212. Graduation Day

<p>Four years ago, almost to the day, I moved to Colombia. Four years ago, I decided to become a writer.</p> <p>Four years is how long it takes to get a college degree. Today, I’m graduating.</p> <p>It might seem strange that I didn’t think of myself as a writer. By the time I set out on this mission I had already written one best-selling book.</p> <p>But writing was still frightening to me. Every time I sat down to write, I felt a sense of agony and fear, and I wanted to run away.</p> <h3 id="todayismygraduationday">Today is my "graduation day"</h3> <p>Now that I’ve dedicated myself to writing for the past four years, I feel confident in calling myself a writer. Since it takes four years to get a degree in something, I declare today, January 9th, 2020, to be my graduation day.</p> <p>Something to ask yourself as you listen to this: What transformation have you made? What commitments and changes and sacrifices did you make to make that transformation?</p> <p>My quest to becoming a writer took some big commitments, changes, and sacrifices – but by making these changes, I was getting something I wanted.</p> <h3 id="whyimovedtocolombiatobecomeawriter">Why I moved to Colombia to become a writer</h3> <p>By moving to Colombia, I was doing two primary things things:</p> <p>One: I was choosing a place where I knew I could build routines I wanted to build to do the things I wanted to do. I wanted apply the things I had learned about how to be more productive in producing creative work.</p> <p>Second, really, wrapped up in the idea of being able to build the routines I wanted to build, was a behavior-shaping constraint: By moving to Colombia, I was also moving myself far away from distractions. When I lived in Chicago, for example, I could easily fly across the country on a whim, just because there was a neat conference going on, I got a speaking opportunity (usually not paying much, if at all), or even a friend was having a cocktail party in New York.</p> <p>But now I can’t fly to any major U.S. city on a whim. From Medel