I was thinking about diaryland.com this morning. I started my first diaryland account in Denver in 2000 when I was having trouble dealing with the death of a very close friend and starting an online diary was suggested to me by another very close friend who also had one.
About 6 months in to D’land someone e-mailed me that they had stumbled onto my online diary and that it reminded them a lot of another girl’s diary from Chicago and that I should check her’s out as well. I did and we quickly became friends. After a few years of being friends online she flew to Denver to hang out with me in person for a weekend and we decided the world needed us to join forces in the same city and fight for all things awesome together. Eight years after meeting on Diaryland, Sarah and I both live in Brooklyn. She’s one of my best friends in the world and we hang out constantly.
Then last summer while I was on tour a stranger walked up to me at a bar and asked if I was (redacted) from Diaryland and Livejournal. She recognized me from photos I had posted in one of my online diaries from years ago and said she felt like she knew me. I had used my diaryland and livejournal accounts for years telling tales of heartbreak, addiction, suicide, loss, love, gossip, and everything in between and I realized that it’s quite likely that this complete stranger knew more about me than my own mother.
And I’m fine with that.
Isn’t it strange how the internet makes the world so much smaller and intertwines us all?
