On April 30th I released my first major iPhone app, Mingle. The feedback has been incredible, and the experience one-of-a-kind.

About 30 minutes after announcing the release of Mingle on the App Store, Patrick Rhone published an amazing article on Minimal Mac. At that point, I got a great surge of excitement. Patrick really seemed to “get” Mingle, and that felt great.

Moments later, an article appeared on MacStories as well, which felt absolutely surreal. The app got reviewed on other sites too, including Lifehacker, AppAdvice, GeeksWithJuniors, and a few other. Seeing all these writers and bloggers whom I’ve always followed take their time to write about my app stirred feelings that I’ve never felt before inside me. It’s humbling, to say the least.

However, this sort of feedback has had some drawbacks. I find myself more and more compelled to search for “Mingle Contacts” and “Mingle App” on Google and Twitter, searching for any kind of comments about the app. This kind of addiction has been really overwhelming, and really tough to overcome, at least for me. A day after release I even had “Mingle Contacts” as a saved search term on Tweetbot. I’ve been trying to get past that, and forcing myself to stop from searching whenever I felt like it. It’s getting better, and I suppose what I went through was a natural reaction to this kind of attention.

Ultimately, however, releasing Mingle has definitely been one of the most positive and enjoyable experiences of my life. There’s nothing quite like seeing a large number of people really enjoy something you created, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

To everyone who’s used Mingle: thank you.