One year ago today, I released Affirmations into the world.

Words cannot describe the effect that this app has had, and continues to have, on my life. The response has been more than I could have ever expected, as I wasn’t even expecting 30 people to download it, much less 100 times that. Almost every day, I get some form of feedback about how the app has made someone’s day better - be it a text from friends or family, an email, or a tweet. For me, these stories make the project completely worth it, and make me feel like I have made a positive impact on the world.

A lot has changed in this past year for me - I released Affirmations during my last semester of college, which is in itself a weird transitional time. At the end of 2021, after I graduated, I put out an outline on my theme for 2022: the Year of Stability. The point of this theme was to find structure, and ease into life as an adult. In that post, I shared three things I wanted to accomplish:

1. Find a full-time software development job,
2. Get into a regular development schedule, and
3. Reduce the number of uncertainties about my future.

Well, I’m happy to say that I have achieved the first goal. I’ve been working full-time as a software engineer for a few months, and I’m absolutely loving the shift from indie development to a professional workspace. That being said, it has made me shift priorities in regards to my indie apps - in my typical fashion, I tried to do both my new job and my apps and fit both into my day. I quickly learned that it just isn’t feasible to try and squeeze everything into the same 24 hours and keep the same pace I had a while back. I’m just one person with a finite amount of energy, and if I kept trying to do this I would quickly get burnt out.

So over the past few months, I’ve been fighting the part of my brain that holds the impostor syndrome center, and trying to be fine with putting my apps on the backburner. This isn’t to say that I’m completely abandoning my apps (even though it may feel like that sometimes), I’m just taking my time and trying to find out where they fit into my new life. In my mind, my apps and projects have always been hobbies and school or work would always take precedence. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love indie development - I’m super proud of the work I’ve done over the past few years. I do have updates and projects planned, but I’m letting them take more time to come to fruition. And I’m learning to be okay with that. Ultimately, this shift is about taking care of myself, and that’s the most important thing to me. Hell, isn’t that the entire idea that Affirmations is built around?

So I just want to say thank you to everyone who has come along with me for this weird transition in my life, in addition to everyone who has downloaded Affirmations, supported me during its development, and kept using it. You mean more to me than you could ever know. I can’t wait to see what’s next.