Essayism.org
I spent months, if not years, thinking about publication architecture, essayism, essaying, inquiry, disposition, and the relations between them.
When I went to look for a domain name the market's contribution was:
Essayism.org: $7 Essaying.org: $4300 Essaying.lol: $1.50
Which immediately raises a question: What exactly is being valued here? A merchant says traffic. A marketer says keywords. A domain investor says scarcity.
An essayist notices that none of these is the same thing as meaning.
In a strange way, that's a Montaignian moment. An apparently trivial fact becomes a point of entry into a larger inquiry. And if I'm being honest, I'd rather own essayism.org than essaying.org even if they were the same price.
“Essaying” describes an activity. “Essayism” describes a territory.
The former tells people what you are doing. The latter invites them to ask what the thing is. That's much more interesting.
And, after all, every good essay begins with someone noticing that the thing everybody values is not necessarily the thing that matters.
My seven-dollar domain registration of essayism.org may be a case in point. 😊
David Marshall
Skerries