There was this moment a while back, one of those small interactions that gets stuck in your head, and you replay it over and over trying to make sense of something that maybe didn’t even need decoding.

It was at one of Camila’s Spanish-English meetup events in Jacksonville Florida. I’d just finished talking with her and her friend Erika, a Ecuadorian woman with an easy, grounded energy. I mentioned I’d be traveling to her country for reasons not everyone understands. I didn’t name it directly, but Erika caught on. She looked surprised—not offended, just surprised. After the conversation ended, she got up excused herself, and left. No drama, no words really… she just left.

That moment sat with me for months.

La ofendí? Fui demasiado honesto?

I stopped getting meetup invites. I thought I had ruined something with my words.

But last night, I found out the truth.

Camila had gone to the Virgin Islands for eight months. Erika left that day because she had to work.

Todo estaba bien.

It was just life moving forward. And I had been stuck… sobre pensando.

This happens to me more than I’d like to admit.

Like when I sent a heartfelt message to my Spanish instructor, Ari concerning our lesson. I was proud of it. I could have used google translate and nailed all the punctuation and grammar but instead, I wrote it with care, in her language, from the heart. Instead of feeling seen, I got grammar corrections. No acknowledgment of the emotion behind it, just critique. I overthought that too. Maybe I’d gone too deep. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all and I ended up canceling that lesson altogether and all the future ones.

But over time, I realized it wasn’t about me, it was a dynamic I’ve now come to understand and name as the filtered perception dynamic.

When you speak in your second language, especially to a native speaker, something strange happens. The way they see you becomes distorted or filtered through your accent, your grammar, and your hesitations. You aren’t received as you. You’re received as a version of you. And that version can feel flat, incomplete, and misunderstood.

I’ll go deeper into that in another post. But for now… just know, if you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly explaining yourself, or trying to correct how others interpret you… you’re not alone.

Me paso mucho tiempo sobre pensando.

But I’m learning to let go.

Not every silence is rejection.

Not every pause is a problem.

And sometimes, people just leave a table because they have somewhere else to be.

If you’re like me… overthinking, overfeeling, overanalyzing… just know:

Your awareness is a gift. Your depth is rare.

Just don’t let it become your cage.

I’ll be back at those meetups soon. With more clarity, less hesitation, and a deeper love for the moments that just are.

Somewhere in the silence, I began to hear myself.

For so long, I moved through life trying to meet expectations that weren’t my own. The quiet pressure to conform, the unspoken rules we follow without question—until one day, I did question them. Until one day, I saw the structure for what it was.

A game. A script. A path laid out before me that I had never chosen, yet somehow had agreed to walk.

I didn’t recognize it at first, because I had never been taught to see it.

But once I did, a question rose from deep within me…

What would happen if I lived in alignment with my own truth?

What if my actions, my words, my choices weren’t dictated by expectations but by the pulse of something real within me?
What if I resisted the urge to shrink, to mold, to make myself palatable to the world, and instead stood firm in who I really am?

I have fought this battle—of caring too much, of worrying too often what others might think. But through stillness, through meditation, through peeling back the layers, I have begun to understand myself. To observe my thoughts rather than be consumed by them. To separate what I truly value from what I was conditioned to accept.

I have never sought to challenge authority for the sake of rebellion. I seek to understand. To ask why before I follow. To decide for myself what aligns with my values and what does not. Because my greatest strength, my greatest gift… is my curiosity.

And so, here I stand.

With every piece of content I create, with every word I share, I hope you see me as I truly am. The most honest, unfiltered version of myself that I can present.

I do not ask you to understand what you cannot.

I only ask that you follow along, if something in you stirs at the thought of a wild dream—
One lived freely, fully, and authentically.

I know I have been missing, distant, or perhaps even absent from posting on social media and, in some ways, from your daily lives. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why the silence? The truth is, I needed time to reflect and redirect. I once watched a video that said, “Disappear for six months and become unstoppable, unrecognizable. Unlock your true power by listening to the voice within.”

And so, that is what I did. I stepped back from distractions—no more scrolling, no more posting, and even when I did, it was rare, unplanned. I distanced myself from the noise, even refraining from promoting my gigs, so that I could finally hear what life had been trying to say to me all along.

I went somewhere warm. I simply hopped in the van and went. My guitar was always with me, but my focus was no longer on filling every weekend with performances. The constant cycle of booking, playing, and chasing a vision of success had taken its toll. I wanted to experience life as the person I had become, rather than as the version of myself I had once been chasing. And in that stillness, I embarked on the most profound search for meaning. What I found was more than I had ever imagined, more than I could have asked for.

Since 2022, my journey has been one of deep reflection and exploration. I traveled outside the United States for the first time, allowing myself to be embraced by new cultures and perspectives. Through love, I discovered a new way to see the world—one that called me to live more authentically. I began to truly understand connection, not just to people, but to the infinite worlds that exist within our own.

Take, for instance, the Spanish language—one of the most spoken languages in the world, yet so often overlooked by those who do not speak it. It was not given to me at birth, yet somehow, through love, it found me. It spoke to me in a way that reshaped my understanding of the world. Learning Spanish has not been about stepping away from my own culture, but rather about building a bridge—deepening my ability to connect with others, to learn, to see from another perspective. My winters in South America have reinforced a truth I have always known but had not fully realized: life is always speaking to us. We are all connected. Each person we meet leads us to another and, ultimately, back home to ourselves.

In my time away, I have also begun writing my first memoir. My Purest Intention is an offering of my experiences, my journey through life, love, and spirituality. It is a way to uncover and revisit moments long buried beneath the weight of everyday struggles—not forgotten, just tucked away in places rarely visited. This book is my attempt to share my perspective, to articulate the understanding I now carry, to no longer feel so misunderstood—and perhaps, to inspire.

Now, I return with new energy and purpose. I will be sharing my thoughts here, on this blog, instead of social media. Maybe I will post daily, maybe weekly, but I will be here. I will also begin posting content on my YouTube channel once again, inviting you to join me as I navigate this journey that life is unfolding before me. And of course, there will always be music—my heart, my soul. Let me remind you, I never stopped creating. I only stepped away to truly sit with what I had created, to understand who I had become through it all. My voice is stronger than ever, and it longs to be heard—to resonate within the hearts and souls of those who are willing to listen.

I have never left you. I only retreated so that I could return with more to offer, with a deeper, more authentic version of myself. I hope you will stay with me on this journey. I have so much to share with you.

And I love you.

Pentley

A Wild Dream

The chapter is closed. A Wild Dream has reached its final breath, with Cartoon Eyes set to release on March 25th as the last single. A story told in three songs—one final echo before the silence.

I’m proud of these recordings, though the process tested me. I wanted to create something that was wholly mine—without interference, without outside voices shaping the direction. Just me, the music, and the tools placed before me. In the past, though I wrote the songs, they never truly felt like my own. There were always other hands in the mix, other ideas, other forces steering the vehicle. It’s a natural thing—when you let others into the creative process, they bring their own maps, their own sense of direction. But A Wild Dream was never about perfection. It wasn’t about pristine production or polished delivery. It was about truth.

It was about remembering where I came from, tracing the steps that led me here, and deciding how to move forward with the weight of that understanding. Each song carried a piece of that reflection.

“Memories” was a reckoning with the past—the journeys, the forgotten hard drives filled with places I once roamed but never shared. Looking back at the years, I saw a road paved by music, by motion, by something greater than myself. And in the quiet of a dream, I heard the call: keep going. There was still more to do, more to see. From that revelation, I wrote “Cruise.” A dream within a song, a whisper in the wind telling me that music is not the destination—it is only the soundtrack. Life is the journey. I am the traveler.

The final song, “Cartoon Eyes,” was the closing of a wound. A conversation with Betty, a reckoning with the boy who once stood in the ashes of a bridge he refused to burn. Here, at last, he speaks his truth, he lets go, he walks away. The heart is healed, the path is open. It’s just three songs—a glimpse of a soul deciding which way to walk, or whether to walk at all.

A few days ago, I took my bike along a familiar trail in the northeast woods of Pennsylvania, winding alongside the Delaware River. The same trail I had ridden countless times before. But this time, something was different. The rains of the past years had left their mark, washing away the soil, reshaping the land.

There were stretches of the path that remained smooth—easily traveled, effortlessly enjoyed. And then there were others, uneven and broken, demanding more effort, more awareness. I kept riding, kept pushing forward, until I reached a place where the trail simply vanished. The river had swallowed it whole. As far as I could see, there was no way through.

In that moment, I had to decide: Do I turn back? Do I walk until I find another path? Do I wait? Or do I press forward, trusting that beyond this break in the road, something else awaits?

Life is the same.

We all start on a smooth path, gliding forward with ease, unaware of the obstacles ahead. But soon, the road changes. The terrain shifts beneath us. Some parts become rocky, forcing us to navigate carefully. And then there are places where the road disappears entirely. The beauty of the world remains—the trees, the sky, the whisper of the wind—but the path itself is gone.

And we are left to decide: Do we keep going?

Sometimes, we must dismount. Walk the uneven ground. Trust that beyond the unseen horizon, the path smooths out again. There will be stretches of ease, of joy, where the ride feels effortless once more. And then, just as suddenly, a new challenge will rise before us—an obstruction in the road, a detour we did not expect.

Maybe it will rain. Maybe the cold will bite. Maybe we will look at the washed-out road ahead and wonder why we ever started riding in the first place.

But the real question is this:

How badly do you want to keep going?

The Road Less Understood

Why not make your life interesting? Why not let it be an adventure?

You should be you__fully, unapologetically,because no matter what you do, people won’t always understand. They aren’t supposed to. The world will try to fit you into its mold, tell you how to live, how to move, how to belong. But if you spend your days seeking their approval, you will wake up one morning and realize you never truly lived at all.

For the longest time, I was trapped in that illusion,believing that others had it all figured out, that if I just followed their path, I would find my way. I shaped my choices around what seemed acceptable, what looked right. I mirrored my brothers, my friends, the people I admired. Without ever asking myself: Is this what I truly want?

The most frustrating part? Most of it wasn’t even for me. It was for the illusion. The comfort of walking the road that everyone else was traveling, the security of moving with the current instead of questioning where it was taking me.

I was raised in a Baptist home, taught to seek truth in the words of the Bible. And though my understanding of faith has shifted with time, I still hold on to the wisdom that rings true. One verse has stayed with me:

“The road is straight and narrow.”

Not the wide road, the one filled with crowds moving in unison. The path of the outcast, the wanderer, the dreamer that is where truth lies.

We judge the ones who step away, the ones whose hair is wild, whose clothes don’t conform, who choose a van over a mortgage, who refuse to play by the script. But aren’t they simply living in the purest way they know how?

As children, we are allowed to dream without limits. If a child says he wants to go to the moon, no one tells him it’s impossible. Instead, his room is decorated with stars, his bed becomes a spaceship, his world expands to fit the size of his dreams. But somewhere along the way, that freedom is taken from us. The world tells us to be realistic, to grow up, to fall in line.

I left home in my van to unlearn that conditioning to find a truer way of living, free from the limitations of a reality that was never mine to begin with.

“You can’t do that.”
“It’s too hard.”
“Good luck with that.”

These words are chains. Spoken by those who have long abandoned their own dreams, who see impossibility where I see adventure. But the road… unknown, open, wild… has shown me something different. It has shown me who I am.

There is something sacred about arriving in a place where no one knows you. Where people see you not through the lens of who you were, but as you are in that moment… free, untethered, shining in your own light.

I choose to live an interesting life, even if the world calls it strange. I am a dreamer, and I believe life was meant to be a great adventure.

Even if no one else understands, I will continue to live a life that excites me.

—Pentley

In Pursuit of a Wild Dream

My name is Pentley—like the car, but with a P. A singer, a songwriter, a traveler in pursuit of a wild dream. And yes, you’ll hear that phrase often, because as long as I have breath, I will always be chasing it.

This is Betty, my Ram ProMaster. My companion. My home. I built her with my own hands, shaping her into a vessel of freedom, one that carries me beyond the noise of the world, past the edges of expectation, deep into the unknown. She takes me wherever I need to go.

Far off the beaten path.
Into the heart of nature.
To the places where silence speaks, where I can sit with myself, reconnect, and remember what truly matters.

From here, in the best seat in the house, I watch the world unfold.

I was born a dreamer. Always believing that anything was possible. That life wasn’t meant to be passively lived, but created. That instead of merely existing in this world, we could shape it into something greater, something more beautiful.

Even when the voices of the world tell me otherwise.

I carry a dream so vivid, so real, that it spills from my heart, from my soul. I believe we are all given something—a gift, a purpose to share. Mine is vision. I was given the ability to see beyond what exists, to dream beyond what is seen. And in doing so, I am free.

Free from the limitations of sight.
Free to believe in what my heart knows to be true.

That freedom has led me to people, to places, to moments I never imagined possible. It has connected me to souls in ways that defy logic, ways that remind me that life is not merely about what we see, but about what we feel.

And because I believe in my dreams, even the weight of disappointment does not break me. My dreams are stronger. They give me hope. They turn frustration into fire, despair into light. They allow me to see tomorrow not as something to fear, but as a canvas of infinite possibility.

So, I invite you to follow me on this journey “in pursuit of a wild dream” and to imagine, just for a moment, how beautiful life could be if we all came together to create the world we wish to live in.

—Pentley

Welcome to My Corner of the World

Hey, I’m Pentley—welcome to my little space on the internet.

You’ll find a bio somewhere that sums me up, but that’s just words someone else wrote. Here, in this space, I’ll tell my story in my own words.

I’ll write about the places I’ve been, the roads I’ve traveled, the moments that have shaped me. Some of it will be reflections, some just thoughts along the way. But if I had to guess, most of it will be about my journey…my travels, my shows, the pieces of my world that I feel like sharing.

So stick around. There’s more to come.

—Pentley