There’s a certain kind of excitement about watching your baby come to life. Not as in an actual baby, but an idea that has been living in your head for a long time.
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.