1.

Journals are things writers keep to keep the muscle tone, the systems lubricated for when they are called upon to truly write something. Almost no writer says, "The secret is to to only write when you feel like you've got something to say. Otherwise, just browse the web for a while, masturbate and go to sleep." No, of course they say, "The key is to write every day. Whether it's a grocery list or an epic poem or a short story about a short-sighted canary in love with a hand of bananas on the counter in the kitchen adjacent, just write."

And this is advice I haven't heeded up to now. Oy, I'm tired. And I can find something else to do every night and every day. Work is work, it swallows all the time, expands to fill the space like a gas and suddenly you aren't doing anything but work.

And there's family, and a dog, and the trash bins to take to the curb, and grandparents to update about the lives of the children, and bills to pay and small stuff to sweat, and suddenly you haven't written anything since the short story about the infatuation and the moonlight, which felt like genius but probably was more like meh.

What then to do? How to tackle this problem, reset the balance and find this sliver of time? Just do.