I have been reading and thinking a lot about feelings and emotions recently. I feel that societally there isn't much normalization about talking about feelings — people express feelings all the time, but it feels much rarer that people talk about their feelings in both the abstract (what are feelings, etc) and the explicit (discussing why someone may feel that way, etc.)

I think that this causes a "suppression" of emotions flowing through people (or just me) and as such it causes an "eruption" of emotion instead.

Admittedly, I do not feel like a very eruptive person — but I see it in other people all the time, and often think "gosh, how did you get here?"

This feels extra important to me due to it being a valuable parenting skill. I want my kids to be able to process emotions and have latitude about expressing them.

I think that this starts by being able to express my own feelings authentically and frequently. So I added a silly little feelings orb to my site, I can then work with my openclaw to update it via a simple text message.

I did this because I wanted to create a check in for myself to assess how I'm feeling. It's incredibly niche and specific, but who cares! this is my dumb little site.

Some of the books I have found vaguely informative about this topic are:

• Permission to Feel

• Fuck feelings

• Not nice

• Atlas of the Heart

• The Gift of Therapy