The Nostalgia of Diaryland and Personal Documentation

A friend and I were recently chatting about Diaryland and our nostalgia for the Internet of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s — a time when a crazy, new technology landed in our laps, allowing us to connect in a very different way. It was a place to hone our writing chops, express ourselves to the world, build a really intimate community of tight-knit, faceless strangers who knew more about us than even our families, lifelong friends. We were looking for substance, and Diaryland, at the time, was a soulmate goldmine of like-minded nerds with like-minded tastes. Wowee zowee!

Out of curiosity and holiday nostalgia, I checked in to my old accounts. Little did I know, both of my diaries were not locked and still out there for the public to see. GASP. I quickly password-protected the angsty one, but the less damning one — though no less cringeworthy — is my travel diary. Despite my rambling words and inability to edit, these entries document a key period of my life that framed my perspective today. It also detailed a carefree aimlessness, a life of taking on random temporary jobs to support travel, going to work hungover, and immaturely leaving bathrooms full of barf for my roommates to clean up. (Ahem, thanks, Mark Fletcher.)

I guess we all have to grow up sometime. And though I realize the Diaryland days are long gone, and despite the commonplace rise of the instant update, there are still people writing substantial notes for the sake of the challenge; the recent longform-reads trend confirms that. I still believe diary-writing is one of the most powerful forms of documentation, a snapshot of our brain at its most open and best, a touching historical memento we can offer to our older, nostalgic selves (the more cringeworthy, the better). When done well, it records our purest thoughts in a way that images and videos will never, ever be able to do.

So fuck those 140-character projectiles. I want to truly remember what I was thinking in these mid-’10s. Professional, personal, password-protected, or old-school lock-and-key, I’m gonna write a lot more this coming year, and I’m hoping everyone else does, too.