Do you have any advice on how to journal as a system. Thinking of doing it ourselves but struggling to figure out how to format, structure, and actually do it
Rule Number One of Journaling:
there are no rules.
Rule Number Two of Journaling:
you should ignore Rule One if having rules helps you journal.
So: take a moment and imagine a world where journaling is easy (or fun) and helpful for your system. Toss out all your notions of what journaling should be- remember Rule One? Start from scratch.
If journaling were easy, then what would your journal (and journaling process) look like? What do you each want from your journal(s)? What rules or structures would make those wants happen?
It sounds like a silly question, but seriously, sit down and try to answer it. That might give you some ideas to get started with.
About "Rules"
There are no rules for journaling, only guidelines and preferences. What do you want your journal to do for you? What structures would allow it to do that?
There are so, so, so many different styles of journaling out there, and no two people have quite the same setup. Some people swear by elaborate formatting that takes them an hour to set up before they can write the entry itself. Some people journal with a Bic ballpoint on looseleaf paper that they staple together sometimes. Some people prefer to write for an imaginary audience. Some people burn their finished journals. Some people do best with set journaling times, while others stick to an "if we think about it, we do it" tactic. I could go on.
If you keep individual journals, then your personal setup is going to be unique to you, but a big part of having a shared System Journal is finding ways to coexist despite different formatting preferences and/or journaling goals. The challenge comes in allowing your journal to change with you or in compromising on a shared format.
That's where Rule Two comes in: at any time, you all may agree to do something a certain way. That agreement might help keep the peace, make conversation easier, or otherwise help you get along in the journal, but it should help you journal in some way.
A rule isn't working? Remember Rule One: there are no rules. You can always try something else. Rules should help you share the space, not get in the way of using that space in the first place.
As for starting: As soon as you've gotten a thought out of your head somewhere vaguely reflective, you've successfully journaled. Keep going.
Our Journaling Setup
Your journal is probably going to look very different from our current setup, but I'm hoping that ours gives you ideas about what your own system journal(s) could be like.
We keep four journals right now:
One lined A5 journal that acts as a catch-all for thoughts and communication. We call it the "main journal" for a reason, and it was our only journal for a long time. When in doubt, check this one. (See footnote 1)
One blank A6 journal that lives in our pocket. Useful for work, going out, etc. Also great for brainstorming in. We added this journal when the main journal became impractical to carry in some situations, but we still wanted something to capture our thoughts with.
One chunky, specialized A5 journal designed to capture one four-line entry per day for ten years. Extremely useful for figuring out when something happened in the semi-recent past (or what happened at all). It's also proven its worth by making seasonal patterns in our mood obvious.
One orange three-ring binder that we leave on our desk when actively debating major or long-term decisions. Used to keep the debate somewhere that we can actually find it. Also contains printed copies of system agreements for archival/reference, brain-fixing documents in case of emergency, etc.
This setup is something that we've figured out by trial and error- if something snags, then we change our journaling habits to fix the snag and keep improving upon it as we go.
Our rules for our main and mini journals:
There are no rules. If a rule stops helping or being fun, then suggest changing or removing the rule.
No thought is too small, ridiculous, absurd, or out of context. If you think, "I should write that down," then write it down.
Do not write for future historians, potential snoopers, etc. Write for yourself or our system. Do not self-censor. (See footnote 2)
You are not required to identify yourself in entries, but it is appreciated if you're comfortable doing so. (See footnote 3)
Avoid censoring each other, but respect it when it happens. If we see something crossed out or blotted over, then we will assume that it would be destabilizing or dangerous to know, and we will not attempt to read it anyway.
You don't have to be nice, but you do need to be respectful. Insult someone all you want, but don't rip up the drawing that they spent four hours on, and don't deny their right to share the space. Let them speak.
Mark the first entry of each day with the date in YYYY-MM-DD format (see footnote 4). Days start at 00:00.
If two entries are separated by time or topic within the same day, then leave a blank line between them.
You do not have to use timestamps, but you may note the time if you would like to. 24-hour timestamps are preferred for clarity.
Doodling in the journal counts as journaling.
Taping things into the journal counts as journaling.
Sticking things into the journal's inside pocket for safekeeping counts as journaling.
Completed journals are archived for safe-keeping and future reference.
Our journaling setup might be pretty personal to us because everyone likes to journal for different reasons and in different ways. We journal to process the contents of our head, talk to each other, brainstorm, problem-solve, and keep a grasp on time passing.
Many of our rules are compromises that allow us to accomplish our goals while sharing pages with each other. Sharing space means that we have to respect that shared space. Someone else's entry can be written over or destroyed, for example. The physicality of the journal entries was something we had to account for.
I'd honestly say that sharing physical space in our earliest journals taught us the basics of getting along with each other. Crossing out someone else's entry tends to upset them, and we each eventually learned that leaving a snarky comment in the margin was given a lot more tolerance than crossing out someone else's entry. That opened space for snarky margin conversations where we could try to understand each other a little better, albeit in a slightly hostile way. Nowadays, we're talking in the center of the page, and the snark is considerably more good-natured.
I hope some of this helps you all figure out what you want your system journal to be like, Anons.
Footnotes
1: We put a lot of effort into making this journal feel like a consistent place or home. We use a journal cover to make it look mostly the same, we buy multiple of the same journal so it's not jarringly different, and we write a phrase on the first and last pages when starting and finishing the journal to pass the metaphorical torch. It really is the main journal because of this, the one that feels like relief to sit with.
You don't need a journal cover or luxury supplies to pull that sort of consistent journaling environment off, though. Many people swear by journaling in ordinary composition books or spiral notebooks. They're consistent, easy to find, and cheap. You reliably get the same thing every time. If you want a journal that stays essentially the same even when you replace it (especially one that's not likely to go out of production in the future), then you might want to consider your local generic school notebook.
2: The trouble with self-censoring yourself to look good for the imaginary future historians is that you might wind up avoiding any topic with much depth or roughness to it, tinting the whole thing to avoid judgement. This has a way of skirting around all of the things you'd get the most benefit from journaling about.
When we introduced this rule, we wrote everything that we wouldn't want a future historian to see on the front page of the next journal to ensure that we'd have no reason to self-censor. It was very effective. Why hide anything if you've put your personal brain garbage in the front for whoever reads it?
3: Various ways to mark who wrote an entry:
Writing utensil type (pencil, pen, crayon, marker...)
Color
Signatures and printed names
Name symbols, sigils, emblems
Doodles of your faces
Speech bubbles
Position on the page
Handwriting quirks (voluntary or involuntary)
Indexing it in the back or front
Marking entries is absolutely not required, and we actually don't do it too often at the moment. That said, if you like marking entries by using different ink colors, multi-color pens have gotten a lot better and some of them feel glorious to use. We like the Pilot Dr. Grip 4+1 personally. This isn't an ad, we genuinely just like the pen.
4: The actual follow-through on the date format is still inconsistent; someone has yet to get the memo on the format, and we have no idea who. We'll get it across to whoever it is eventually, and they're using a format we can parse in the meantime, so it's no big deal.
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hi! I'd like some advice. not on whether im plural but more just on the problem solving and communication side of this debate. everyone agrees on what we're experiencing but nobody agrees on whether the word "plural" would describe it well. part 1 says yes, part 2 says no, part 3 says probs. part 3 would be good at helping the concerns of part 2 but 2 and 3 don't communicate. id like to decide one way or the other bc as it stands we are in a weird middle which is way worse than either conclusion
Have you considered agreeing to disagree?
I know this sounds like absurd advice when we're saying, "have you tried disagreeing on whether you're going to call yourselves plural?". I think a lot of folks would read that as "you should disagree about whether you exist!" That's not the intent.
You really, really can't force most people to see themselves as plural even if you personally think it's obvious. Often, this still applies to your own brainmates. The harder you push the framework, the harder they'll resist. The more that you insist on agreement, the more likely that someone is to double down (especially if they're afraid of any ramifications of other opinions being more practical or honest).
On top of that, folks do have the right to choose their own language for their experiences, and it can feel really frustrating when someone else pushes their framework or language on you when you don't want them. Frustrating each other over language isn't going to help you decide what to do with your experiences in a practical, daily life sense.
Sometimes getting agreement really, truly matters. We reach for tools like Consensus Decision Making to figure those conflicts out. Sometimes it doesn't actually matter as much as it seems to matter initially. There are a lot of very important-seeming things that turn out to have very little impact on your actual life, and figuring out which important things will actually affect you later is a useful skill to develop.
Personally, I think that trying to push for total agreement here is more likely to cause pressure and upset than it is to get The One True Answer. There is no One True Answer; plurality is subjective. So are labels. There's no objective test to tell you whether you're XYZ community term. There may not even be a right answer.
You've already said that you all agree that whatever is happening, it's happening a certain way. You are having an experience. You agree on that, and I'd argue that's more important than agreeing on what to call that experience. Everything else starts from deciding that something is happening.
There's no inherent reason that you all have to call yourselves the same thing or see yourselves the same way to try working with your actual experiences.
I find myself wondering what Part 2 prefers to call your experience, if anything. Have you heard them out, even a little bit? Did they make any good points or raise concerns you could address? (And if you can't reach them either: have you tried establishing external communication by leaving a note or other signal?)
I just took a moment to update our blog description because we are drowning in asks that are hard to answer because of their format.
If sending an ask from now on:
Please ensure that your ask is focused around one issue or question (if possible). If you have multiple questions that are not very, very closely related, then please send them as separate asks. It's difficult to refer back to posts with relevant points when the post answers five different questions, four of which have nothing to do with the issue we're talking about.
Please try to ensure that each ask is self-contained. Avoid spreading your question across multiple asks- we are very unlikely to answer a question that's been split up like this because of the extra work needed to stitch the asks together into something we can actually answer.
Do not include detailed information about trauma, triggers, or other sensitive information unless it is literally impossible to ask the question without it- please remember that our blog has enough of a following that you may be exposing hundreds of people to your personal information. We will not answer asks that contain obviously sensitive personal information without clear consent to share that ask with the public.
It's not very common for me, but there are times when it feels like my headmates actually come out of "headspace" and are physically next to me, usually to show physical affection in some way. It's an extremely pleasant experience, one of my favourite parts of being plural. It seems completely random and I can't seem to find anything that triggers or causes it. Is there any way I can try to get it to happen more often?
The daemonism and tulpamancy communities call this experience "imposition", and they've written a bunch of guides on doing this intentionally. I've also seen it called "projection", depending on who's naming the phenomenon and where, but "imposition" is more useful in a search engine because the word is less commonly used outside of this context than "projection" is.
If you want a starting point, then I might point you to the Tulpanomicon's section on imposition (which has three guides), the slightly larger imposition section in the New Great Big List of Guides (which is 13 years old now- wow, that time went by quickly), and whatever Reddit threads you can scrounge up. I tossed "tulpamancy imposition guide" into a search engine and found useful results, so you may find more recent guides by poking around.
I'd also encourage you to write and share your own guide if you figure this out. There's a general lack of guide-style writing compared to a decade ago, and I think we could all benefit from each other's hard-earned lessons and skills.
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I hope you all know that we see every single reblog comment (tags included), and we appreciate you all. Thank you for being so kind. I'm glad we can help some folks or offer a mirror to folks' experiences.
π helicopter for the ask game? love all your essays and other works btw, theyre really well done :]
Thank you!
π (helicopter) - Which things have gotten easier with time? Which things are still hard?
It's been long enough that this is actually a bit of a challenge to answer- it's hard to remember everything that's changed in almost a decade.
Easier:
Not fighting with each other 24/7. We still have the occasional argument, but we give each other a lot more grace when they happen and approach it as "this issue is all of us versus the problem". It's made a big difference in how well we get along.
See also: arguing peacefully instead of falling apart into insults and threats.
See also: not hating each others' guts. There was a period of our life where some of us would have gladly killed each other. I don't think anyone wants anyone gone like that anymore, though some people are still closer than others. But we've at least got neutrality for even the more strained relationships nowadays.
Communication. It does get easier, especially when you don't rely on words alone. There's still room for improvement, but we can all reach each other a good chunk of the time.
Control over switching. We've had a good bit of practice with this now, and we can generally arrange for someone to come forward (unless they're unreachable at the time- it's not perfect, and sometimes someone isn't available).
Teamwork. We're gradually learning what everyone has a knack for, which lets us lean on each other's strengths.
Likewise for not clinging so aggressively to control. It's hard to let the money expert do their thing if you don't get out of the way. We do still struggle with someone clinging to control sometimes, but it's been getting easier to trust someone to bring you back when they're done.
Denial. It's a lot more rare now, and when it crops up, we know how to handle it (ask what it's protecting us from, then address that).
Accepting that we can't and don't know everything about our system, and that trying to nail everything down is a losing battle that hurts us more than it helps us.
We spend almost no time on "traditional" plural community list/profile-style documentation nowadays because we realized that it wasn't helpful in a system structured to thwart that exact kind of identity prying. All of the profiles that we used to make were worse than useless, and we switched up how we handled documentation after realizing that. Nowadays, we tend to make art or web-style maps, not profiles, and it works much better for us.
Being seen by friends. There are people who know us individually now, both offline and online, and it's helped us feel like people actually know us instead of knowing this hollow, mirror-coated simulacrum of a person that we used to try to portray.
Still hard:
Everything to do with trauma and processing it. It sucks. It's probably going to keep sucking for a long while. This isn't a fast process. A lot of us still struggle with shame, self-blame, hyperarousal, etc. on top of the memories themselves, and untangling that whole mess takes time. Doubly so when the fallout while processing one event often hits multiple people, making it much harder to function well.
General mental health. Some of it has improved! Some of it has gotten worse or stayed the same. We're dealing with a rough patch right now, unfortunately. It'll pass.
Memory gaps. They're usually not a huge problem (or very large, nowadays), but sometimes they are a problem. There's not much to do about it but react, fill it in if possible, and move on.
Relatedly: finding objects. We still tend to disagree on where objects should be put away, and we're not great about notifying each other if something is moved. We still need to find some kind of practical system to get that information relayed.
Balancing our free time is always a challenge, especially when we all have our own projects. We're currently working on finding more free time for a few of us who could use it.
Knowing what our entire system is like. Do we know some things? Sure! Enough to get by. The trouble is that things change, and our system seems set up to evade being deeply known. There's a lot of strangeness in here and we've found that the best approach is to let it be strange and live with it as a vague, unknown blob of stuff that affects or is us. Sometimes, the idea of an objective reality isn't useful.
