I was one of the people in the world who kept a diary long before the advent of the internet and web 2.
0 technologies.
By a diary, I mean a notebook or a real diary notepad, where I penned down my thoughts, my life on every day of the year.
I kept diaries since I was young, as early as 10 years of age; however there were breaks in between when I could not keep up the routine, discipline, rigour and commitment of keeping a diary.
My dozens of notes (which I fastened together as diaries) helped make me sane during National Service.
However, with time, all these diaries or 'makeshift' diaries have long gone with the wind as I decided not to immerse myself in the past but to move forward and make the most of future! With the advent of blogs, I find the passion of writing diaries online being rekindled.
There started my first foray of online diaries in the form of blogs during my university days.
At that times, blogs were used as online diaries and I kept blogging my thoughts on this new found medium of diaries till one fine day, being free, I did an experiment and was shocked to find that my blog footprints could be bared naked to the internet world at large by simply keying a few of my friends' names.
From then on, for a few years, I stopped blogging and deleted my online diary blog.
It is not that I have written something horrible about my friends.
It is just that I am a private person and prefer to keep my life to myself.
These days, blogs have morphed into something bigger than just mere online diaries.
They have now a commercial slant or are for posting of targeted content towards certain niches.
Many have found fame and a money motherlode with these blogs.
I think blogs can never substitute the old diaries due to the simple fact, nobody really want their lives to be exposed.
They can keep a blog which contains more subtle, less vivid details of what they actually want to write as compared to a real diary!