One Account to Rule Them All?

Each prominent member of The Electric Circus (t-e-c) has had a separate email account for decades. We also have several accounts on the cafe itself (they all end with “.t-e-c”). When we needed to communicate, we would often email each other. It worked for us, even if all the different email addresses caused mass confusion for more ordinary people. (“You have how many email addresses?!”)

But as we’re in our third decade as a diagnosed system, our communication is much better than in the olden days. It’s not perfect. We still have to write notes to each other sometimes, but we also have more co-consciousness. That doesn’t mean we’re all active all the time, but it does mean that we can at least play The Dissociative Telephone Game more often. (“Hey, if you see so-and-so before I do, tell them…”) Messages get around eventually.

Some of us have begun to wonder if we haven’t become more OSSD-1b instead of DID as our healing has progressed. Sometimes we’ll become pretty convinced of that, only to be slapped with evidence of full-strength DID amnesia again. Sigh. But this ramble isn’t about that.

It’s about the fact that we’ve recently made a drastic change.

We now have only one real personal email account, and all of our various addresses now go to the same Inbox. It’s been an adjustment. We still pin things, have folders, and use multiple email sorting techniques, but there is just that one glorious Sent folder. <insert heavenly “Aaaaaaaa”> It makes life easier when you don’t have to search several separate accounts to see if anyone sent something. Because yeah, there’s that amnesia thing.

The One Email Account to Rule Them All has made some of us wonder if we have needlessly reinforced our separateness over the years by having so many unique accounts, not just for email but for everything. But, when everything, including your body, is shared, there is an undeniable comfort in having things that belong just to you. Our accounts and personal domains have filled that need over the years. But was there a hidden cost?

We don’t know yet, but we will continue the experiment. We’ll no longer post under our various *.t-e-c accounts, just this one. Oh, we’ll probably still individually sign off now and then, but the truth is that most people don’t need to know which one of us wrote something. We’re a team, responsible for each other and all our content.