MEET ALISHA
Writer, Photographer, Dreamer.
The Girl Who Wanted To Be a Writer at Nine Years Old, but Took the Scenic Route Getting There.
Thirty years. A graphic design degree. Twenty years of brand identity work. A whole lot of living. It all lead me back to the beginning.
I love to read stories about real people living real lives.
Bonus if it’s got a bit of romance in it.Writing about real people became my passion project that turned into my entire next chapter.
I'm a formally trained graphic designer — class of 2005, before the digital design explosion. I spent twenty years building visual languages for other people's ideas and sitting front row to businesses finding their footing. I was good at it. I was also slowly disappearing inside someone else's story.
This — the Chronicle, the writing, all of it — is mine story of saying YES to something before it made any rational sense.
FEATURED STORY
Personal Bio—The Long Version
If you remember Samantha — the woman who traveled on the Travel Channel in the 90s — the nine year old version of me thought that Sam had the greatest job I'd ever seen.
Paid to travel and tell stories. Sign me up. Then the blogging renaissance came. I wanted in on that too. Didn't think I had anything to offer. Too many voices. What would mine add? I ignored it and continued staying in my lane, graphic arts.
I'm an avid reader. Not the kind who stays in one lane — dark fantasy (Rhysand, forever), literary fiction, multiple Auschwitz memoirs, business books, psychological thrillers, detective stories, highland romance, lots of sci-fi. Reading has been my passion hobby for as far back as I can remember.
When inspired I’d write stories of my own. I've written countless journals, letters, half-finished stories. The writing was always there. I just never gave it permission to evolve.
And then one day, I outgrew the traditional novel. What I want now — what I'm genuinely hungry for — is the slow life of magazine articles about real people living real lives. No stardom, no fanfare. The simple extraordinary of everyday. That's what lead me to Substack and starting my own publication. But I had so many other adventures to write. Ones that didn’t have a home on Substack because I wanted to keep the authenticity of what I was building there.
This whole thing started after a few hours in prayer over not knowing how to move forward. I felt trapped. Stuck. Wanting to reconnect with my creative side but done with done-for-you work. I finally stopped treating the writing like a problem to solve and started treating it like the answer I was overlooking.
I've lived many life adventures and wanted to share them since I was about nine years old. It just took another thirty years of living to have what I needed to dive in and let it be my entire next chapter.
on the blog
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ON THE BLOG
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on the blog • ON THE BLOG •
The stories that don’t have a traditional home. This is a NO NICHE zone.
What I Believe
A few things I refuse to budge on.Belief 1: Community is everything. Celebrities and business experts are great — they show us what's possible. But the everyday person sitting across from you at the coffee shop, living her life, figuring it out in real time? She's the one who actually moves you. Because she's you. And you're her. That's where the real learning happens — in fellowship with each other, not from a stage.
Belief 2: Real life is far more interesting and inspiring than fiction will ever be. The best lessons come from the people who lived it — not the ones who studied it.
Belief 3: You're allowed to outgrow your current chapter and write the next one wildly different. Be vivacious. Be audacious. Delight in the journey. It's only finished when you decide to stop moving.
The Blog is free. Always.
New stories land directly in your inbox when you subscribe — no spam, just the writing. And if you want the deeper narrative work, the long-form profiles and origin stories, that lives on Substack.