My interior monologue lately has been going back and forth between "This really sucks, I am so tired, and I don't know what I'm going to do" and "Take a deep breath and stop being such a spaz. Things are going to be fine. They could even be great!"
As mine is not a particularly sophisticated artistic sensibility, I think the paintings I've made lately (two samples below) are showing the polarity almost directly. Subtlety, complexity, imagery . . . fuck that shit.
The somber:
And the sparkly:
Yep, I painted bright colors and put beads on them. Shiny, shiny beads, like in your first-grade recess on rainy days. (Detail below.)
This regression leads me to suspect that my calmer, more optimistic impulse is, in fact, completely stupid and possibly dangerous. We shall see.