The morning I almost cried at my desk.
Published May 4, 2026
I want to tell you about a Tuesday morning.
My desktop — the actual one — was buried in files I couldn’t identify. The borders of my monitor were lined with sticky notes, layered like roof shingles. I had 15 orders to pack and ship before the post office closed. I had to get to the grocery store at some point. And I was trying to remember whether I’d already entered the mileage from my last post office run, or if that receipt was still floating somewhere in the pile of receipts on my actual physical desk.
My business was taking off. I sold planner and journal sticker sheets, and they were genuinely doing well. I should have been thrilled.
I had already had two cups of coffee, and I was exhausted.
I had a spreadsheet — somewhere — that tracked my business expenses. There were probably four versions of it. I couldn’t remember which one was the most recent. I’d opened the wrong one twice that week already. I was scared to open any of them, because every time I did, I found something I’d forgotten to log, and the panic of “how far behind am I?” was worse than just not looking.
I put my hands on the keyboard, then took them off, then put them back. I genuinely considered putting my head down on the desk and crying.
That was the morning Maryn started.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about running a small creative business when you have ADHD and a real growth curve at the same time: the success itself becomes the problem. Fifteen orders is great. Fifteen orders when your task list is on three sticky notes, your inventory is in your head, your finances are in a spreadsheet you can’t find, and your mileage log is a stack of receipts in a Cricut box — that’s not great. That’s a slow disaster wearing the costume of “things are going well.”
I’d been duct-taping tools together for years. Notion for tasks (until I stopped opening it). Google Sheets for money (which one? all of them? none of them?). Trello for one project I’d abandoned. A QuickBooks subscription I was paying for and avoiding. Sticky notes for everything that didn’t fit anywhere else, which was most things.
The problem wasn’t that I was disorganized. I’d worked in enterprise software before this. I knew what good systems looked like. The problem was that no software was actually built for one person, doing fifteen things, with a brain that needs to see it all at once. Software was built for teams of fifty. I’d just been trying to fit into something the wrong shape and blaming myself for not fitting.
That morning at my desk, with the cold coffee and the sticky notes and the 15 orders, I didn’t decide to build software. I decided I needed one place. One window I could open and see everything — what I had to do today, what I’d spent, when I last logged mileage, what was waiting for me. One private place. Mine.
When I couldn’t find that place — because it didn’t exist for someone like me — I built it.
Maryn opens to a single screen. It tells me what matters today. It logs my mileage when I add an expense. It keeps track of what I’ve actually done versus what I keep meaning to do. It doesn’t sync to anyone. It lives on my Mac. The four spreadsheet versions are gone. The sticky note border on my monitor is gone. (Mostly. I’m not a saint.)
I didn’t almost-cry at my desk this morning. That feels worth something.
If your morning sounds like that Tuesday — Maryn was built for you. Because it was built for me first.
— Jen