- Since you mentioned LiveJournal, its fork, Dreamwidth, is still alive and well. Archival take more steps, but doable.
- Join a WriteFreely instance that is free and has open registration. I joined Paper.wf and Rant.li. WriteFreely is the software that powers Write.as, and Write.as is an instance, but unfortunately paid only now. Archival is very easy. Moving/copying your posts to another instance is very easy.
- Bear Blog. I have never tried this before so I don't know the details, but I've heard good things about it.
- If you're willing to go pretty deep into personal indie small web world, make your own website. The easiest would be to host it in Neocities or Nekoweb, though they can only host static website in free tier, so people like to use SSG (Static Site Generators)...which aren't exactly beginner-friendly. But there are blogging engine people made usable for Neocities that are more beginner-friendly, like Zonelets, Zonelots (Zonelets with tagging), and Tabvoid.
- Since you mentioned LiveJournal, its fork, Dreamwidth, is still alive and well. Archival take more steps, but doable.
- Join a WriteFreely instance that is free and has open registration. I joined Paper.wf and Rant.li. WriteFreely is the software that powers Write.as, and Write.as is an instance, but unfortunately paid only now. Archival is very easy. Moving/copying your posts to another instance is very easy.
- Bear Blog. I have never tried this before so I don't know the details, but I've heard good things about it.
- If you're willing to go pretty deep into personal indie small web world, make your own website. The easiest would be to host it in Neocities or Nekoweb, though they can only host static website in free tier, so people like to use SSG (Static Site Generators)...which aren't exactly beginner-friendly. But there are blogging engine people made usable for Neocities that are more beginner-friendly, like Zonelets, Zonelots (Zonelets with tagging), and Tabvoid.
(Also on: Reddit)