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July 2001 Issue

Putting Your Life On-(the) Line: Keeping an Online Diary

By Janna Rogat

It's been awhile since I've kept a diary. Something like six or seven years. It's not from lack of trying--I always like to have some impressive looking blank notebook in my nightstand. It's just that lately my diary has been busting at the seams, not from the wear and tear that might come as one pours one's heart out onto the pages inside--with the cards and ticket stubs I've collected.

But when my friend Kat directed me to www.diaryland.com, I thought the new format--a web-based journal that catalogs and dates your entries on its own--might be just what I needed to get back to the writer I used to be. If you think about it, the concept of an online journal sort of turns the traditional diary idea on its head: instead of being locked with that little gold key, (and come on, we all know that a twisted paper clip was REALLY all you needed), your innermost thoughts are posted on the web for basically anyone in the world to see…day after day after day…

Nevertheless, I decided to try it. The site itself is easy to use, and although not slick, pleasing to the eye (okay, so it's a little girly). You can set up your own free account, including a profile where you can list your favorite bands, authors, even your favorite other diaries on the site (users have created their own "diaryrings", which you can join if you wish, according to your location, your interests, your hair color, etc). For $3.50/month (it gets cheaper the more months you pay for in advance), you can upgrade to a "Gold Membership," which gets you 5 MB of online space for you to post pictures along with your ramblings or for other fancy doo-dads you want to add to your journal. You can even get a real-time stats tracker to keep a running tab of visitors. Being the simple gal that I am, I stuck with the free account.

As far as the diary itself, the site offers a small selection of templates to change the feel of your journal. They're pretty basic, and not as pretty as the rest of the site. Entering your daily thoughts is a breeze, and the date and time are automatically recorded. A bonus for webheads, you can edit any previous entry with HTML tags. All in all, the site serves its purposes cleanly and easily, and even the greenest web novice should be able to get going.

As for my quest to rediscover the writer within, well, that has proven to be a bit harder. What I found when I started writing is that a diary online isn't really a diary at all. At least not for me. It's more like a daily log of my life. Being the yenta that I am, it shouldn't be so hard for me to share my deep thoughts with anyone and everyone. Yet, as I write my entries, I find myself holding back. I might start out with a story about what's annoying me at work, or how a friend of mine pissed me off, and before I even finish the first word of the sentence, I reach for the backspace key, thinking, "Oh my God, what if they see this??? Especially after I write about this site for GenJ!!"

But, according to my friend Mark, that's the whole spark behind diaryland--it's a reading space online for the voyeur in all of us to peruse. After sneaking a peek at Kat's most recent entry, he admitted to me, "it's just fun to read something you're not supposed to." (FYI--Mark's diary can be found at markdmb.diaryland.com.)

In my opinion, though, diaryland's tools are probably best used by those who are away from their close friends and family--students abroad, newly separated college sorority sisters, or prisoners (do they all keep diaries, or just the crazy ones?). Merely by updating their own personal journals, they can give anyone and everyone a click-away chance to know all the intimate details of their two-hour wait in line at the Tower of London or the DMV. Take a look at my diary and read just one entry about my boring day at work--you'll see what I mean.

But then again, Mark does have a good point. The most intriguing thing about diaryland is reading other people's diaries. Some of them are really interesting. Others plain scare me. But, between you and me, I probably read my friend Kat's most often of all. Not that there are any secrets in there, but it's always good for a recap in case I drift off during our daily phone calls.

Janna Rogat lives in Columbus, Ohio, and works in the Jewish community there. You can read her diary at janna511.diaryland.com, although she secretly hopes you don't.

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