Why I built Pause & Breathe
Hey, if you're a human reading this, hello!
I'm in the middle of one of the hardest stretches of my life. Not a pity party, thats just the truth. It sucks.
AND I'm still standing. Still functioning. Still building things. Still knowing who I am and what I value. Both things are true at once, and learning to hold them together is most of the work right now.
One of the things that helped (and continues to help) me hold it together is my breath.
My yoga teacher, Danielle (who is truly an angel sent to me from the Universe) said something to me once. I've been gifted versions of this line by a few incredible teachers over the years, enough that it stopped feeling like a quote and started feeling like a fact:
"Your breath has been there for you, from the moment you were born. And it always is available to you."
When other things feel unreliable, my breath isn't. So I built a small app around that.
I'd always wanted to build an app, or at least try. It was very hard to focus, though the brain fog has cleared, which is nice. I'd been in engineering management for years, hadn't coded in forever, and iOS specifically with all of Apple's rules? No idea what I'm doing besides I know it'll involve Swift, and I know I want the framework to be future looking so when it was hard to focus, it could run on wheels. Turns out, AI is useful for that. (oh and is this the part where, being in tech, I am supposed to claim AI will bring about world peace, save humanity, end hunger and homelessness and turn the world into a utopia? ha, jk. It's a useful tool and I appreciate it for what it is.) Roughly two months ago I decided to stop wanting and try.
The first one I built is called Pause & Breathe.
No streaks. No notifications guilting you back. No upsells trying to upgrade you to "premium serenity." No ads trying to squeeze clicks or attention out of you. No way to even purchase the app (there is a gratitude tip section. The app NEVER nudges you towards it). This app will always remain free. Zero data collection (thats a great upside of focusing on apps you care about that help people, why would I WANT to collect YOUR data? That's your business and I would not enjoy having a bunch of my data harvested for some machine).
Just a small, quiet way to slow down for a minute when the world is too loud.
I built it for me first, maybe selfishly at first. To remember the simple techniques I'd already learned. To add more advanced ones over time.
But I also built it with one hope, and I mean one literally: that it helps at least one other person besides me. I don't know yet if it has. Maybe you'll be the one. Maybe not. Either way, here it is if you'd like to try it: