Because of the wonder that is the internet, I have had multiple Jennifer Grahams enter my life. The first, of course, was Jennifer Phillips Graham — whose story I told here — but I’ve also had the privilege of getting to know Dr. Jennifer Graham the veterinarian and sometimes I get email meant for Jennifer Graham the potter.

We are legion, we Jennifer Grahams.

Earlier this year, Jennifer Graham the life coach reached out to me with a question. She wanted to buy my domain name. She pointed out, reasonably, that I was barely even using it, because JenniferGraham.com redirects to JenniferGrahamToday for reasons I can’t fully explain. (The short version is that my former editor at The Boston Globe suggested my Twitter handle, which is @GrahamToday, even though honesty would have demanded @GrahamOccasionally.)

At any rate, I like money, or at least I admire it from afar. And at the time, I was a little bit cold and the cost of heating oil was high, so I threw out a number and immediately felt ashamed.

What is the cost of a name? An online identity? More than a cost in dollars, what is its value?

It’s not nearly as much as it used to be.

When I told my daughter about the exchange, she laughed riotously. No one would pay that, she said. And she may have a point. Elon Musk doesn’t have a website in his name. Neither does Jeff Bezos. Nor do they need one.

But when I registered Jennifergraham.com in June of the year 2000, it was trendy to have a website bearing your name, and practically mandatory if you were a writer. New parents were even buying domain names for their babies. As recently as five years ago, parents were choosing baby names based on the availability of domain names. Now, it doesn’t seem to matter as much, although domain names are still ridiculously expensive — I notice that fatrunner.com, the domain name I tried to obtain for my book a decade ago, is currently offered for $2,395. I laughed at that, just like my daughter did at my price.

At any rate, the small existential crisis caused by Jennifer Graham the life coach quickly passed. She never responded to my apparently ridiculous offer, and even if she had, I probably would have pulled back at the moment of sale. It just felt kind of icky, the idea of selling my name, even if it is just a bit of code, cyber-hubris.

Still, I spent a few months wondering if I should just shut down this site, since I post so rarely. All the trendy people are on Substack these days, and I never could figure out what this blog was supposed to be about. Animals? Running? Parenting? Books? Writing? My inability to narrow in on a subject paralyzed me, as did constantly worrying about how a post would land with a readership that was so diverse. It’s not so much that I don’t want to offend or anger people; that is an occupational hazard that I’m used to as a journalist. It’s that I don’t want to bore them. And that is an occupational hazard of blogging: wrestling with the worry of people thinking “You again?” when they get a notification of a new post.

That said, one of my favorite writers, Jon Katz, posts several times a day on his Bedlam Farm blog. He is most known for his books on animals, but has built a wonderful community on his blog, where he writes about animals but also about health, love, friendship, getting older and doing the most good we can with the resources we have. He has also shown himself to be a first-rate photographer. While I don’t always agree with his positions, Katz is something of a role model for me, professionally and also in his approach to life generally. Instead of complaining about the changes in publishing, he evolved, and seems the epitome of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admonition to “Be useful.” (Great title, but disappointingly mediocre book, by the way.)

I just finished reading the hilarious novel “Mr. Texas” by Lawrence Wright. In an interview with Texas Monthly, Wright, who is 76, explained why he is so prolific: “I am trying to squeeze everything from the tube before the lights go out.”

Increasingly, I have that sense of urgency, too, and lately, a newfound sense of responsibility to this domain name. If I’m going to squat on it, I should probably use it more than twice a year. Also, there are a few new subscribers, thanks to the Modern Love essay, so it seems rude to leave the chat just as new friends arrived.

So I ask your forbearance as I try to figure out what this space is, and who it is for, and what I should be writing about, and how often. Suggestions welcome.

With gratitude, Jennifer Graham the writer