Some people may say my curved panels look like sails. Well, I am a sailor, so I guess I probably do use that metaphor in my work - though not consciously.
I don't think that you can let the storms of life overwhelm you. When you do that, you are no better than the craziness that caused you to be under attack.
You can't please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.