I was 22 when I discovered my purpose in life:
I wanted to become a writer.
The moment I found out you could actually make money from a blog, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. So I bought a domain, set up hosting, and started writing about my life.
And guess what?
It was absolute shit.
I was 22 with almost no life experience. I could write, and I tried hard, but I didn’t have my own voice yet. I was basically parroting the writers I looked up to.
The result was bland and lifeless. Like a black-and-white photocopy of the Mona Lisa.
But I thought, My heroes got famous writing about XYZ. I’ll write about XYZ and eventually I’ll get famous too.
And I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what that life would look like. Tropical beach. Sunset. Palm trees. Ice-cold Dos Equis. Toes in the sand. Beautiful Latin girl sitting next to me.
I knew I’d eventually get there.
I just had no idea how.
Three Years of Getting Nowhere
So I spent the next few years trying everything. YouTube. Different writing styles. Different topics. Anything that might finally get people to pay attention to my blog.
Nothing really worked.
Then, about three years in, I got a message.
Not a text. Not an email.
A feeling.
Move to Mexico.
It was probably the strongest gut feeling I’d ever had. It didn’t feel like something I needed to think about. I just knew I was supposed to go.
It was like Morpheus standing in front of me saying:
You want to become a professional writer? Take the Mexico pill. Or take the other pill, stay in the USA, and keep being a wannabe.
So I took the Mexico pill.
Within 30 days, I was lying on a beach in Mexico watching the sunset. Palm trees above me. A few beers deep. Toes in the sand. A gorgeous 20-year-old from Guadalajara sitting next to me.
Then it hit me.
I’d seen this before.
It was almost exactly what I’d been imagining for the previous three years. Except now I wasn’t daydreaming about it.
I was living it.
Then Something Else Happened
The beach wasn’t even the most important part. People started talking to me. Everywhere I went, people wanted to know:
Where are you from? What are you doing here? Why are you living in Mexico?
And the one I’ve probably heard a thousand times since:
“I wish I could do what you do.”
I was just a 25-year-old kid with a buzz cut and a baby face, but suddenly people thought my life was interesting.
I remember sitting in a thatched-roof bar one night when two guys in their 60s told me, “If I could go back and do things differently, I’d be doing exactly what you’re doing.”
Then one of them told me:
“You’re my hero.”
Their wives were in the bathroom, obviously.
In a pretty short amount of time, I’d gone from practically invisible to feeling like the most interesting man in the world.
And eventually I realized something:
The guy who couldn’t get anyone to read about his life had finally started living a life people wanted to hear about.
That was what had been missing.
I Needed Something to Write About
I wanted to become a better writer. But I didn’t just need more practice.
I needed more life.
I needed experiences. I needed stories. I needed opinions that actually came from me instead of somebody I’d been reading.
Moving to Mexico gave me that.
I wish I could tell you I’d figured this out beforehand. That I’d made some brilliant plan to move to another country because I knew it would make me a better writer.
Bullshit.
I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to write, and when my gut screamed MOVE TO MEXICO, I listened.
Looking back, I think the universe knew what I needed better than I did.
The Real Reason I Moved to Mexico
Sure, I love the culture, the cost of living, the food, and the women.
But when I look back at why I ended up here, I think it was about something bigger.
I wanted to become a writer.
Mexico gave me something to write about.
It gave me stories. Experiences. Mistakes. Different ways of looking at the world. Most importantly, it helped me stop copying other writers and finally gave me enough of my own experiences to start sounding like myself.
Maybe that’s what happens when you commit to something without knowing exactly how you’re going to get there. You start moving in one direction, and sometimes life points you somewhere you never would’ve thought to go on your own.
For me, that was Mexico.
For you, it’ll probably be something completely different.
So when your version of the Mexico pill shows up, don’t spend the next five years staring at it.
Take the fucking pill.
See what happens.
Your man,
Morpheus Uncle Blayde
