It's astonishing to think how much the internet has changed since then. I wrote in html (learned all the tags I needed by heart and logged on to look up anything I couldn't remember) and uploaded it via....I can't even remember. Online communication was ICQ and MSN Messenger for anybody not cool enough to use ICQ. The idea of holding it all in the palm of my hand; of not needing to scan in developed photographs to get graphics; of emojis instead of small pictures of Mr Men; of a blog editor that just required text instead of tags; of embedded videos and social media....they would all have blown my 1999 mind.
So would the idea that I would still be keeping this blog, 20 years later, and probably most of my life now. I didn't imagine I wouldn't live in London. I imagined teaching, but not as my first choice. I imagined Mr Z, but in the hazy way you think about someone you like but assume you will never be in a relationship with. I think I still imagined children in 1999 but not for very much longer.
Luckily for all concerned, the first 8 years of Diario no longer exist online (hopefully) - even now I don't really consider that I'm writing for anybody else to read, but it was much worse in 1999 when there was almost nobody reading anything and I was therefore candid to an excruciating degree.
However, here is the very first post. It was the Blair Witch Project that drove me to begin, because it was so dreadful. The biggest fright anybody got was when I put my hand up through the bottom of the popcorn box and grabbed Jen's hand when she went in for a snack. I cared less about swearing (sorry) and wasted a lot of time on boys. A very typical undergrad, I suppose.
Happy birthday to my blog. I hope we're still here in 20 years' time.
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