#note keeping

Sure! Journalling is actually a great start and a good way to boost communication between headmates. We’d also recommend using an app like Simply Plural (available on the App Store and Google play) which lets you keep track of when headmates are fronting, who’s co-conscious, and much more! Keeping track of who’s fronting can help you feel more coherent and less blurry, which overall will make it easier to accomplish necessary tasks!

Notes

We’d also recommend leaving notes! Keeping a little note in your binder or folder for each class saying things like “this is our history class - we’re on chapter 4” or “this is our math class, our homework assignment needs to be turned in!” can clue in other headmates as to what’s going on and how to pick up where y’all left off.

Teamwork

This one is essential. If you have a studious headmate, or one who does better in school than the rest, maybe try to get that headmate to front in class as much as possible. They can take notes, do readings, ask questions in class, and be present for y’all so you don’t miss out on important information. The notes they take can then be used by other headmates who switch involuntarily or switch without being equipped to handle class work. If this headmate is shy/nervous/doesn’t want to front at school, then they can do homework/readings/take notes at home that the rest of the system can then use when you’re in the classroom.

Basically, whenever a headmate is aware of a due date/project/important assignment or anything coming up, they can do two things: a. Work on the project or assignment to the best of their ability, and b. Leave a note in a conspicuous place for another headmate to see letting them know what’s going on. In this way, y’all can work together to complete assignments and make it through the school year!

Outside Support

If anyone in your life knows you’re a system, perhaps you can ask them for help in navigating school life. Whether it’s a sibling or parent, a classmate, or even a teacher or guidance counselor, having some support from people in your life can definitely make things easier! Whether it’s by helping you study or complete your homework assignments, keeping you and your headmates informed about due dates and tests coming up, or providing accessibility accommodations in class (like longer test times, for example) there are lots of things others can do to help you and your system navigate school life while learning at the same time!

Grounding

Practicing grounding techniques can help you stay focused and present in the moment and may make it easier for you to front when you have to! Here’s some things you can do to help you stay calm and remain present when you’re not sure what’s going on/feeling nervous/want to stay in the front:

5-4-3-2-1: try and think of five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. If the taste and smell ones are hard, you can skip them! But noticing details about your surroundings can certainly help you feel more aware of your environment.

Yowchie method (courtesy of our therapist): eat a sour candy, lemon slice, hot pepper, spicy mint, or something else with a strong flavor (we keep a few Warhead candies with us almost all the time for this purpose!). Try and focus on how it tastes and the physical sensations it makes you feel. This can also help keep you present in the physical world and more in tune with your surroundings.

BREATHE! This one is huge! Just taking a few deep breaths (inhale for 4 seconds, exhale for 7) can help you calm down, can ease numbness or blurriness, can clear mind fog, and overall help you function better. We cannot stress how important it is to take some deep breaths when you’re feeling overwhelmed! If you want to form some good breathing habits, you can download the app Breathe2Relax on the App Store or Google Play!

Hopefully these things can help y’all be more on the same page when it comes to school. We wish y’all the best of luck! Followers, if you have any more advice for systems in school, please feel free to share!

I have no choice but to keep it organized, because if I don't, I'm screwed. :) ...And this isn't just a side effect of being 70+, but of having numerous projects going at once, all in wildly varying stages of development... and ideas for any of them are likely to pop up at any time.

Over time I've learned to keep separate projects' notes well separated from one another, to prevent confusion. Additionally, some kinds of notes are better for some projects than others. If the worldbuilding is mostly to do with character business and stuff going on inside people's brains, something that supports long-format typed notes will be best. For something that needs artwork, drawings, diagrams or calculations, something more graphics-oriented may work better. I usually find out what works best as as I go along, and stage newer notes accordingly.

In the past I've often used (physical) notebooks, but I don't any more, as it takes more effort than I care to expend to move things off the paper and onto the screen / into the file. (For those wondering: I normally compose directly into the computer, either by typing or [Dragon Anywhere-mediated] dictation. If a piece of work is giving me more trouble than usual, I'll sometimes break down and compose on paper, with a fountain pen: thanks for the hint, @neil-gaiman. Sometimes slowing things down does make a difference) :) ...Then I read the pen-generated material into the machine.

Probably the modality I use most often now for worldbuild material is Scrivener, for reasons I discussed a little over here the other day. It lets you store notes alongside your prose material, or in a research "folder" down at the bottom of your project: and it keeps it all together.

But I'm not always sitting down in front of the machine. Sometimes ideas pop out when you're on the road: or you're working on one project and something pertinent to another one comes up. So at such times I use:

Evernote. It syncs seamlessly among all the devices I use, and you can get at it from wherever you are in a browser or from a smartphone or tablet.

A voice recording app. I've got one in the iPad and one on my phone. If I'm somewhere without broadband and can't use Dragon, the saved audio can be fed into it later. Dragon'll then transcribe what I said and email it to me for inclusion in whatever note-keeping software I'm using. Right now on the iPad I'm using an app called Voice Recorder, and on the (Android) phone one that (mysteriously) also called Voice Recorder.

These are desperately handy for when an idea comes to you in the middle of the night and your handwriting's not to be trusted or you don't want to turn on the light for fear of waking up whoever else is in the bed. Fumble around for the recorder, turn it on, mumble your note in and go back to sleep. Just make sure you've actually turned it on. And off. :)

Sticky notes. I do use them, but I don't let them sit around: it's too easy for a passing breeze to blow them off the table / desk / whatever and under the fridge, where you'll never see them again. These normally get transcribed into electronic storage immediately, or stuck onto my desk in a spot where they have to be dealt with immediately; or (in the case of really important notes) stapled to several others that in same cases have been there for years. ...Notes not immediately transcribed get stuck into a notebook which I clean out carefully once a month, along with the other note-taking apps.

Another kind of sticky notes, of which I'm really fond, is this app for the iPad, called Tatter. It allows you to open multiple "notebooks" that can house what seem to be an unlimited number of stickies. Supports images, as well.

A wiki on a stick. If there's a lot of data coming down the pipeline at once, it's handy to have something to stick it into in which short articles can be linked easily to one another. You can export / cut-and-paste these into your main work file as necessary. Then at the project's end, you just zip the wiki's contents up and put it away somewhere, on disk or in the cloud, as you prefer. (Because who knows what its contents might come in handy for, some years from now...?) TiddlyWiki is good tor this kind of thing.

Anyway: the secret of successfully managing an array of note-taking methods like this is to set aside a day once a month to go through them all, making sure that notes that are worth something will be tucked safely into the project file associated with them. If you're not using a program like Scrivener that provides its own storage, this space can as easily be a folder on your desktop, or even a series of printouts. But the most important thing: back them up somewhere safe. Worldbuilding notes are some of the most painful to lose. ...I keep a set of mine in Dropbox, and an additional set in my laptop, and once a month I email a zipfile of the most crucial ones to myself.

If this sounds like a lot of work: that's as may be... but it's worth it. I mean, we're talking worlds here. Until they're safely out where people can see them on paper or on the screen, you are their only guardian.

Over the years, I have tried many times to keeping a notebook. Ended up buying a variety of notebooks (mainly for their design, paper etc.) but never using them as they are beautiful by design, texture and smell.

Now as I work (and grow in ) on my photography, I am compelled to keep a notebook - to collect bits of ideas, information, references, thoughts, notes on interesting conversations, anecdotes  etc. Anything that will further fuel my thinking and practice.

Once again the research starts how best to approach keeping a notebook. While doing my research  I am across an article mentioned by Joan Didion’s essay, “On Keeping a Notebook”.

Didion has defined a writer as “a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. I write entirely to find out what’s on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of.” She has also said that “all writing is an attempt to find out what matters, to find the pattern in disorder, to find the grammar in the shimmer. Actually I don’t know whether you find the grammar in the shimmer or you impose a grammar on the shimmer, but I am quite specific about the grammar—I mean it literally. The scene that you see in your mind finds its own structure; the structure dictates the arrangement of the words. ... All the writer has to do really is to find the words.” However, she warns, “You have to be alone to do this.”

Source: Joan Didion , Essay, “On Keeping a Notebook”.

Reading the article, what is interesting is the way she looks at writing “. . . .to find out what’s on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of.”  

How or can this parallel (thinking) be applied to photography - an approach . It begs the question, what and how can I make sense of it for my practice, what “lessons” can be learnt from her words.

The written word and photographs do have a close link. Without a photography we only have words to describe to share a visual. Then came along photography and the adage  “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

From exploring on how to keep a notebook (still working on that), it was an interesting tangential departure from the objective but possibility an interesting learning how to look at things differently - perspective. What art making is all about.