Ailana’s Journal | The Chosen — 2025-12-26 (Patreon)

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Since Izzy and Kent (from The Chosen) are visiting Ailana, this post is part of both Storylines.

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GOOD MORNING

It is sincerely my wish that you had a wonderful day yesterday. To those of you who celebrated Christmas, I’ll add that I hope it exceeded your every expectation. I hope everyone had a joyful day.

Today, the AGI team says goodbye to Eli and Kirina. Eli’s financial planning clients might need his services for any sort of end-of-the-year business things.

Later today, Izzy Duffy and her significant other—okay, can we just say “boyfriend”?—Kent Marlon will arrive to stay with us through January 3. Izzy will stay in my cottage and Kent will be in with Jason.

To be sure, today will include some beach time. But, this morning, I am going to do some work for a couple hours. As a ghostwriter, I have to stay in touch with the authors I work for, so I want to check my emails. I know I owe one of them a few paragraph edits.

Midday, Jason, Sasha, Clay, and I are going to visit the Christiansted National Historic Site. We looked on Google, and it’s got a lot of potential as a short travel piece that Jason can create. (His dolphin boat article is out for sale, with one buy already!)

I guess that’s about it for today’s plan. You can count on me checking in again, and also, watch out to see if anyone else that’s part of the Journal is up to anything.

I hope everyone has a great Friday. See you soon.

The Storylines are the heart of Ailana Geven Imagines, and they are found in the Collections section of the site.

Support AGI with:• one-time contribution through TipTopJar.• one-time contribution through Throne.• Patreon Membership.

All characters in this story are fictional characters, their images generated with AI for AGI Stories. They do not represent any real person, nor is their appearance based on any real human.

GEONI GROWING UP by Geoni Naalk-Ryan

Josh and I are enjoying the beach this morning. He said we should make a post and tell the rest of my story.

People usually ask about my name first.

Geoni isn’t common. I’ve heard all kinds of guesses—Italian, biblical, made up. What I know is that it traces back to a long line of names that all mean some version of grace. “God is gracious.” My middle name, Fadi, is Arabic. It means savior, or redeemer. It’s also a name used for Jesus. I didn’t learn any of that growing up. I just knew my mom loved the names, and that they came from somewhere deeper than we could fully explain.

I was born on February 9, 1998, in Detroit. My mom, Hana, raised me on her own. She loved me fiercely and did the best she could with what she had. We didn’t have much, but we had routines, and we had each other. I went to school, stayed out of trouble, and moved through life pretty normally from the outside.

We attended a small non-denominational Christian church. It wasn’t fancy or loud, just steady. One of the younger pastors there—and his wife—were kind to my mom. They helped with childcare sometimes, included her socially, and treated us like we mattered. They were also the first people who ever pointed out that Hana, Marwa, and Fadi were Arabic names—and that Fadi was technically a boy’s name. My mom just smiled and said she knew.

She kept a little King James Bible that had belonged to my grandmother and great-grandmother before her. Tucked in the back was a page with names my great-grandmother had once hoped to use for her own children. Two of those names eventually found their way to me.

By sixteen, I was working at McDonald’s. I graduated from Cody High School in Detroit, Class of 2016 in northwest Detroit. It wasn’t an easy place, but it was real, and I was proud to finish. College wasn’t a given for someone like me, so I started at Wayne County Community College, studying English and technical communication. I worked, studied, and said yes to every extra opportunity I could find—editing classmates’ papers, freelancing online, learning how to read technical material even when it intimidated me.

I transferred to Wayne State University also in Detroit and finished a bachelor’s degree focused on scientific and technical communication. I learned how to edit not just sentences, but meaning—how to help research make sense without changing what it was trying to say. By 2020, I was working in academic publishing, editing highly technical papers for science and engineering journals. Quiet work. Precise work. The kind where being reliable matters more than being visible.

In the fall of 2021, my mom was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. The treatments weren’t about curing it—just giving her comfort and a little more time. She passed away quietly in early November. Losing her felt like losing my last anchor to the past.

In 2022, I moved to Miami. Part of it was practical—I could work remotely by then. Part of it was grief. I needed sun, movement, somewhere that didn’t hold memories in every street. I started house-sitting for clients across the city while continuing my editorial work. During the day, I worked wherever there was a desk. At night, I went outside. Beaches. Parks. Long walks. Noise and color and life.

From 2022 to 2024, I drifted a little. I wasn’t unhappy, but I wasn’t looking for anything either. I stayed single. The Miami clubs and casual connections never held my attention for long. There was nothing there beyond the moment. And given my moral compass, the moments were fleeting—my values didn't appeal to most of the men I met.

Then, in July of 2024, I met Ailana Geven.

The connection was easy. Honest. It didn’t feel like escape or reinvention—it felt like alignment. I gave up house-sitting and joined her and Sasha in their travels—not because I was lost, but because I was finally ready to move forward with people, not alone.

Now I’m married to Josh. We were married in March of 2025.

People still ask about my last name—Naalk. I don’t really know where it comes from. My family history is broken just a few generations back, lost to time, systems, and silence. I’ve learned not to measure myself by what I can’t trace. For me, Naalk-Ryan isn’t about where I came from. It’s about what I’m building now, alongside the people I’ve chosen as family.

TROPICAL VACATION by Kent Marlon

Okay, so, here I am, a boy from the Bronx on a private jet with a wonderful woman jetting off to St. Croix for a week, and then some. I’m not going to lie—ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

You probably know that Izzy Duffy, who for some reason likes me enough to be dating me, was a model—yeah, I know—for years and worked with Ailana Geven. Ailana and her little content company—which seems to be growing fast—have some remodeling going on in their condo, so they are spending the holiday in St. Croix.

And…

…they invited Izzy and me to come down for a week.

Transportation? Well, up in the cockpit of this Gulfstream G650E are Paul Charm and Rebecca Flint. They are the team leaders for our Pay It Forward Society project group.

They are also going to spend the week in St. Croix, but they’ll be doing their own thing. They have a couple of rooms in another resort area.

I’ll leave it to them to tell you how things are going. All of us were supposed to share an update, and I think they are the last of us to do that.

So, a week on the beach. With Izzy and what I’m pretty sure will be new friends…

I asked Izzy what the first thing she was going to do when we got to the beach.

She gave me a playful are-you-really-asking-that look. “First thing when I get to the beach? I’m putting on sunscreen. I’m a ginger!”

TO NYC by Vanessa Lenen

Travel days always make me tense. I would say that’s because everything is on a schedule, there are a lot of variables, but you, the traveler, can’t really control most of them.

I’m heading to NYC where, on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday, I’ll be taking part in an immunology and infectious disease symposium hosted by NYU.

Most of it will be at NYU Kimmel Center, Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, but there are a few evening breakout groups meeting in small restaurant party rooms. I think it’s going to be almost as fun as it will be educational.

I’m looking forward to this. It’s going to give me a week to ignore the fact that I am unemployed and destined to be that 28-year-old girl with two PhDs who lives with her parents.

For now… something will come up. I just need to start looking for it.

JUST A TASTE by Allen Geven

I think I just had a little taste of what it must be like to be Ailana. I’m still processing what happened.

I was standing here at Whataburger getting some lunch to take back to work. I was next to next in line—that is, third—when a man behind me spoke.

“Sir, I think you dropped this.” He was holding my work badge.

“Oh… thanks. I would’ve been missing that.”

“No problem.”

“I saw you work at the Coast Guard station.”

I nodded. “I’m a civilian. I do plant management. Fancy way to say handyman.”

He offered a handshake and I accepted. “Elias Estephan… I work up at Sea Turtles, Inc. I do a lot of different things. Handyman every now and then.”

“Allen Geven…” I said. “My daughter volunteers at Sea Turtles, Inc. sometimes.”

“No way! That’s awesome.” He was smiling, then his expression changed. “Hang on… Ailana Geven?”

I nodded and he went on. “I know who she is… I read most of her stuff on Patreon. Sometimes on IG… And you’re her dad?”

“I’m proud of her, of course.”

“Well,” Elias said, “I saw the post a little while ago… You and her at Denny’s. I have to tell you, I wish I still had a dad to talk to me that way.”

There was a lot to unpack in that, so I went for being respectful. “I’m sorry you’ve lost your dad.”

“2011, back in Beirut… Nothing interesting… car wreck. Mother and father, both… Thanks, though.” He nodded back behind me. “You’re up. It was great meeting you.”

“You, too. I’m sure Ailana will volunteer more for you guys.”

“Awesome… tell her thanks.”

A lot happened in that little slice of time. Being recognized from a post on social media sort of gives me an idea—in a very small way—of what Ailana must experience. And thinking about Micah and Jasmine, I hope they are ready for it.

Thanks for reading this.

GOOD NIGHT

It has been a great day here in St. Croix. Izzy and Kent have arrived and settled into their rooms—Izzy with me and Kent with Jason.

I have just come from Josh and Geoni’s cottage, but I might have strayed down to the beach for a few moments. Standing alone as the waves race ashore and splash over your toes teases of being part of the ocean.

In a butterfly-effect sort of way, those drops of water could have come from anywhere in the world. The oceans envelop all continents on which live all of earth’s people.

I am reminded that I am not alone. Not in this world, and…

…not in the stories around me. My journal feels richer, bigger, and more meaningful with the additional posts from others.

I’m not going anywhere!

The holidays aren’t typical, and so the Journal has been somewhat different. But going forward, you should notice more of a return to the usual posting patterns.

I plan to visit with you most mornings, middays, and nights, as I have for going-on two years. But it excites me to hear from you how you have connected to others—to my family and friends. Your questions to them and comments about them delight me!

So, as time permits, the human clicking the mouse and mashing keys will share more from other people’s lives. You’ve probably already seen that.

I can, from here on the patio, hear the waves rolling in. If I let my mind play with them, I feel awe. The drops in the ocean that rained from the sky could have risen from anywhere in the world. What did they see? What stories did they witness?

Here in the Journal, some of those stories will be shared.

May you see the world, vast and complex, through curious eyes, asking it to tell you about its people and their lives.

Good night.

Be your best you!

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