For the past 17 years, I’ve been chasing a dream.

Not a startup IPO. Not a billion-dollar exit. Just one thing: to launch my own app in the App Store.

Seventeen years. That’s older than some developers now shipping their own indie apps. In that time, I’ve started and stopped more projects than I can count. I’ve sketched wireframes in coffee shops, coded into the night after work, tried learning new languages, jumped between frameworks, abandoned ideas halfway through, gotten distracted by other responsibilities–and sometimes, I’ve just run out of steam.

There were dozens of beginnings that went nowhere. Notes in old notebooks. Xcode projects lost to time. GitHub repos full of good intentions and TODO comments. Each time, I told myself “maybe next time” or “this just isn’t the right idea.” And each time I watched others launch, I quietly wondered if I’d ever get there myself.

The truth is, it never stopped mattering to me. Even when life got busy–kids, jobs, burnout–I still carried this tiny ember of hope that someday I’d ship something of my own. Not for money. Not for fame. Just to prove to myself I could finish. That I could take an idea all the way from a blank screen to someone tapping “Get” on their iPhone.

And now… I finally have.

This week, after nearly two decades of trying, I submitted my app to the App Store. And it was accepted.

I keep opening the App Store just to see it there. My app. With a name, an icon, a real page. It still doesn’t feel real. I’ve cried. I’ve smiled. I’ve just sat in silence, overwhelmed.

I know there are people who crank out apps every few months. I admire them. But for me, this moment is sacred. It’s not just about this app–it’s about every failure that came before. Every lesson I had to learn. Every time I kept going, even when it felt like I never would get here.

To anyone reading this who’s still trying, still failing, still dreaming: don’t give up. Your timeline doesn’t have to match anyone else’s. Your path might wind and stall and break and restart. But if it matters to you, keep going.

Because one day, your app might just show up in the App Store. And I promise–it will feel like everything.

For the past 17 years, I’ve been chasing a dream.

Not a startup IPO. Not a billion-dollar exit. Just one thing: to launch my own app in the App Store.

Seventeen years. That’s older than some developers now shipping their own indie apps. In that time, I’ve started and stopped more projects than I can count. I’ve sketched wireframes in coffee shops, coded into the night after work, tried learning new languages, jumped between frameworks, abandoned ideas halfway through, gotten distracted by other responsibilities–and sometimes, I’ve just run out of steam.

There were dozens of beginnings that went nowhere. Notes in old notebooks. Xcode projects lost to time. GitHub repos full of good intentions and TODO comments. Each time, I told myself “maybe next time” or “this just isn’t the right idea.” And each time I watched others launch, I quietly wondered if I’d ever get there myself.

The truth is, it never stopped mattering to me. Even when life got busy–kids, jobs, burnout–I still carried this tiny ember of hope that someday I’d ship something of my own. Not for money. Not for fame. Just to prove to myself I could finish. That I could take an idea all the way from a blank screen to someone tapping “Get” on their iPhone.

And now… I finally have.

This week, after nearly two decades of trying, I submitted my app to the App Store. And it was accepted.

I keep opening the App Store just to see it there. My app. With a name, an icon, a real page. It still doesn’t feel real. I’ve cried. I’ve smiled. I’ve just sat in silence, overwhelmed.

I know there are people who crank out apps every few months. I admire them. But for me, this moment is sacred. It’s not just about this app–it’s about every failure that came before. Every lesson I had to learn. Every time I kept going, even when it felt like I never would get here.

To anyone reading this who’s still trying, still failing, still dreaming: don’t give up. Your timeline doesn’t have to match anyone else’s. Your path might wind and stall and break and restart. But if it matters to you, keep going.

Because one day, your app might just show up in the App Store. And I promise–it will feel like everything.

There’s a special kind of purgatory that comes from submitting your app to the App Store. It’s the modern-day equivalent of sending your kid off to their first day of school–you’ve dressed it up, fed it well, double-checked its backpack for bugs, and now… you wait. And wait. And refresh App Store Connect like it owes you money.

I submitted JournalPlus (my lovingly crafted, slightly obsessive ode to daily themes and intentional living) to Apple for review. And now I am absolutely not pacing back and forth refreshing my email every 3 minutes like a sane person.

This is the part no one tells you about in the indie dev stories. They tell you about the design, the code, the user onboarding flows–but not about the emotional death spiral that is “Waiting for Review.”

Meanwhile, my brain has chosen to cope in the only way it knows how: frantically making a list of all the things I’m going to fix once it’s approved. You know, because it’s totally rational to make a post-launch roadmap before you’ve even launched.

So far the list includes:

• Better onboarding animations (because what if the confetti isn’t whimsical enough?)
• A celebratory “YOU DID IT” llama when you complete a daily action
• A long overdue dark mode easter egg (👀)
• Tweaking that one shadow that’s 2% off and haunts me
• Thinking about Android. Again. Briefly. And then closing the tab.
• Writing another blog post to distract myself from refreshing the status again.

Anyway, this post is mostly a stall tactic, but also a little time capsule of this oddly magical/frustrating moment. If you’ve been here, you know. And if you haven’t–just wait.

Literally. Just wait.

– Jesse 👨‍💻⏳📱

Probably refreshing App Store Connect right now