hey! i found this post while scrolling through the "latest things" page, and i'm really glad i did, because it really resonates with me. i don't have the history with LJ and journal sites in general that you mention having, but i'm also a journaller (been journalling in various notebooks, on-and-off, for almost 10 years now) and i've been having a lot of the same thoughts and concerns about handwritten journals vs chronicling my life in different bits and scraps across texts and discord DMs, so it feels really reassuring in an unexpected way to know someone else feels the same way! i appreciated you mentioning heavily filtered / private posts on dreamwidth, because it got me thinking about ways i could use them for my own purposes that i haven't considered before. so thank you for posting this, because it gave me a lot of food for thought! i took the liberty of subscribing, too (⌒‿⌒) i hope you have a good day!