The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t about writing a better script; it’s about noticing the movement beneath the story—moment by moment, breath by breath.

Some days, the pencil moves quickly. Some days, hardly at all. Some days, it writes things you didn’t expect. Some days, it refuses to write anything at all.

But in every case, you’re not forcing it. You’re watching. You’re present. You’re alive inside the immediacy of the moment rather than inside an inherited narrative about what your life ought to become.

This simple shift—attention instead of expectation, presence instead of purpose—is the beginning of freedom.

A Final Word for This First Monday

This new chapter on the website isn’t a rebrand; it’s a revelation of what’s been happening quietly for years.

Oak Hollow has become the place where this philosophy is lived out in real time. This blog will be where it is articulated.

If you’ve lived your life inside someone else’s script, or even inside a script you once wrote for yourself but can’t bear to follow anymore, then you are already standing at the threshold of something larger.

Not a new storyline. A new way of seeing.

There is nothing to achieve. Nothing to prove. Nothing to become.

There is only this moment—clear, unburdened, unwritten—and the life unfolding inside it.

Let’s see where the pencil moves next.

—Richard

A New Beginning at The Pencil-Driven Life

Why the website changed — and what comes next

For most of my life, I lived inside stories I didn’t write—beliefs I inherited, purposes assigned to me, expectations handed down long before I ever had a chance to choose my own path. I didn’t recognize how small that space had become until everything began to unravel.

That unraveling led me toward something quieter: presence, clarity, and the freedom to live moment by moment.

Over time, that shift grew into a philosophy, then a lived practice, and now a body of work called The Pencil-Driven Life.

If you’ve visited this website before, you may notice it looks very different.
Here’s why.

Life at Oak Hollow

Much of this transformation has taken place on our seventy-acre property in North Alabama—land we call Oak Hollow.

What began as a simple place to live has become an ongoing experiment in presence:

building off-grid cabins
creating quiet spaces to think and breathe
walking trails at sunrise
tending a greenhouse
caring for seven rescued dogs
letting each day unfold without a script

Oak Hollow isn’t a cabin rental business.
It’s where The Pencil-Driven Life is lived out in real time.

You’ll see glimpses of these moments, projects, and reflections on @thepencildrivenlife, because they’re inseparable from the philosophy itself.

What’s Changing on the Website

This site used to focus heavily on story coaching and Fictionary editing. I’m grateful for that chapter—my training sharpened the way I understand story and, ultimately, the way I understand life.

But I no longer offer story coaching as a profession.

The work ahead of me now is different:

writing The Pencil-Driven Life — Volume 1
creating the companion workbook
sharing daily reflections
continuing the Boaz novels
documenting the work happening at Oak Hollow
and exploring presence in ordinary life

Story still matters deeply—just not as a service.
It’s become a lens.

Where We Go From Here

You’ll see more writing here about:

presence
simplicity
letting go
finding clarity
creative life at Oak Hollow
writing as awareness
questioning inherited stories
living lightly and honestly

The Pencil-Driven Life isn’t about reaching a destination.
It’s about noticing what’s already here.

Thank you for walking with me into this next chapter.
Let’s see where the pencil moves from here.

—Richard

Fictionary’s Story Elements: Backstory

Backstory is one of the most powerful—and most misunderstood—tools in storytelling. Done well, it deepens characters, explains motivations, and anchors readers in the world of the story. Done poorly, it becomes an information dump that stalls the narrative and risks losing the reader.

Why Backstory Matters

Backstory is the story that happens before page one. It shapes who your characters are when the novel begins. Often, it’s tied to an event that hurt them, created a flaw, or established a driving motivation. Without it, characters may feel flat or unconvincing. But too much backstory, especially early on, can overwhelm readers with explanation instead of action.

Think of backstory as seasoning—not the whole meal. Sprinkled in at the right time, it makes the main story richer. Poured out all at once, it overshadows the actual narrative.

A great example comes from The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. Early on, Carey drops intriguing pieces of backstory that raise questions without fully answering them: children are rare, they arrive and disappear, and something ominous is happening behind the scenes. The effect? Curiosity drives the reader forward.

Using Backstory Effectively

As editors, we look for balance. Backstory should serve a purpose:

Too Little: The reader feels lost, unsure why a character behaves the way they do.
Too Much: The reader is dragged out of the story by an info dump.
Irrelevant: The backstory doesn’t connect to character motivations, flaws, or the plot.

When a scene leans too heavily on explanation, one option is to convert backstory into action or even a flashback. This way, the reader experiences the past with the character rather than being told about it.

Equally important is timing. Ask: Does the reader need this information right now? Or could it wait until later in the story? Curiosity fuels engagement—don’t answer every question too soon.

Advice for Writers

Here’s what to keep in mind as you revise:

Anchor your backstory in character pain or motivation—something that still matters in the present story.
Spread it out strategically. Let readers discover the past in small, meaningful doses.
Avoid irrelevant details. If a revelation about your character’s past doesn’t affect the plot or deepen the character, cut it.
If you find yourself front-loading chapters with paragraphs of explanation, consider moving some of that material later.
Remember: curiosity keeps the pages turning. Keep the reader wondering.

Final Thought

Backstory is powerful, but only when it’s relevant, strategically placed, and connected to your characters’ flaws and goals. Your job is to use it to deepen the emotional impact of the present story—not replace it.

As you review your manuscript, use the Story Map to track backstory in each scene. Are you giving the reader just enough to understand and stay intrigued, or weighing them down with too much too soon?

Backstory should whisper, not shout.