From the essay shelf
Keeping a Shift Journal
I am by temperament a keeper of records. I note the first frost and the day the swifts leave. So when I began, years ago, to suspect that the odd tilts in my attention had a pattern, the natural thing was to buy a notebook. I have kept one ever since, and it has taught me more about my own therianthropy than anything I have read. I would like to describe the method, which is very simple, and to be candid about its limits.
What to write
An entry needs six things and takes two minutes.
- The date and the hour.
- Where you were and, briefly, what you were doing.
- What you noticed, in plain physical terms. "Felt ears turn toward the gate." "Stopped thinking in words for a while." "Tail heavy, low." Describe; do not classify.
- How strong it was, on any rough scale you like. I use faint, clear and strong.
- How long it lasted.
- The state you were in beforehand: rested or tired, fed or hungry, calm or stirred up, alone or in company.
That is all. Resist the urge to write an essay each time. A journal that takes twenty minutes will be abandoned within two weeks.
Write down the nothing, too
This is the part people leave out, and it matters most. Once a week, on a day when nothing whatever happened, write "nothing" and a line about the day. If you record only the remarkable moments you will end up with a notebook that says you are remarkable all the time, and you will have learned nothing true.
For the same reason, write up the times you expected something and it did not come. I once spent an evening on a hill under a full moon, entirely ready to be moved. I was cold and slightly bored. That entry has been as useful to me as any other.
Reading it back
Do not look for patterns for at least three months. Then sit down with the whole notebook and a pencil and simply count.
What I found, the first time, surprised me. My shifts had nothing to do with the moon, about which I had cherished a private theory. They had a great deal to do with being rested and being outdoors, and with the hour before dark. They were almost absent in weeks when I was anxious about work. Phantom sensations were commonest when I was at ease, and when I read my own descriptions one after another, nearly all of them were about ears: ears turning, ears flattening, ears pricked toward something I had not yet consciously heard. I had never once noticed how much of my animal is listening.
None of this would have been visible from inside any single day. It took a column of dull entries to show it.
Keeping it honest
A journal can be bent, and you should know how.
- Do not go looking for entries. If you find yourself staging walks in order to have something to write, stop for a month.
- Do not improve them afterward. Never go back and rewrite an entry in the light of what you now believe.
- Do not show it to anyone. The moment a journal has a reader it starts to perform.
- Use the plainest words you have. "Felt like a hunting cat" is an interpretation. "Went very still, eyes fixed on the moving thing, weight on the balls of my feet" is an observation, and the observation is what you will want later.
What a notebook cannot do
It cannot tell you whether you are a therian. It can only tell you what happens to you and when, which is not the same thing. A person with many entries is not more of a therian than a person with few, and a contherian, who does not shift at all, would have nothing to write and be none the less for it.
What it can do is replace guessing with knowing, in a small way, about one's own days. I find that a calming thing. So much of this subject is fog. A date, a place and a plain sentence are solid ground, and I am grateful for every one of them.
The guide to shifting describes the kinds of experience you may find yourself recording.
Pieces in the stacks are written under pen names. Personal pieces are composite accounts that gather experiences commonly described by therians and otherkin, and are offered as illustration, not as testimony about any one person. See the editorial principles.