The Ghost Town Season

You know the feeling... a fresh notebook page, a new list in Notion, a perfectly curated Pinterest board of ideas. Pick whichever poison is your favorite. Or, if you're like me, you'll select a potent mix of all of them, straight up and edited to perfection from DAY ONE.

It starts out promising. The first post went live, you’ve got a list planned out of what to write about, what photographs to take, and possible captions with accompanying emojis and hashtags. You sit back with the last sip of coffee and a high from that feeling of absolute potential...

...and then your mom calls to tell you a cow is missing. 🫠 Or, for those of you who didn't have to learn the hard way that owning livestock is not always a picturesque hobby, your plate gets piled high with the sudden stress of everyday life.

For me, there are days when there isn't even a massive catastrophe to fix. It’s just coming home after a mentally draining day at my job and realizing that not only do the dishes need to be washed, but a load of laundry has to happen so I don't smell while facing the public tomorrow. Meanwhile, according to my perfect planner, I was also scheduled to write the next two blog posts, film content, comment on ten social media posts, and perform whatever other magical chanting is required to keep the infamous algorithm gods happy.

This is usually when I choose ignorance. I sit on my couch, doom-scrolling to pretend the mounting guilt and thoughts of "why can't I just get it together?" aren't screaming in the back of my mind.

Welcome to what I like to call the Ghost Town Season. It’s the gap between the idyllic creative life I think I can plan for, and the messy, exhausting, beautiful reality I actually live in.

I used to view these seasons like a personal failure. But I’m realizing that my ghost town season isn’t proof that I’m incapable. It is simply proof that I’m a human being living a real life, out here in the country, in the middle of nowhere, and honestly am just trying my best.

And if your dreams have gone a little quiet or seem to always take a back burner too, I want to talk about why that's completely okay and what I'm doing moving forward.

What the Cows Taught Me About Content Calendars

There is a weird "rule" on the internet that says if you don’t produce something new every single week (or honestly, every single day), you basically cease to exist. The algorithm demands constant, unbroken noise.

But when you live in the country, you realize pretty quickly that the rest of the actual, living world doesn't operate on a 7-day digital upload schedule. Take the cows, for instance.

Right now, we are in an "in-between" phase. They still need to be checked, but they are pretty self-sufficient. However, things come up out of the blue. A calf is born early. The herd doesn't come in to eat, and you're left wondering if everyone is accounted for. Or, worst of all, your heart drops into your stomach when you approach a white spot in the pasture, only to discover it is indeed a set of ribs from a cow that was perfectly fine the last time you checked her.

Life is raw, demanding, and gives zero effs about a color-coded planner that did not include a catastrophe.

Part of my energy goes into checking pastures, watching the herd, and making sure everyone is safe and healthy from the million and one things that are out to get them—their own selves included! It’s late nights, dirty shoes, and being fully present in the physical world. Even without the cows, some weeks are just heavy. It’s a relentless week at the day job, a mountain of chores I've put off for days, or just wanting to show up and be fully present for the people in my life instead of staring at a screen. Real life demands focus, and it drains the exact same battery. During the times that the herd—or just life—demands my presence, my digital life completely stalls out. The blog goes quiet. My social media drafts gather dust. If you looked at my analytics, it would look like a flatline. I used to look at that quiet screen and panic, feeling like I was breaking some invisible promise to the internet.

It’s late nights, dirty shoes, and being fully present in the physical world. And honestly, even without the cows, some weeks are just heavy. It’s a relentless week at the day job, a mountain of chores I've put off for days, or just wanting to show up and be fully present for the people in my life instead of staring at a screen. Real life demands your focus, and it drains the exact same battery. During the times that the herd—or just life—demands my presence, my digital life completely stalls out.

But out in the pasture, you learn to look at seasons differently. The land doesn’t produce crops twelve months a year. A cow doesn’t give birth on demand just because you really need her to calve before you go to town to get groceries since those potato chips truly don't cut it.

There is a season for intense, high-energy output, a season for maintenance, and—crucially—a season where the ground just sits there, completely still, recovering. Winter isn't a failure to grow; it's the only reason spring is even possible.

So why do I expect myself to be any different? Why do I think I can run a full day job, manage a real life, take care of living things, and still produce a flawless stream of "content" without ever taking a season to just lie fallow?

The Ghost Town Season happens because I'm trying to force a harvest in the middle of a drought or a winter. I'm trying to force an environment that simply doesn't have the infrastructure to survive right now. When life out here gets loud and demanding, I have to learn that it is okay to let the digital side get quiet. My ghost town isn't a sign of a dying dream—it's just my creative soil taking a beat to rest, recharge, and wait for the next rain or the next season to bloom.

Planning for the Version of Me that Exists at 6:00 PM

It is so easy for me to be an absolute powerhouse of productivity when I start planning. I'm sitting there with coffee in hand, the playlist doing its thing with hit after hit, and every single task perfectly color-coordinated. Things are assigned left and right. Forgotten crafts are rescued from the dusty, dark void of my closet. I feel like a ruthless corporate manager.

“Tuesday night? Oh, I’ll easily write a 1,000-word blog post, record three TikToks, and finish that stained glass piece I started last month. It’ll be great!”

Planning Me is a delusional optimist. Because Planning Me completely forgets about 6:00 PM Me. In reality, 6:00 PM Me has just clocked out of a full day at work. 6:00 PM Me has commuted, stepped out of the truck, and walked through the door with a brain operating on a strict survival basis. I am physically exhausted and mentally drained. The absolute last thing I have the bandwidth for is "hustling" for the internet.

I look at the massive, ambitious to-do list that Optimistic Me created and realize I don't have the energy to do any of it. So, I then feel a wave of defeat, hide my laptop, and scroll on my phone in a guilt-induced paralysis until bedtime.

"I just need to be more disciplined."

"I just need to have it ALL written out."

"I just need to try harder..."

Spoiler alert: shouting "just do it" at a brain that has been working for eight hours straight doesn't actually generate anything creative. And it certainly won't appease an algorithm that is designed to keep people scrolling past your meticulously curated posts anyway.

So... what am I going to do? Do I, once again, give up on this dream of having a blog? Or do I pivot?

The real breakthrough is going to be when I stop planning my life for a hypothetical superhuman who lives on caffeine and earlier stated potato chips, and start accounting for the actual woman who walks through my house at six o'clock.

When I look at my feed and feel that familiar sting of guilt because the tumbleweeds have taken over, I am going to take a deep, quiet breath and meet myself where I am at—realistically. My flatlined, ghost-town of an algorithm isn't a failure. It’s not a sign that I'm not cut out to be a creator, or that I lack the discipline to make things happen. It’s just a sign that I had to be fully present in my actual, physical life when it needed me the most. I chose to show up for my day job, to take care of the living things counting on me, or to simply protect my own peace of mind after a grueling week. And that is a beautiful, necessary choice.

If I know 6:00 PM Me is going to be tired, I have to lower the bar. I'm not going to ask her to write a flawless, publication-ready essay. Instead, I'm gonna ask her to do the "creative low-power mode" version. Can she sit on the couch with a cozy blanket and just type three bullet-point ideas into the notes app on her phone? Can she just pick out the photos for a draft without writing a single word?

When I start protecting the tired version of myself instead of punishing her for not being a productivity machine, the guilt will start to lift. The ghost town will stop looking like a failure and start to look as it was intend: a soft place to land. A place where something Unfinished is better than nothing ever started. A place where God can come in and offer me some grace, being the quiet anchor right in the middle of the storm that I've planned for myself.

An Ending Thought to Leave You With

I know this one was long but perhaps you need this gentile reminder like I did.

The internet will tell you that if you step away, the world will forget you. But the internet is a machine, and you are not.

Your life doesn't die just because you haven't posted about it. It’s still there, resting quietly in the soil, waiting for water or even just the warmth of a new season. The town isn’t a ghost town—it’s just sleeping.

So, borrow some grace for yourself. Close the laptop. Pour a warm drink, watch the sunset, check on whatever your equivalent of the cows is, and let yourself have some rest.