There is no Protocol for This

Keith, Raven, and I got to talking about organization and had a bit of a laugh about it. Our system is collectively more organized than most people we know, which struck me as ironic on so many levels.

Organization is vital when you're liable to forget large chunks of time and you don't know what chunks those might be. Occasionally, I will adamantly argue that I haven't seen a movie and gone to a place because, for all practical purposes, I don't recall the experience. But it happened, and this body certainly participated even though I wasn't at the wheel. Human memory relies on emotion for much of its long-term recall, and those emotions were felt by someone else.

The only way to avoid that is through extensive use of notes, tagging, and search functionality. If Loved One says we've seen a movie, I can just do a quick search and verify whether it happened and whether any of us had an opinion.

When it comes to planning for the future, trying to get four different adults (and one child) to agree on next steps is like herding cats. Only, the cats are usually not around at the same time and their opinions about everything vary wildly. To counter that, we have decision chats where we can discuss almost any decision we have to make and create plans for the future on which we then vote. It's not fast, but it's probably the fairest method we have at the moment.

And it means I can look at our notes and conversations and tell you with some certainty where we're going, how far we've come, what the next steps are and who is doing them. That's because we've had to work through all of these things (and are still very much working on them) while dealing with all kinds of external issues. So, yeah, I've done project management where the project is the continued wellbeing of the Shard and its crew, and we have limited physical and mental resources to manage. It's not easy, but it's worthwhile.

Until recently, I never talked about the voices in my head or discussed how it feels to become someone else and wake up again a while later, aware of what happened but not attached to any of it. I thought that because it didn't cause me distress -- bad memory is a human condition after all -- it wasn't a problem. And honestly, it still doesn't cause me distress.

Yes, there's extra effort but it's worth it.

The people I share my head with are amazing, and I wouldn't change it. It's not the normal experience of being a human, but it is one flavor of experience and it's frankly not terrible. It's just another aspect of a life that is filled with good moments and bad ones...

And I'm rambling so I will stop here.