What's in a Name?

It's getting out of hand, people stopping me on the street, in the supermarket, at the mall, basically everywhere. They all have one question on the tip of their tongue. "Dan, where did you come up with name Return to Zero for your award-winning blog?" Man, if I had a nickel for every time that I fielded that question I'd have exactly zero cents. O.K., so nobody has actually asked me this question, but I can sense that you all want, nay pine, to know. The title came to me when I was moving back to Virginia a few years ago to restart my life. I kind of felt that everything that I had accumulated in my life to that point had been completely taken away from me, and I had to go all the way back to the beginning, hence "Return to Zero". The entire chalkboard of my life had been completely erased. My blog name also is based on a band headed by ex-Boston members Brad Delp and Barry Goudreau. A fitting name they chose after such promise was shown and such high expectations were built after Boston's first two albums, after which that band kind of fell apart. Return to Zero is not necessarily a name chosen based on positive feelings and hope for the future. It is really a name of lament and despair in some sense. All that I have known and counted on and believed in is gone, and here I am with nothing, starting all over again, at a time in my life when things should be much further along. Return to Zero certainly marked a turning point in my life, but, of course, which way I go, where I end up, and whether I find some inner peace again is still a complete unknown.