If you've ever purchased (rented) a domain, you know that pretty much any name you'd want is usually already taken. Which is why when you find one that you like, whether or not you have any use for it yet, you tend to want to hold on to it. Unfortunately, while domains are pretty cheap, the more domains you have the more expensive having them gets. Which is why sometimes, you're forced to just let them expire. Now I'm nothing close to a domain squatter, but at one point in time I had built up a small cache of domains to deploy at my will. Some of them were for failed projects, some for possible future projects, and some I just thought were clever and hoped I'd one day have a use for. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of 'conveniently' consolidating all their renewal dates at the suggestion of the company I buy them from. As it turns out, this is one of the least convenient things I could have done. If you pay for all your domains at once, it can be very expensive.
Unfortunately, last year around this time, I couldn't' really afford the cost of renewing all of them. So, I let about half of my domains expire. Admittedly, most of the ones I let go were for old school projects or online personas that I no longer operate under, so it wasn't completely disastrous. Sill, it was hard to see them go. In the end, I just held on to my favorites (and of course the ones that were actually in use).
This year, however, when it came time to let some more domains expire it was a little more of a sacrifice. I had already dumped everything I could live without, so there was nothing left to abandon without really having to feel it. Long story short, I decided to bite the bullet and I purged every domain I had except the three that are currently in use and two variations of my name. My guess is that most of the people who are going to read this post aren't going to be able to sympathize with the loss, but trust me it's sad times. And to add insult to injury, the domain registrar feels the need to send me an email every day reminding me of all the domains I've let expire.
posted by Christopher Schnese