Goodbye Open Diary

Starting in December 2000 until about May 2013 I wrote somewhat regularly at Open Diary, an online blogging site before blogging was cool. I had written a bit before that in a self-coded website (geocities or tripod or both), but the ease of OD -- and the included anonymous audience -- made writing much easier and more satisfying. I stumbled upon the site after looking at bored.com in my dorm room while procrastinating school work. It was quite the happy -- and long-lasting -- find.

After I started this blog, linked to my own name, I backed off writing on OD, except for when I wanted to write something that just wasn't right for this blog -- i.e., could hurt feelings or was too personal to be publicly tied to myself. Not that my OD was untraceable. I'm sure if anyone wanted to they could have figured it out, and there are people from OD who know about this blog too. So the trail is there. But somehow it felt safer, more anonymous.

Now it is closed. The home page doesn't even load anymore. There had been rumblings about it already, so I had downloaded my diary -- not sure if I wrote any more entries after I downloaded, and I can't check now. So that's that. All I'm left with is a massive notepad file. It includes comments, but there's no way to track down anyone I haven't connected with already outside of OD.

They say nothing really ever leaves the Internet though, so I'm sure via the wayback machine or some other archiving process someone could read about my angst over boys in college or complaints about whoever was pissing me off at a given time. I don't know that I'll ever ready my own archive, except maybe I should mine it for material for this blog!

I hadn't thought about OD in a while anyway, so I appreciate my friend who tipped me off to its final demise in a comment here. Thanks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What???

For the Love!


You still have all of the comments I ever offered???

What a treasure trove!!


Oh, and I was completely riveted to the 12-second video of the highway in Texas.

(In honest truth, I had been hoping it would be a longer video of the drive/path/scenery in that area, for I've never been to much of the path I perceive you to have been on)

(been north to south From Memphis to New O. and I have been from Manhattan, KS to Amarillo, and then west, but nowhere else in that area)

Ah well...

Anonymous said...

What???

For the Love!


You still have all of the comments I ever offered???

What a treasure trove!!


Oh, and I was completely riveted to the 12-second video of the highway in Texas.

(In honest truth, I had been hoping it would be a longer video of the drive/path/scenery in that area, for I've never been to much of the path I perceive you to have been on)

(been north to south From Memphis to New O. and I have been from Manhattan, KS to Amarillo, and then west, but nowhere else in that area)

Ah well...

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