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Writer's pictureMartyn Foster

The overnight success takes 10 years to make

QWAN number 200 on the books.

 

Hello everyone and thank you for being here as I celebrate my 200th QWAN article since undertaking this venture in becoming a writer. If the saying in the title is true then I’m about halfway there, but, as we frequently see nowadays, gaining a following or some level of success is becoming increasingly more arbitrary…or perhaps much worse…determined. I haven’t found the token which unlocks the gate nor grants me access to the party, but perhaps it’s a party I wouldn’t want to go to even if I was invited.

 

Reflecting back when I wrote “Keeping it 100”, the halfway point to where I am now, a lot of what I talked about still rings true; the need to pursue virtue, truth and higher ideals, understanding people as they are, understanding how we can be wrong, the slow but accelerating degeneration of society, and how we have serious and complex problems that need solving by the mature, intelligent, wise and ethical adults of the world. I won’t pin it all on this, but Covid (and how we handled it) changed a lot of people, or more accurately, accelerated the change/warping. I wrote about the derangement of the modern human here.

 

I’ve started off on a bit of glum note, forgive me, I can’t help but feel that the calm and critical, the empathetic and understanding, doesn’t seem to sell well. People don’t want to or have time to think. The cost of being open-minded, eh? I contend with the material I write as I write it – it comes through me; it’s not just writing about some random topic week to week – and I ask my readers to do the same. It takes a significant amount of time to fully write each article, I’m not a newspaper article simply filling a gap in the 24-hour news cycle only to be forgotten the next day.


turned on desk lamp beside pile of books
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash.

I do spend an above-average amount of time alone, but this disconnecting from society helps me with my insight and overview of understanding the human condition and society at large. I’m aware of the dangers and pitfalls of isolation which can be bad, but it’s necessary in what I do. I also feel it forms part of the reason why people don’t understand why I do what I do, and why they don’t intuit/see what I intuit/see.

 

So, why do I keep doing what I do? As I’ve said previously, I feel morally obligated, I feel called forward to. In a world that seems to increasingly make no sense – the absurdity of life, chaos, madness, stupidity, sheer randomness and idiocy – it perhaps makes the most sense to continue to do what I do. I’m a tad scared for humanity, but I’m doing my best to be courageous.

 

It's probably no surprise that if a list some of my favourite articles out of the 200 (a little more with my short-running “Take 5 Tuesday” segment), the one’s I feel I got the most satisfaction out of writing, they would reflect what I’m most about and wrestling with – not necessarily the one’s that got the most views (although a few of them have winks). Click the links to read each one.

 

-       Disposable Humans

-       Fantasy and Reality (Part I and II)

-       In a World of One

-       Hermit or Hero

 

Every week I’m trying to make sense of nonsense, to skipper a ship calmly into port through the rough seas, to pilot a plane through the turbulence and land safely on the tarmac, and I hope I’m helping you as the reader to navigate your lives with your own contexts.  

 

At the end of my “Keeping it 100” article I wrote this sentence:

 

“I don’t have all the answers, but I’m searching for them and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let things get worse. And if that isn’t ‘keeping it 100’ then I don’t know what is.”

 

So, what, if anything, has changed?

 

I still don’t have all the answers, the difference is that I’m no longer searching for ALL of them, only certain ones which I make evident in my writing. Also, I find asking the right question to be more important than finding the right answer. To paraphrase my university professor who took me for critical thinking, “a question stops being a question not when we find a truth, but when it’s no longer a question.”

 

I apologise for allowing things to become worse, I have failed you in that regard, but I remain as committed as ever to rectify the situation. To the extent of Elder Zosima in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, to “make yourself responsible for all of men’s sins”, as the pathway to salvation and truth, my work is only beginning.

 

Many more of you may hear of me in five years’ time, or you may never hear of me again. Either way, I shall continue my work truly and conscientiously, no matter how isolated and lonely I feel, awaiting unknown friends to come and seek me.


Man playing basketball at sunset near beach
"I want to fly like an eagle" - Photo courtesy of Martyn Foster.

Please consider donating at one of the links below, if you are able to do so, I would very much appreciate it.



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I have to say that in this mad, mad world we live in, your articles each and every week are the one thing i genuinely look forward too and make sense. I truly hope that others read your articles and will be able to understand themselves and the world we live in better so they can lead a more fulfilling and contented life. You have helped me no end love :-) X ❤️ Please keep writing and hopefully more people will follow each week and maybe find it in their hearts to make even a small donation to help you to continue your work.

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Bless your soul, mum, I'm grateful that I've been able to help you (and others) and continue to do so. Love you too xo ❤️

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