Hi, I’m Olive. Welcome to Olee Branch.
I’ve been here before; you may have been here before, too. Life lifed a few years back; matter of fact, it’s still life-ing if I am being honest. But it lifed so hard a few years ago that renewing this domain slipped through, and Olee Branch ended up in the hands of a Chinese Betting site for 5 whole years! Can you imagine that! I only managed to get it back a couple of weeks ago, and I took it as a sign that things are finally looking up…
So much has happened since my last blog; I’d been working at Radio One FM90, where I learned about a “brand’s voice,” the “sound,” and the subtle things that set a brand apart from the rest of the pack. I was doing this while sharing my travel adventures on my blog or on The Culture Trip, writing features for the Daily Monitor. I loved writing for both. One of my favorite memories from my Culture Trip days is meeting someone who actually visited Kampala all the way from the US of A because I’d convinced them, through my writing, that Uganda was an ultimate travel destination!
Then I made the leap into tech through Refactory Academy, and the learning curve was so steep that I hit a massive writer’s block. I couldn’t write, not a word, for the longest time. These days I lead software implementation projects, which, oddly enough, isn’t as far from storytelling as it sounds. Both are about listening carefully, untangling what people actually need, and building something that works.
While I’ve been eager to get back into good ole blogging, it’s been kinda scary. I mean, who’s going to read this? What with so many scrollable things we have lately? Having slept on it several nights, I stumbled on a Threads post that said “Bring back blogging…” so here I am. 😌
What you’ll find here
- Travel: places I’ve been, things I’ve learned the hard way, and the small details guidebooks leave out
- Cooking: recipes I return to, and the ones I’m still perfecting
- Knitting & crochet: projects, patterns, and the occasional unraveling (literal and otherwise)
- Life, in between: reflections, personal anecdotes, and whatever else feels worth writing down