Okay, so it's been a week of trying out this new thing with our system, and so far the results have been positive. We have been essentially drawing names from a hat to decide who is going to front for the day (actually we roll a die and treat pk;list as a random table, but effectively the same thing). Putting a name in the hat is strictly voluntary (e.g. Octavia doesn't wish to front, so she didnt put her name in).
We haven't been dreading upcoming things as much. Whoever ends up fronting during the upcoming thing doesn't have the burden of knowing they will have to before hand.
We haven't been getting as front stuck. The "forced" switching to a random headmate every day has helped avoid our brain "defaulting" to one person.
We also don't collectively get stuck with one headmate taking on all of the responsibilities because they were just there (E.g. Faye often times would front for days on end and feel overwhelmed cause we would forget that we could give her a break).
Everyone gets time to front and do their thing without the sensation that they have to make their time "count". We would oftentimes feel like we need to do something while front and feel guilty that we were taking up other people's time. Foxy just watched YouTube one day instead of what she wanted because she had the body on a day that it was just out of spoons and didn't feel guilty since it was her randomly determined time to do whatever she wanted.
We also figured out some rules after starting this out that have been working. First, if someone draws their name, they are allowed to say no. Faye did this when we drew her name a 3rd day in a row for instance. Second, we don't make this schedule a hard thing. If someone needs or wants to step in for something, that's fine, and we don't judge one another for breaking the schedule; just remind them who's day it is. Third, we have 2 hats: one with everybody who wants to do this, and one for everyone who wants to work. We draw from the larger hat first, but if the name that comes up is someone who cannot work (e.g. our little one) we will draw from the second one for who will be the "chaperone" that goes to work or interacts with people.
Obviously this only works if your system has some amount of control over switching. We can consciously switch who is in front, but cannot unconsciously hold front (i.e. when we don't actively watch out for it, someone else will get yeeted into front). This has helped somewhat with that it seems. So even if your system doesn't have control over switching, it might be worthwhile to give it a shot, cause it could help with switch control (and it is extremely important to avoid judgement and blame when it doesn't work, cause of course there will be times where it doesn't work).
If anyone gives this a try we would love to hear your experience! Share what does and doesn't work. Tell us what modifications your system came up with!
-Moxie {O}
