Life is too short not to do this.

Urgency is an excellent starter and a poor fuel. It gets people to book the flight, sign up, send the first message — then burns off within about a fortnight, because nobody can sustain a sense of mortality through a Wednesday.

What keeps a thing going afterwards is duller. A slot in the week. Somebody expecting you.

Still, the starter matters, because the alternative is the great devourer of plans: when things calm down.

Things do not calm down. There is no version of the diary in which the space appears on its own.