I just released my channel trailer for my new YouTube channel, and I need to explain where the name came from.

I am a one-trick pony; I am just a programmer and nothing more. This has always bothered me, and I have spent a long time trying to find some way to become more than just a programmer.

On top of that, because I am just a programmer, my more adventurous wife finds herself becoming bored with the very things I like: routine. I have wanted to make her life more interesting.

To both of those ends, I have been trying to find a good idea for a YouTube channel for nearly two years that might solve both problems. It was only in January that I found one: expanding my comfort zone by making myself uncomfortable.

This was a good idea for two reasons:

1. Apparently, when I am uncomfortable, I am entertaining.
2. The very things that make me uncomfortable are the things my wife loves.

Now, in the several months between January and now, I have filmed several episodes for the Enverge channel, but introducing a video by saying, “It’s time to make myself uncomfortable!” was a mouthful. It also wasn’t catchy.

So I asked my wife, Courtney, to help me come up with a name. She was the one who suggested basing it off of the word “verge,” and after a lot of thinking, I came up with “enverge.”

The connotation is about putting yourself on the “verge” of something; for me, it is quite literal because I hate heights, and putting myself on a real verge is terrifying. And that’s why I liked it.

So what does it mean exactly? Well, it actually has two definitions, both related:

1. To make oneself uncomfortable.
2. To step outside of one’s comfort zone, in order to grow.

The extra cool thing about this word was that it gave us another one for free: “averge.” It intentionally sounds like “averse,” but it is the opposite of “enverge.” It means:

1. To make oneself comfortable.
2. To get oneself back into one’s comfort zone.

So that is the story behind the word. Perhaps, in the future, my wife will be less bored.