By April Martin

There’s a specific kind of silence that comes after too many losses.
It’s not peace. It’s not stillness.
It’s a weight.
Like the world has gone on without you,
and you’re just a ghost trapped in the amber of your own attempts.

Lately, I feel like I’m drifting.
No shore. No compass.
The world burns, scrolls, floods, forgets:
And I’m here asking questions that feel both foolish and holy.

Why do I keep trying?
Why do I pour ink into work that goes unseen?
Why do I sculpt meaning out of dust, knowing full well it might never matter?

The answers don’t come easily.
But the questions won’t leave me alone either.

I used to believe success had a shape.
A cold, hard, measurable thing;
Stamped on paychecks. Framed on walls. Echoed in applause.

But I chased that shape.
I sprinted toward it like it was salvation.
And all I found at the end were graves:

A studio I poured my soul into; dead.
A master’s program was interrupted by grief, and I never caught up.
A comic I loved, snuffed out mid-breath.
Books I bled into, turned away like beggars at the gate.

What do you do when your proudest moments become your deepest disappointments?
When the dreams you dared to believe in
end up as chalk outlines on the pavement?

You get quiet.
You go numb.
You start to wonder if maybe you were never meant to win in the first place.

But even then;
The fire doesn’t die.

Redefining Success (Before It Kills Us)

At some point, we have to ask ourselves:
Who defined success for us?

Because it wasn’t the artists.
It wasn’t the mystics or the monks or the rebels.
It was the machine.
The system.
The colonial, capitalist mirage dressed in gold and grind and endless productivity.

They told us success meant money. Prestige. Exposure. A product.
They told us to measure our worth in volume, in clicks, in awards.
They told us if we didn’t make it “big,” we didn’t matter.

And like good soldiers, we obeyed.

But here’s the truth no one profits from:
That definition of success is a lie.
Worse, it’s a weapon.

It keeps us small.
It keeps us quiet.
It keeps us afraid to try again.

So I’ve stopped chasing it.

Success, to me now, is something quieter.
Something truer.

It’s the moment you keep writing, even when you’re shattered.
It’s the day you decide not to quit, even though the world hasn’t clapped.
It’s daring to live in alignment with your values, even if no one sees it.
Even if it earns you nothing.

Success is doing the thing anyway.
Because it’s who you are.
Because it’s the language of your soul.
Because burning with purpose, even alone,
is better than being applauded for something that’s not you.

That’s success.
Not a product.
Not prestige.
Not proof.
Just presence.

And that’s the part they don’t put on the self-help posters.

They don’t tell you that real success isn’t about being seen.
It’s not about being paid.
It’s about not letting this world turn you into a silence.

Because this world is loud, yes;
but it’s not deep.
It’s scrolling, not searching.
It rewards performance, not presence.

And in the middle of that circus,
the act of telling the truth becomes an act of rebellion.

Art matters more now, not less.
In the face of corruption, conformity, and collapse;
we need myth. We need madness. We need meaning.

We need someone brave enough to say:

I see the cracks in the sky and the fractures in the system,
and I’m still going to paint anyway.
Still going to write anyway.
Still going to feel anyway.

Because I’m not here to win.
I’m here to witness.
To remember.
To carry the last honest thread of the human soul through this gauntlet and out the other side.

I feel far from people lately.
Even those I love feel like echoes from another timeline.
We smile. We text. We cope.
But deep down, we’re all just trying not to vanish.

And yet;
despite the grief, the noise, the systemic erasure of tenderness;
I keep returning to this page.
This pen.
This truth.

Not because I believe I’ll be rewarded for it.
But because I believe it’s mine.

This fire.
This voice.
This sacred refusal to shut up.

So if you’re out there, cracked, quiet, questioning;
I want you to know: You’re not alone.
Not even close.

You are one of the last ones carrying light through this storm.
You are not broken.
You are forged.

And success?
It’s not something they give you.
It’s something you claim.
In the dark.
With no witness.
And no applause.

You just keep going.

“True success is not recognition, but defiance;
The fire that refuses to go out,
even when the night is long and the world forgets your name.”
— April Martin

I Turn to You

So now I ask you,
the one still reading through the noise,
the one who hasn’t looked away yet;
what does success mean to you?

Not the version you inherited.
Not the one sold to you in classrooms, in ads, in the slow scrolling death spiral of social media.
But the one that lives inside you.

The one that maybe you’ve buried.
The one that doesn’t come with a trophy, but a pulse.

When was the last time you felt proud, even if no one noticed?
What are the moments that changed you, not because they were shiny, but because they were true?
Whose approval are you still chasing, and why?
What would success look like if it weren’t about proving anything, but about becoming?

Let this be your line in the sand.
Your map redraw.
Your quiet revolution.

Because maybe success isn’t something we’re meant to climb toward.
Maybe it’s something we grow into.
Layer by layer.
Scar by scar.
Truth by raw, honest truth.

So tell me;
what does your success feel like?
And are you brave enough to redefine it before the world defines you out of your own life?

The Fire That Refuses to Die

Redefining Success (Before It Kills Us)

I Turn to You

Purple Inkwell Studios

The Fire That Refuses to Die

Redefining Success (Before It Kills Us)

I Turn to You

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Purple Inkwell Studios