I've seen the blog of deceased friend vanish forever because his parents didn't understand that you had to renew it

This is painful. I'm sorry.

growing issues of Internet privacy kind of makes me want to keep my private thoughts offline

I was always concerned about this, even when online journaling and such was for nerds and early adopters (I suppose I've been around the Internet block too). Anything that I wanted to keep truly private, I never wrote online.

I keep meaning to go back to my paper journal.