#journal system

[sevenofdeers]

06.02.2024

a hobonichi a6 avec, a fieldnotes journal & a hobinichi day free a6 in my cover from cadenta notebooks on etsy (and of course my trusty snoopy pen)

[bridgetheages]

My current active journal system

Left to right: A Hobonichi notebook used as my "commonplace" book (I didn't bother decorating it because it's fairly collage heavy and I tend to use the cover to glue things), a Hobonichi notebook used for daily journaling, a Hobonichi Cousin Avec used as a health and habit tracker/health journaling, Hobonichi weeks used as a traditional planner.

Finally feeling satisfied and like my system is benefiting me. And honestly the main reason I use Hobonichi notebooks is that the paper brings me a lot of joy, as well as all the spreads in the Cousin Avec.

[imanbenerrabeh]

planning & studying

[dissociativecollective]

Grieving, grieving, constantly grieving. I mourn what could have been, what should have been, what will not be, what I cannot save.

[beatrizjournal]

I must say that I have finally found some planner peace, I have been using my a5 ring binder and just updating that system for the past 3 weeks. It isn’t much but I am feeling the relief of consistency and I just hope this feeling last. 🕯️📎

.

(Pages are from @petite-gloom)

[the-northstar-collective]

Youuu know what? I'd like to thank Tumblr for making me pro endogenic. Thankyou everyone who helped me change my beliefs about systems. Its truly wonderful to know what its like to be pro endo for over a year now.

[obsob]

one small step for. kitties

[purpleenma]

Finally the ✨Zine O'biology✨ @zineobiology is out for everyone to feast upon! 🙌

*Please, click for better quality

"With a Mind as Fertile as the Chenesi": A Brief Exploration of the Interrelatedness Between Telepathy and Sexuality of the Vuhlkantra.

Read in AO3

And within its many pages full of absolute genius of all kinds you can find this new collaboration with amazing @ex--astris--scientia (CampySpaceSlime) where this diagram comes from. If you like Vulcans, mind melds and the fra'als I highly recommend you give it a read 🖖✨

✨ Download your copy for free here

✨ Get your physical copy at cost here

[thefluxsystem]

10 mindsets about my DID that have helped my system:

[This is solely for the sake of sharing experiences & supplying food for thought. This post is not implying these takes are the “right way” to view systemhood.]

1. We’re individuals and we’re parts of a whole. We see each other as people in our system, but in a different way than those in their own bodies. We share a brain. We share a life. I’m me, but I’m also him/her/them at the same time. If you take a piece out of a puzzle, it doesn’t cease to exist, right? It’s still its own object. It just doesn’t make much sense when it stands alone. We need each other to be truly complete.

2. Time keeps coming. I know it’s not an unlimited resource, but it’s not scarce either. Okay, so somebody in the system didn’t get to do what they planned today. They’ll do it tomorrow. No big deal. No need to fight about it or stress over “how I’ll ever manage all this”. We’ll simply give it another shot in the morning.

3. Reality is subjective. We’re a very philosophically-inclined system, and I could write books on what “reality is subjective” means. Basically, reality is based on perception. On a societal level, it is based in the common agreement of what something is. If anyone’s perception tests the limits of this common agreement, it is labeled as untrue. This ties into why DID is largely disbelieved; it doesn’t fit in with the common reality (perception) of the average person. So it is seen as fake. And, well, if I’m going to be told I’m wrong for the most basic, inherent part of this disorder… I don’t really care if they disagree with any other aspect of it. My reality is different. That’s okay.

4. There is no original. I strongly believe the Theory of Structural Dissociation. Maybe science will prove it wrong with a more suitable theory to take its place in the future, but it’s what I roll with at the moment. Now, to us, this translates as “there is no original/we were all the original”. We’re Adventure Time fans, so we think of it like the “Mother Gum”. If all of the Mother Gum broke off into people (like PB & Neddy), no specific one of them would be “the original”. Rather, they’d all be repurposed parts of the original whole. (In a less serious way, we like to say “we all came from the primordial personality soup”.)

5. Our body is shared equally. We’ve decided our body has its own identity & “look” that helps represent us as a whole, but doesn’t take after one member specifically. In a gnawingly self-aware way, I know this is a further form of dissociation. But adopting this view changed a lot for us in a positive way. We don’t fight about hair or clothes anymore, we don’t have discomfort around our legal name, we don’t even really have struggles with gender/sexuality anymore. (We identify differently internally, but externally we identify as nonbinary & bisexual. Even if the person fronting at the moment is, for example, a gay man.)

6. Be open-minded to what happens internally. Seems straightforward enough, but we’ve wasted a lot of time trying to “make rules” for each other in the system. The biggest example I can think of is in-system dating. Around 10 years ago, as we became more aware of each other, it became clear that two system members were basically in love. We immediately became defensive. We told them that they couldn’t do that, that two system members being together was absurd & “impossible”. (This view became stronger after discovering online system spaces & “fakeclaimers” that come with it.) Though we regret it now, we shamed those two a lot in the hopes they’d drop it. They didn’t. About 3 years later it became an actual problem. They didn’t trust us; they were fronting & we were coming back to absolutely no memory of it (we usually have a vague idea at least). Eventually, they wrote us a whole thing about how they were going to be together & there was really nothing anyone could do about it, seeing as we couldn’t technically keep them apart. In modern day, we’ve had an in-system couple recently fuse. Upon reflection, we were standing in the way of genuine healing by trying to break up the first two, and we did so solely out of shame. As long as it isn’t genuinely causing harm, we try to be accepting of each other these days. This applies to a lot of other aspects; how system members appear internally, the pronouns and/or identity labels they choose, anything to do with how system members engage with each other, our differing individual perceptions of an event, etc.

7. We don’t have to like each other, but we do have to love each other. Mostly because, if we don’t, we’re holding hatred for ourself. There are certainly members of my system I would never choose to befriend if we were actually separate people, but we’re not, and we don’t get to act like we are. So even though it’s hard, I’m learning to love every piece that makes up “me”, no matter how difficult they try to make it at times.

8. Nobody’s system works like mine except for mine. Meaning, no two systems are going to be alike, and experiences aren’t often going to translate perfectly. This is true for people who aren’t systems as well— everyone’s experience is going to be different, because nobody is wired exactly the same way. Once I took that to heart, it became easier to focus on my own way of being. I could take the pieces of represented/online systemhood that resonate with me & leave the rest (which probably resonates with someone else).

9. There’s a reason for everything. This kind of ties back into the ‘we have to love each other’ thing. Each component of the system is a clue regarding how to move forward. We had someone in the system getting really uptight & controlling, to a point that it was irritating, but, taking a step back, we recognized it was a response to feeling a lack of control. Instead of simply getting angry at him for how he was acting, we were able to address the problem. My collective self is more laid-back for it.

10. It’s okay not to focus on it all. DID is a part of my life for the rest of it, whether I like it or not, but it’s nice to let it be a background thing every once in a while. Who’s fronting? Who cares. What roles do we have? I don’t know. Who’s this new person in my head? I’ll figure it out later. We’re making it through as a team, and sometimes that’s enough.

[annadiplosis]

A few months ago I posted a couple photos of my index cards, saying I still didn’t know how and where I’d keep them, and I’ve since developed an Archiving System that combines the cards with a digital spreadsheet and has taken more hours than I will ever admit.

So, since I don’t have a “notebook system” to speak of, I'd like to share the way I archive my journals / sketchbooks / whatever you wanna call them, because I’m very proud of it, and who knows, someone might find it helpful :)

WHY I NEED AN ARCHIVING SYSTEM

The reason I don’t have a notebook system is because I use my books for absolutely everything, from sketches to grocery lists and journaling. It is crucial to me to not have any restrictions or expectations when it comes to my books, and that’s how I’ve managed to fill 43 of them over the years.

But of course, when you’ve been using notebooks without a system for most of your life and you want to read a specific entry, you can easily spend a full hour flipping through a sea of paper until you stumble upon those notes on the Bubonic Plague you took in 2011 or whatever you were trying to find.

SO HERE’S WHAT I DO

When I finish a notebook, I try to determine what its most important contents are: stuff I might want to reference in the future (project ideas, meeting notes) or is very characteristic of a period in my life (friends' drawings, travel logs). Every single page contributes to making the notebook what it is and gives it a unique personality, but not all of them are gonna be keepers, and that's fine (I'd even say fundamental, at least in my case).

These are the extremely generic categories I sort my Chosen Entries into. It's similar to the dot system so many people use, just applied retroactively:

🟣 Study notes 🔵 Work 🟢 Personal 🟡 Projects 🔴 Misc

And here's where the real archiving begins. This info goes into:

1. THE INDEX CARDS

(I always write them in Catalan; this one's a mockup and most of these are not real entries)

A little piece of cardboard with the notebook number, its start and end dates, and most important contents. I keep each index card inside its corresponding notebook, either in its own backpocket or an adhesive one I stick there myself.

This way, whenever I want to take a quick look through the book, I get a general idea of its contents at first glance. Sometimes, just holding it in my hand and reading the index card brings me back to the time when I was keeping it, and that time-travel feeling gives me a rush like no other. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm crazy about my notebooks.

2. THE SPREADSHEET

Same as before, just a couple more pieces of info (number of months, physical description) added to a file with the rest of my notebooks' data. Again, these are not real entries for privacy and language reasons, but they're very similar to the kind of stuff I do keep. The spreadsheet helps me find specific entries with a simple ctrl+f, and it's also a bird's-eye view of my progress through the years as a notebook keeper. I can see when my interests shift, how long some of my most important projects took to come to fruition, and even similar types of entries that repeat every few years which I wasn't even aware of before putting it all together. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

I hope this was useful, or interesting at the very least! If you’re a notebook keeper trying to find their own archiving system, my main advice would be to start early so you don’t have to deal with almost two decades of material like I did :’)

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask.

Good luck 🖤

[judgmentbytheh0unds]

you. you made me out to be something special, your prized possession, your protégé, and i trusted you with the deepest parts in my mind.

you just left me like everybody else.

i’ll forever wait for you to return with my collar still intact, じま.

[tofusfortbhk]

An Exorcise in Devotion — Part 6

Part 6 — The End

Previous <<< Master List

Extras

[imanbenerrabeh]

sweet journaling with a hot chocolate 💌

[shanklin]

It’s the most honest job Stan’s ever had.

Sure, the company he’s working for is downright diabolical, scamming their customers in all aspects of life, but that’s not Stan’s problem.

As Le Ville Corp’s most successful customer service agent in the Oregon area his only job is to follow the company guidelines, sell as many bad deals as possible and never ever let anyone back out of a contract. 

Morality aside, nothing the company does is actually illegal, so at the end of the day Stan gets to collect his almost-minimum-wage-sized paycheck and go home in the knowledge, that no pigs will come knocking on his door anytime soon.

Life is good. Or at least as good as it gets where Stan is concerned. Last month he even got a raise for selling every bad product the company had to offer to one poor kind sucker. 

From household appliances to car insurance, magazine subscriptions and even their extremely shitty telephone and electricity contracts - the McGucket guy brought it all.

Thanks to him, Stan could upgrade from his car to an almost black mold free one room appartment with a community bathroom one block over.

Stan was finally moving up in the world and then his phone rings. He recognises the number. It’s his good friend Fiddle-not-gonna-say-the-rest McGucket.

Stan grins and cracks his knuckles. It’s about time McGucket figured out he’s gotten scammed. Time to make the poor guy’s life a living hell. No one is getting out of a contract on his watch.

“Thank you for calling Le Ville Corp. For us you are more than just a customer. You are family! This is Piers. How can I help you today?”

The moment Stan starts his greeting, he is bombarded with noise disturbances from the other side.

Ah, the good old Le Ville Corp telephone network working as intended. Maybe Stan can convince the guy to upgrade to a slightly less egregious version. 

Wait, what did he say?

His name is Dr. Stammered Lynes? Weird, but okay. Still better than Fiddle-nope-not-saying-it Hardon McGucket.

As it turns out, Stan finally met the mysterious roommate whose money McGucket has been using to pay for all of their products. Stan didn’t think the guy had it in him to ditch his roommate after the scam got discovered. Good for him!

Now, how to best screw Dr. Lynes here over.

***

An hour and a half of data security safety questions and a new phone contract later the doc hangs up to Stan’s cheery and corporate mandated farewell:

“And don’t forget we here at Le Ville Corp consider you our forever family, because you will stay with us forever!”

***

Stanford Pines just had the worst month of his life [not counting the weeks after the science fair that he refuses to think about].

The portal test was a disaster, his partner left, his muse refuses to explain himself and on top of all of that his new fridge won’t open, because this week’s subscription fee hasn’t been paid yet.

What the f-FIDDLEFORD!

[beatrizjournal]

New video coming up soon, also I think I finally cracked this system.🕯️🗝️

Soon at Beatriz’s Journal on YouTube