Kimberly O'Connor

Week 4 of The Artist’s Way begins by asking us to consider what it is we are truly feeling. Cameron interrogates what it means to feel “okay.” Think about how often we answer, when asked how we are, I’m okay. “Okay is a blanket word for most of us,” Cameron writes. “It covers all sorts of squirmy feelings, and it frequently signals a loss.”

I think it’s interesting that Week 4 is titled “Recovering a Sense of Integrity.” Integrity means being honest, whole, and true to what you believe in. We can’t have integrity if we don’t know what we believe in, and we can’t know what we want to be true to until we know how we feel.

This week reminded me of the emotion wheel. It’s something I’ve come across in various teaching and learning situations; basically, it’s a rainbow wheel of a bunch of emotions humans can feel. Here it is:

I found this image on this post on Medium.

When I teach, I often ask my students to let me know how they are doing with a thumbs up (good, happy, energetic), thumbs down (bad, unhappy, exhausted) or sideways thumb (so-so, or “okay”). I wonder what would happen if I asked them to identify their emotions on the wheel each day. It’s kind of tricky to do. This morning, I think I am feeling sleepy and thankful, and also relieved, which I notice is not on the wheel.

How are you feeling? Week 4 asks us to take the time to identify our emotions because “as we lose our vagueness about self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self.”

The morning pages, Cameron reminds us, give us the time and space to make this contact. Are you writing morning pages? Even a paragraph or two can help connect us with how we are doing and what we want. Let me know in the comments, if you like! See you next week.

And P.S.! I am teaching this poetry workshop with Denver Public Library beginning in April on Zoom.