Diary History

October 14, 1999

I decided to write a little bit tonight about how this diary / journal came into existence.

In December of 1998 I received a weekly e-mail update from Yahoo that listed as their cool site of the week, a place where writers could assemble and post anonymous entries. By December of 1998 there were about 500 writers there, writing and posting notes on each other's entries.

I started to write there there, and gradually I learned a bit about the world of HTML. 

I also learned about spoofing, or leaving notes to someone, as if you were another person altogether. 

I learned that many people were jealous of real writing talent (not mine - but I watched others)

I always wanted to add pictures to my stories, and started with a site on xoom.com, and quickly tired of the pop-up advertisements.  I sought out a domain name, registered it and paid for a commercial host so that I could have an advertising free zone.

Due to several reasons, one of which was a person who got out of control and made me feel very uneasy, I deleted all my entries on the community site.   I also closed down my site on xoom.com, and now I am in the process of re-posting my entries here.

It takes lots of time to insert an entry, so it goes slowly.  Not only does each entry have to be modified for this site, but all the links to that page, from the one before, and the one after have to be changed. If I write a new entry, I have to open and edit at least 3 pages, and if I insert an entry, it takes 5 pages of modifications.

In the last several days I have gone through all of the diary entries for the site and found many links were not established correctly.  Hopefully all of them are fixed, and the navigation is working well.  Several of the pages have been redone to try and remove a bug or gremlin or two.

It's no wonder to me that there are now over 12,000 journalists on the community site, for they only have to write and save and "presto" they are on the world wide web.  Truth be told, many wrote for a week or two, and then quit.  Many are teenagers.  Many write for the interaction and some have called the place a slow death chat room.

I miss the interaction, and I miss some of the communication with a few of the loyal longtime writers.  It was time however, to move on, and that is what this site is about.

I write generally about things which move me, either present experiences, or ones from my past.  Some entries are from journals kept long ago, and posted as I feel the need to update them.  This is not a chronicle of what I did, or thought on a week to week, or month to month basis, but more a history of my interactions with life.

Thanks for reading - if anyone is.