Finding my 'zone'

So I was reading some stuff in my inbox, I'm suscribed to this mailing list for writers by David Farland (free, for those interested in writing. Talks a lot about himself but he knows himself best so...) and he's an epic fantasy writer which isn't what I'm really into or anything, but still good basics of story to know as I get ready to enter into the Children Book World, and he said something that hit on the head what I'm doing wrong with my drawings.

Kinda weird, yes? It always blows my mind how similar the process is for art, music, and writing.

Anyways, he was talking about how when we do programs that stress us out, or when we work under stress we produce a lot of stuff, but he said

"I find that I have three problems when I’m writing while stressed: 1) I lose my sense of humor, and my tales become darker and grimmer. 2) Because I’m trying for a high page count, I take less time to think about plot twists. Thus my tale becomes more predictable. 3) I take less time for wordplay, and I find that my style suffers. " (DF)

Which is exactly the problem I have with my art! It's dark, its grim, I make a lot of it but its getting too simple (see my excuse of a mermaid) and my style has been meh.

So maybe I just need to relax more?

I've realized as I've been underemployed and at my parents house, forced to relax, forced to sleep-in, forced to not work (Because there isn't any), forced to not date (because its one of those times in my life), and where my only real paying job is a super-easy service job for a nice old lady, I have had something unforseen come out of it: my expression has improved--a lot--not in my art, but in my piano playing.

I'm not even focusing on piano right now. I don't play nearly as much as I did in college or high school. But my expression in the piano playing touched on my sketchbook (because, to me, playing the piano is like the sketchbook, and when no one's around I make up a lot of good/bad songs like I make good/bad drawings.) And so I looked at my sketchbook, the one place I was never stressed, where my line quality was the thing that my teachers loved and kept wanting me to do, but, by the time it was a final painting would dissapear under layers of stressful paint application, and saw it was a distinct and different style I always had but never really paid attention to.

So I'm thinking I should...not stop painting...but produce more drawings. Somehow keep that spontaneous and more humorous energy all the way through the painting and finished stages. Basically I need to calm down and relax. I'm not the only one in this situation. I've met dozens of others, who have 'real' careers with math and logic and things that actually make money who are also unemployed. I was never really any good at this whole relaxing thing. Now I'm going to stress out about it.