Big News!

About two years ago, I decided to start building something that I honestly figured would never leave my own head. I had this idea for a task and project management app. I wanted something that didn’t require a monthly subscription. I wanted the tools I kept wishing other apps had. And, more than anything, I wanted it to care about more than just getting things done. I wanted it to pay attention to emotional health, overwhelm, follow-through, and the very human side of trying to manage work, life, ideas, and all the things we keep telling ourselves we’ll get to “after this week calms down.”

About a year ago, I finally decided to stop letting it live only in my brain. I took my very old-school coding knowledge, which was just enough to be dangerous, and started learning Swift because, at this point, I am fully and unapologetically living in the Apple ecosystem. There was a lot of trial and error. A lot. There were plenty of moments where I had no idea what I was doing, followed by just enough moments where something actually worked to keep me going. I also got a lot of help along the way. From people, from tools, from documentation, from late-night troubleshooting, from stubbornness, and from whatever weird part of my brain refuses to let go of an idea once it has decided the idea matters.

And today, just after noon Eastern time, my Apple Developer account finished converting to an organizational account for Olympus Life LLC. A little while later, I hit Submit for Review on both the iOS and Mac versions of Athena Life Manager.

So now I wait.

I am fully prepared for Apple to send it back with a polite-but-firm “fix this, this, and also this other thing you didn’t know was a thing.” I’m sure there will be some back and forth before Athena officially goes live. But the goal is next Friday. If approval comes early, we’ll start the pre-sale early. That sentence is still extremely strange to type. Because two years ago, Athena was just an idea in my head. A very specific, very persistent idea, but still just an idea. And now she is almost for sale in the App Store.

So here is the sappy part, and I’m not even going to apologize for it. Any time you catch yourself wondering, “Can I actually do this?” — I really do think the answer is yes, if you want it badly enough and you are willing to be bad at it long enough to get better. You do not have to know everything at the beginning. You do not have to see the whole road. You do not have to have every answer. You just have to keep taking the next step, then the next one, then the next one after that. Eventually, the thing that used to only exist in your head starts existing somewhere else.

Athena is not done, either. Version 1.0 is just the beginning. I already have a pile of new features planned for version 1.1, and those updates will be free. That release is currently planned for around December, alongside Artemis, (first official screenshot below!) And Hermes is starting to look good enough to share with beta testers. Which means Apollo is moving from pipeline to production!

Oh yeah, and the best part? They all talk to each other. So today is a very good “strange new world” day for me. I’m proud. I’m tired. I’m excited. I’m a little terrified. And I’m incredibly grateful to finally be at the point where I can say:

Athena is almost here.

Artemis First Look: