I know that feeling

Now that I have named the blog "Just about there...", let's talk about it.

I get this feeling a lot of times. Of late, there's been a consistent source of this feeling, which pings me precisely three times a week - around 7:40ish in the evenings on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Well, coincidentally that also matches my running schedule that I've been following for about three months now (all thanks to Rach who is more persistent than my laziness which is at its peek when it's time to run).

Over the course of these three months, I've grown from a 'can't-run-more-than-5-mins-at-a-stretch' personality to a 'can-manage-around-35-mins-without-a-break' being (not bad, eh!). Correspondingly, my at-a-stretch running distance has also improved. I started with 0.4 mile (yeah miles, now that I am a resident American ;)) and can now do around 3.2 miles (which is around 5 Km). This has been a great achievement and it feels really good when I look back. However, the reason I am talking about here is a consistent feeling that I get towards the end of each run, the feeling of being just-about-there. It's really surprising how the human brain works! No matter how long I run, what distance I run, in the last stretch, I always find telling myself that the finish line is just about there.

[I've heard a lot of runners say that after a point, it's just a mental game, it's just a matter of what target you set for your mind. And yeah, it does resonate a lot with that idea. I think it also goes along well with all the great ideas about the unlimited potential the human mind has and why it's so much important to aim high and big.]

Just-about-there is a consolation that it's about to end. At the same time, it's a sign of an achievement that's about to come. Either way, it's a welcome feeling!

What's in the Name?

"Just about there..." - There's not a long history behind that name.

It's been a long time since I've wanted to start writing a blog but could not/did not, mostly because of inertia (honest confession!). When I finally got myself close enough to hit the 'Start a New Blog' button on Blogger, I felt the nice feeling of being 'just about there'. But then, like most other times when you seem closer to the milestone than it actually is, this one was not as easy as hitting 'Start a New Blog' and simply starting to pour in your thoughts you had accumulated for weeks (months?) for your first blog post.

The first thing that you are encountered with is the seemingly trivial task of choosing a name for your blog to be include in the URL. I started with the obvious ones: 'MyDashboard', 'LifeStories', 'A-Wanderer's-Tales', ... But soon got the strange feeling of how late I am. Tried this process of baptizing my blog for around 10 days. Every evening, I would secretly (while my wife is busy cooking - she still doesn't know that I finally have a blog) scribble meaningful names I could think of in my notebook, and try them out the next day I am in office. But in vain! Over the coarse of these 10 days, the quality of names degraded, along with the thought-process that went into selecting those names. From the simple, meaningful and rather positive ones that I started with, I first drifted towards somewhat meaningless ones, the likes of 'Dash-bored' (because I was damn bored by this time), 'TickTock' (because there was a clock right next to my bedside when I thought of this one) and 'PaintBall' (because I had gone for Paintball the day before). Then finally I leaned towards the more frustrated-sounding ones, like 'Nameless-Shameless', 'What-the-heck', 'and even the title of this post 'Whats-in-the-Name'. At each of those attempts, along with the obvious feelings of frustration, disappointment and helplessness, there was also the comforting feeling that someone somewhere has done this before me :) (which explains how all these names were taken).

"Just-about-there" came as a random attempt, just when I was about to give up (well, for Day-10).