I recently went to a conference on the Inklings, a literary group that included C.
I recently went to a conference on the Inklings, a literary group that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Both Lewis and Tolkien were very humble writers albeit with different approaches to writing. While their contemporaries such as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and other modernists were out there thinking they were going to save the world, Tolkien just liked to create worlds and did it his whole life. He even said in a letter that he had "wasted" 17 years of his life on The Lord of the Rings. Here is a man who is creating a whole new genre but thinks he's just obsessing, not because he wants fame and fortune from it but because he sees himself as being distracted from more important things (like studying Anglo-Saxon languages?) Humility is an underrated virtue. Does success follow your effort? Maybe, maybe not. Just ask Van Gogh. The man painted hundreds of paintings but never saw any of his success. Here on Medium I never thought I'd make money or gain followers when I started. It was actually a surprise for me that anyone on here would want to read articles about complex problems in theoretical physics. Am I successful? Well, I still have my day job. On the other hand, I know a lot more about physics than when I started, so I would say I am.