The first thing I have to say is that my mother tongue is French, so please excuse any error or clumsiness in my English writing.

You may be surprised to know… What a great prompt this was! I never written a blog before, but here I go!

You may be surprised to know that emotions are the subject of my VISUAL degree (I am presently enrolled in a master’s degree in visual arts, despite being 60 years old).

The way I treat the emotions is by collecting data about them and then translating that data into something visual. The results are quite abstract for the moment, but they still are aesthetically pleasing. I have found that by grading my emotions every day (it has now been more than a year, and almost 8 months on Moodscope), I can definitely see patterns. In the feedback I receive from Moodscope after taking the daily test, the message often talks about the way outside events should not affect me, but they definitely do. I sometimes think of myself as having holes in my figure and through them the events of the days can be seen, each with its particular mood, happy or sad.

More than a year ago, I came across a ‘feeling wheel’, which was put together by Dr. Gloria Wilcox. The emotions are arranged in a circle in such a way that it shows opposites (joyful/sad, mad/powerful, scared/peaceful). The inner core is composed of those 6 basic feelings and the outer core shows how the basic feelings are decomposed into more subtle variations. I made some changes to that chart, incorporating information from other sources (among which Pr. R. Plutchik), so I now have 8 basic feelings and the outer core is made of 72 different emotions. I check those daily.

When I came across Moodscope, I joined immediately. I like the way it shows the variations (graph) and I like reading the daily blog. It also prompted me to make some changes in the way I was collecting my own data, giving each emotion a score of 0 to 3 instead of a simple ‘absent’ or ‘present’ score.

I am now trying to meditate more often to smooth out the effect of those emotions on my mood. If I could only keep that distance between myself and the events of the day, I imagine myself staying very calm instead of being put on a roller coaster ride against my will. Maybe someday (when I am dead?).

Meanwhile, I still paint, write poetry and take long walks by the river. Thank you for letting me share this. Stay safe… and calm.

The Disheveled poet

A Moodscope member.