Well, that’s where I am with Mentalling (the wellness app) right now.

It’s taken a while to get to this point: coming up with the concept and figuring out how I wanted it to look and feel. And now, I’m at the point where I’m actually putting the blocks together.

And you know what? It’s exhilarating.

But then, there are those moments where it’s not so exhilarating.

The ones where a certain plan on paper doesn’t translate so well, or where I miss a pivotal step and think: now what?

It’s hard to put into words how working on Mentalling has been: the emotional swings are unreal.

One moment I’m riding high on a specific assignment, convinced I’m onto something great. The next, I’m drowning in self-doubt.

And what follows is me overthinking the whole thing. I’ve spent so much time ruminating over a decision that looks simple from the outside.

“Is this element supposed to look like this?”

“What if it ruins the whole project?”

“What if I tweak it this way or that way?”

I can go on and on stressing over one little thing, and only notice afterwards how much it’s affected me emotionally.

I go through a whole spectrum of emotions: the second-guessing, the confusion, the panic, the insecurity, the fear of messing things up.

In these situations, I don’t always catch myself before I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.

And then even the smallest task starts to feel impossible.

That’s how life goes though, right? We don’t notice little emotional warning signs.

Fittingly, that’s exactly what Mentalling is trying to address: what if we caught these little things while they’re happening?

And you know what’s funny? Going through the emotions while working on the app is giving me a real-time testing ground for everything Mentalling is about.

It’s a process. I’m still figuring out how to regulate my emotions. Bad days are gonna be there. But that won’t mean I stop what I’m doing.

What it means is I’ll learn to notice the signs a little sooner.

And that’s the essence of Mentalling.

I recently had one of those days when something unsettling happened, an event that left me feeling unsteady inside.

The night before, I had gone to bed feeling fine. Not great, but just fine, which didn’t explain why I woke up feeling untethered, disoriented.

I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. My body, though a little tight, was willing to. My mind, on the flip side, insisted on just lying still.

So, instead of checking my emails and enjoying my first cup of coffee like most mornings, I figured a splash of water on my face would jolt me back to my good ol’ self. And so, to the bathroom I went.

What a futile effort that was.

Because after I was done, I still felt I was being detached from my body and my surroundings, even more so. On one hand, it felt like I was floating, and on the other, it made me feel numb emotionally.

Even now, I’m still having a hard time describing it because, man, what was that?

Come to think of it, this wasn’t the first time I’d felt that way. It went back a couple of months (maybe even more). Though the last episode was very pronounced, those previous ones hadn’t screamed trouble.

They had been subtle. But in hindsight, those signals had slowly grown. Yet, I had continued to dismiss them as:

“I probably drank too much coffee late in the day that’s why I couldn’t sleep.”

“The week’s been a lot.”

“I forgot to take my protein powder two days in a row, that’s why I’m feeling a little tired.”

This had nothing to do with too much coffee or a crazy week or lack of protein powder intake; however, it had everything to do with my unchecked feelings.

And so, after plenty of warnings, Mr. Emotional Taxman eventually came to collect.

I wasn’t in crisis or anything like that. But I wasn’t myself either. My body and my mind were not connecting. Had I listened to the earlier signals, I would probably have prevented that event.

Maybe I needed to slow down, I don’t know. It also could have been some emotional pain I’d been ignoring, or maybe some stress I hadn’t dealt with. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, blah blah blah.

This unpleasant event got me thinking. Maybe, just maybe, we should pay more attention to our bodies, the way we do our devices.

Just like we charge our phones before their batteries die, we should watch out for the warning signs, so we can recharge before our sense of calm and safety is disrupted.

Not saying we should give every little signal attention, but you know what I mean.