If you want to know what a day in my life actually looks like, these seven vlogs give the honest answer: it is mostly the same handful of things done on purpose. Yoga, tennis, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, time with my kids, and crypto videos that pay the bills. My view now is that a good day is built from routine more than from big moments, and that the routine is what keeps me sober, healthy and working. I don't edit out the parts where I look irrational, because that is usually where the lesson is.
Everything below was filmed in early 2025, between January 5 and March 12, and I have put the entries in the order they happened so you can watch my thinking move. In the January 5 entry the day is yoga, music in my studio and a lot of basketball. By January 10 I am writing that helping others is the secret to staying sober and healthy myself. Then the crypto work gets more serious. In the February 13 entry a sponsorship for playing a game paid me roughly $400 for less than an hour of work, and I am asking what kind of music I want to be known for. ICP, short for Internet Computer Protocol, is the part of my income I talk about most. In my experience it's the best investment I've seen since Bitcoin in 2014.
The middle of the series is about people. In the February 27 entry I zoom my camera out so you can finally see my hands, because I realized my head-only videos had let me get lazy. On March 4, in the resentments entry, I write about releasing a resentment against a family member after months of tension, and I describe being paid $300 in cash to set up ICP for a guy I know from AA, which is my usual rate for about an hour. I am grateful for that, and I am also honest about where money came from before. When I was a correction officer I made about $20,000 a year, working 160 hours a month, so an hour of this work now is about a fifth of what a whole month used to pay.
The most recent entries show the business side getting more deliberate. In the March 12 entry I describe finding my confidence on ICP grants. I had asked five projects for thousands of dollars' worth of their tokens to promote them, and I had been approaching it defensively. Most of those asks cost a dollar or two to make. The most expensive was Decide AI, around $20 or $30 if they said no, and they were the first to send the money. I also forgot a paid one-hour call while I was on a live stream. The person chose to reschedule, and I owned the mistake instead of hiding it.
Here is how to read the rest. If you want one full day, the March 5 entry puts yoga, a windy tennis match, an offer on an account holding 1,500 ICP and an AA meeting about resentments into a single day. The yoga and AA routine is the backbone of most of these entries, and if you want the recovery side in more depth, my Alcoholics Anonymous page and yoga page go further. For the whole month of entries in context, see my March 2025 vlogs and diary.
If you are holding ICP and want a second opinion on your own position, I do personal video reviews at jerrybanfield.com/review/.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- A Day in My Life: Helping Others Is the Secret (June 17, 2026)
- A Day in My Life: Resentments, Abundance, and 11:11 (June 17, 2026)
- A Day in My Life: Yoga, Music, Basketball, and AA (June 17, 2026)
- A Day of Transformation: Confidence, Crypto Grants, and ICP (June 17, 2026)
- A Day in My Life: Yoga, Tennis, ICP, and Family (June 17, 2026)
- A Day in My Life: Crypto, Freestyle Rap, and Vegan Lunch (June 17, 2026)
- Talking With My Hands: Body Language, Tennis, and Daily Habits (June 17, 2026)
A Day in My Life: Helping Others Is the Secret
From my video published June 17, 2026.
Good evening, everyone. It's January 10th, 2025, my 4,974th day on YouTube. I'm a full-time YouTuber, and I have been for a really long time. This is what I did today. I'll put the most clickbait crap I can think of on the title and see if you'll watch it. I think you'll enjoy my life. Maybe you'll hate it. It's fine. Whatever. I'm really grateful I have such a wonderful life, and every day I try to share that with others. I'm glad you're one of the people who might be willing to receive it.
Helping others is the secret
I went to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting today, and we talked about how helping others is the secret to staying sober yourself. To me, this really applies to everything else. If you want to be healthy, helping others be healthy will often be the best way to keep yourself there. If you want to be a good parent, help other people with their kids. If you want to have money, help other people be wealthy. That, to me, is how the world works. I'm helping other people be wealthy by making videos about Internet Computer Protocol, because in my experience it's the best investment I've seen since Bitcoin in 2014. Today I sent out some free coupons to a few people I'd love to talk with, including Aaron Bremster and Six Figs. I'd been meaning to do that for a while, and today I had some extra time.
I went to yoga this morning, so I got up a little after seven. I got the kids ready for school, although Laura does most of it. Then I went in and recorded a music video. I think this morning is all I did. It's funny how quickly you forget what you did this morning, and yet you're so sure you know what happened 20 years ago. At this point, 20 years ago is just a story. You're literally making up whatever happened before. Have you ever seen pictures of yourself where you think, I don't remember that at all? And not like a drunk blackout, either.
Share the specifics, find the answer
At the AA meeting today, I shared how much I appreciate it when people share specifically what's going on. Does this guy have ADHD? How does he change topics so much? Well, it keeps it interesting, doesn't it. If you tell me you're having a specific health problem, then maybe I've read a book or something that can help with that. I came into an AA meeting one night and said, I'm tired of getting these snotty, stupid little head colds. There's got to be a thing I can learn to do or a book I can read to help fix this. The first guy I told that to said, yeah man, just read this book called Breath by James Nestor. It literally changed the way I breathe, and I don't get little head colds anymore.
Think about how amazing that is. I've had hundreds of those colds in my life, and I don't get them anymore. I read a book and did what it said. One thing I did as part of reading that book is use mouth tape to tape my mouth shut at night so my body doesn't sneak in mouth breathing while I sleep. I also slowed down my breathing intentionally. The animals that live the longest tend to breathe the slowest, with the longest in-breaths and out-breaths, whereas the animals that die the fastest tend to either mouth breathe or breathe very quickly. I'm breathing like an elephant today instead of panting like my dog.
Why losing hurts more than winning feels good
After the AA meeting, I went and played tennis, and I got my butt whooped 6-0, 6-1. I got frustrated, and it's not really about the way I'm playing. It's the feeling that I'm out of control with my focus. Why do I take all the shots I hit nicely for granted, or get the tiniest amount of joy when I hit a shot that lands in and my opponent can barely return it or misses it completely, but I feel so much misery when I dink a shot into the net? Why do I feel so much worse screwing it up than I do getting it right? That's human psychology right there.
It's like how I give the kids $10 and fine them a dollar, and the dollar fine hurts them much worse than the $10 gives them joy. Maybe that's why Elon Musk wants to regulate the algorithm to down-regulate negative content. That said, negative content can have its place and its time, like all my negative crypto videos saying that everything but ICP is a meme coin.
Finding people I vibe with
I went to yoga this morning, and I love doing yoga. There are so many beautiful girls there, and there are guys too that I vibe with. One thing that tends to be a bit challenging for me is finding guys I vibe with, and the yoga studio seems to have the most of them. Even in AA meetings, a lot of the guys are not people I would hang out with or be friends with. I've sponsored a guy for five years, and I don't think we've ever done anything outside of going to AA meetings and meeting at my house to work the steps. I don't think we've ever been out to lunch, and maybe I should fix that. I have a sponsor, and we've been out to lunch a few times, and I've worked with him for about a year. I went out and did things with my last sponsor too. But I don't vibe with a lot of the guys at AA, whereas the yoga guys I do tend to vibe with.
There was a guy at yoga today, and Laura had asked me a couple of days ago if we could just pay somebody to do things like the baseboards in the house. The baseboards are still off from the hurricane, back in September or October, whenever we got that one-two hitter of Helene and Milton. It was a good time. But the baseboards are still off. I said, I'll just do it. I'll buy a table saw, measure it, cut it to 45-degree angles and hammer the baseboards in. How hard can it be?
I talked to this guy at yoga, and that's exactly what he does. He said, I love doing baseboards, and they're more difficult than you'd think, and that's why I love doing them. Talking to him, I thought, all right, we're going to do this. You just come over and fix the whole house. I came home and told Laura, you were right and I was wrong. We got money from the insurance company and an SBA loan, so let's just do it. I'll sit or stand here and earn $300 an hour doing calls with people on ICP and $100 per coin in my mastermind. I'll make that money, and then we'll pay somebody who's good at doing stuff around the house to make it look nice.
The fence, and my own irrationality
I fixed the fence and saved probably $500 or $1,000 by doing it myself. It was fun, but it was a pretty easy repair too. I fixed Laura's parents' fence with my father-in-law. It's a little crooked and jacked up, but it's strong. Definitely strong. I've got crossbars overlapping, and it's screwed in with one-to-three-inch screws, so that thing's not falling down where I fixed it. It does look like I did it, though. I'm not a pro fence guy.
I was going to say I digress, but the whole thing is one long digression. I would love to listen to somebody else's vlogs like this, though. I just don't know who to listen to. It's amazing how there are simple things you want to do that you never get around to. I've been wanting to watch pro tennis players to learn how they swing. Have I Googled it? Have I searched for a video on it in months of playing tennis? Not once. Sometimes my own irrationality really bothers me. Why, bro? You paid $280 twice for a tennis coach, you paid $240 five or six times by now, thousands of dollars for this racket club membership and coaching clinic, but you haven't watched one free video on how to swing a tennis racket, with no ads, because you already paid for it. It's okay. It's fine. As long as you can laugh at and be comfortable with your own irrationality and see it, at least there's hope. You don't have to be like that forever.
I was also hoping to do some of these vlogs earlier in the day, but it's nine o'clock and I'm still trying to walk the dog, shower, and go to bed with Laura around ten. So I'm cramming it all in. Maybe this vlog won't go on for 20 minutes.
Grateful for this life, and the lives that didn't go this way
I was thinking today how grateful I am to have this life and these kids here. I don't know how many lifetimes I didn't get to raise a family properly for one reason or another. I've had some very powerful dreams that felt like other realities. I remember one dream one night where we were all on this planet that was kind of like Earth, but it wasn't Earth. We were watching this white comet-looking thing come down fast and hard, and we realized maybe it's a meteor. Then it hits and goes off like a nuclear bomb. We don't die right away, we all start running, and then annihilation. And I wake up. I wonder how many scenarios there were like that, where I didn't get to really enjoy all this time with the family.
I was kind of thinking the opposite too. It's sad how this will all be so gone and forgotten one day, like it never happened. Well, it's happening now. I teared up a little bit thinking about all of it, because I don't need this body to live. I live in many bodies. I create all bodies. I am God. This is my universe. I've created many lifetimes before where things didn't go so well, and how nice that this one is going well. You're like, whoa.
We went to the store with my mom at Whole Foods tonight, which was a fun way to hang out with her. My mom also spent the afternoon with my daughter. My wife and I played frisbee today while my son was doing soccer, and it was so much fun. I love how cute my wife looks when she's running around throwing a frisbee. She struggled with catching, and I struggled for quite a while with throwing. The inside of my arm is sore from it all, actually. I did power yoga this morning, then tennis, and then played frisbee.
Physical activity changes everything
I love noticing how much physical activity I get in a day. I know it is hard if you have gotten stuck in a negative reinforcement loop where you are so unhealthy that you can barely move, but physical activity is where so much of this turns around. I was talking to a guy on the phone recently who is struggling with dating. He is overweight and he is in pain. I went out to eat with him, and I could see it plainly: look how you eat. Of course you are overweight. And then physical activity becomes more difficult, and then you do not feel good about yourself, and then women do not want to go out with you and date you because you do not feel good about yourself, because you will not change your diet.
In my experience, when you eat a whole plant-based diet, having a body that is physically fit is a lot easier. That said, I weighed myself the other day after switching to not eating at night. I cut my eating off at about 4 p.m. today. The scale says my body is 170 pounds, 19% body fat, with 128 pounds of muscle. I look at that and think this body can do just about anything. I am going to weigh 170 with 19% body fat and around 130 pounds of muscle, and I find myself asking, would I have to do something drastic to change that?
Then again, I sometimes think I should trim a little body fat and get down to 15%. But first, why? And second, am I really going to stop eating the things I enjoy? Today I cut up an apple and put cinnamon and sugar on top of it, and it was delicious. Do I need to cut that out, or are we being too nitpicky here? The body works great. It feels great. And the mind is extremely effective.
Giving what I have to people who are ready to receive it
I shared at a meeting that one frustration for me has been that I have so much to give, but many people are not prepared to receive it. It is like first thing in the morning when you are just waking up and somebody comes in, turns on a bright light, and the sun hits you in the face. You want to say, stop, stop, I cannot handle that much right now. I have learned that I need to share my message and share what I have with the people who are prepared to receive it, and to be prepared to receive what I want too.
There are messages I was not prepared to receive until I finally was. There were lots of messages that I should get sober. I finally heard it when my wife said it the last time, after everyone else had already made it clear that I should stop drinking too. I shared at my A meeting that I swear it takes 30 or 40 times for people to tell me things I do not want to hear before it sinks in. And I am glad it does, because I am really happy with my life today. That is what I have to give. What I have to give is where I am at, and you get a real raw look at that in my videos.
It is okay if some people just want to be miserable and suffer, if they do not want happiness and they do not want health. I have got that to offer, but I can only give it to someone who will receive it. That is also why I generally do not read my YouTube comments, although I do a bit more on this smaller channel.
Wrapping up the day
I think I have covered the highlights of the day. Laura is running a marathon at Disney this weekend, so I am really excited about that tomorrow. If I have time, I will fit in a vlog on the road, and I have all my crypto videos scheduled out through Monday. I made three songs today, which was so much fun. I listened to them in the car with the family. Yes, there was some weird, creepy music at certain points, but that is part of the adventure, and I love treating my music as an adventure. If you want to follow more of this raw, day-to-day look at how I am living, you can find it all in my Life playlist. I hope you will give it a try.
A Day in My Life: Resentments, Abundance, and 11:11
From my video published June 17, 2026.
You're about to experience March 4th, 2025 here with me, Jerry Banfield. It's my 5,027th day on YouTube, my vlog that I'm technically recording the next day. And I'm grateful that this morning, which is a Tuesday, I wake up and I get a message from the family member I've had months of tension with because of my not talking to them and complaining to everybody about them. They messaged me back accepting my apology and saying, let's move on, everything's fine, thanks for telling me this. So I feel really relieved. Their response is nice, but the main thing I did is I released this. When we took personal inventory and were wrong, I promptly admitted it. Three months in, I would hope to be more prompt than that, but I feel so relieved and open-hearted again. And I'm very hopeful I don't pick up another resentment like this.
Starting the day with a meeting and an unexpected job
I am starting the day off by getting a YouTube video filmed, taking the kids to school and dropping them off, and then I'm going to go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I get enough of my videos done for the morning that were set up for later, and then I go to my AA meeting. At my AA meeting, the topic ends up being around resentments, which is perfect, because I share what I just said here and in a bit more detail.
Then there's a guy at the meeting who wants me to help him out with his ICP portfolio and what he's doing with his crypto. He said he'll pay me cash to go help him out at his apartment. Now, that's not an offer I'd accept from just anybody, but I've known this guy for a few years in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I drive to his apartment after the meeting and work with him to set up his ICP. He gives me $300 in cash for a little over an hour of work, which is my usual rate.
At the same time, I'm really grateful. That's pretty amazing. There are days I worked when I was a correction officer where I made $20,000 a year, and that's less than $2,000 a month. Working full-time, risking my life, 160 hours a month, to only make a little over $1,500 a month. And in an hour I make a fifth, 20%, of what a month's work used to be, in just an hour. So I'm not special either. There's so much abundance on this planet for all of us.
An afternoon with the kids and a chatty friend
After I come home, I film some more videos for YouTube as usual, and then the kids come home. I enjoy the time with the kids, and my daughter goes across the street to my mom's house while I take my son to his hip-hop dance. When I get there, one of the yoga instructors from the yoga studio is there, which is such a pleasant surprise, to see her in a new environment. And she's very chatty.
After my recent experience, one frustration I had with this family member is that they're a private person. They're not so chatty. If they're just hanging out with me in the course of a family vacation or something, and we're cooking dinner, they don't want to talk. They just want to cook dinner. And for some reason, I interpreted through an extrovert mindset that the only way I would act like that is if I didn't like someone or I was ignoring them. But not everybody wants to chat all the time. Some people would rather just be quiet and enjoy the silence. So I really appreciated how chatty my friend, the yoga instructor, was.
We talked about the floods, and there was a lady there who could be my grandma. I guess she could be my mom too, depending on when she got started. But it's cool how St. Pete is like a little big city. She sounds like her daughters were in high school the same time my wife and her siblings were at school. So that was cool. We talked about all these things from a different perspective. And I actually watched Jack do his hip-hop more than any other time. I brought my iPad, but I didn't even use it, which was great. Meanwhile, the moms I talked to last week, neither of them were there. So I'm really glad this yoga instructor was there, because otherwise it would have been just me sitting there by myself with my iPad, which is fine.
A run, baseboards, and getting the house ready
I bring Jack home and drop him off at my mom's house. I hang out at my mom's house a little bit too, have some of the popcorn, have one Golden Double Stuf Oreo. And then I go for my little 10-minute, one-mile run. Nine and a half minutes, to be exact. Maybe nine minutes and 23 seconds to be more exact. But I go on my little run.
What was unusual today was that we had my friend Scott from yoga working on the baseboards for the house, which we've really needed. It's so nice now that behind me you can see the baseboards are back in. For months we haven't had the baseboards. So Scott went in yesterday, well, technically today for this vlog, and put all the baseboards in. I had to take this office to make room for that and move things around, so I spent probably a couple hours yesterday dealing with moving the office around. I cleaned out some of the extra stuff in the office. And I'm glad I still got my YouTube videos done, just enough to keep my pace of posting six videos a day. And I'm grateful that when I get home from my run, I'm able to get the office put back together so that when Laura comes home, everything will be ready for her.
I put the kids to bed, which is nice. They barely get in bed in time to get their $5 bribe for each of them. And they had a nice time at my mom's house; it was good to see her. I then sit in the room with the kids while they're falling asleep, because that's what they want either of us who's putting them to bed to do.
Tennis, train tickets, and a romantic bath
I watched some tennis, some more Andre Agassi versus Pete Sampras. And man, it's amazing. They were the number one and number two players in the world at the time, and Pete Sampras hits these serves that are just unreturnable, 120-mile-an-hour serves just zinging by Andre Agassi. I watched the highlights, and I figure it's going to help me prepare for tennis tomorrow, which it did really well last time. So I figure it worked last time, more of the same.
Laura gets home, and we have a nice chat about the day, the kids and everything, the baseboards, the house, and our DC trip. Laura books our train tickets for our DC trip. We're going to go to DC in June and we're going to take the auto train, so Laura booked the tickets for that today. We're excited for that. And I take Melanie for a shorter, like 20-minute walk tonight.
Then I wrap up by taking another bath, an Epsom salt bath where I can soak myself and relax. Laura and I talk so much that by the time I walk Melanie, we're not going to have time to go to bed together. Laura wants to go to bed earlier, and I still have my bath to take. So I take my bath, and this time I make a nice romantic bath for myself, something I don't know if I've ever done before. I'm like, we're going to take this bath anyway, why don't I light a candle and put a nice ambiance in the bath? So that was really enjoyable. I ended up being in there like 40 minutes instead of 20, by the time I took the 20 minutes to soak and finally got washed and everything. Although I still don't feel as clean after taking a bath as I do after a shower, so I might take a shower and a bath tomorrow. But I'm soaking in Epsom salts, I'm following the directions, and I'm in bed.
I walk out of the bathroom to go to bed, and it's 11:11. I'm like, yeah, baby. I love those repeating numbers. I take those as a sign that I'm on the right track, a simple way of putting it, that I'm in alignment, that my life is really flowing. So I'm grateful, really grateful as usual, to go to bed in Madeline's room with both the kids, in my little twin bed while they're in their twin bunk beds, and grateful for another day to share with you here. If you enjoy these daily slices of life, you can find more of them in my Life playlist.
A Day in My Life: Yoga, Music, Basketball, and AA
From my video published June 17, 2026.
It's January 5th, 2025, my 4,969th day on YouTube, and here's a look at what I did today. I'm back home after coming home from Legoland yesterday, and I was grateful to have lots of time to get back into the usual routines. I filmed a 45-minute crypto video today that'll be out tomorrow, a tutorial people have been asking for on how to use the network nervous system.
Back to yoga and feeling functional
I went to yoga this morning, a 75-minute class. It was a great stretch after standing up so much and getting a little muscle soreness from walking around Legoland for a few days without doing any yoga. I love doing yoga at least every third day, if not every other day. It really leaves my body feeling flexible and functional, and when my body feels that way it's much easier to love myself and to feel good. In my experience, a lot of the pain I've had in my body in the past, and that I see other people having, can be relieved with just stretching and strengthening and getting your energy to flow. I'm so grateful I've been doing yoga now for years, probably close to three years, averaging three or four classes a week. It's really helped my mental and physical health.
A trip to Whole Foods with the kids
I took the kids to the store after yoga. We went to Whole Foods and dropped $270 there. That seems like a lot, but then the dinner we had at Legoland one night alone was about $160, and the hotel and the tickets to Legoland were $1,200 for two days. So it's all relative. For $270 I bought a lot of food. I bought four things of hummus, ate one whole thing of hummus tonight at an unusual dinner I ended up having, and we ate a whole $10 thing of guacamole. I bought a 64-ounce thing of freshly squeezed juice. When I look in my cart, it's mostly fruits and vegetables. I got some roasted peanuts. I should have taken a picture of my cart, maybe I'll bring the camera next time and get that.
I also bought this thing of organic, essentially Whole Foods style Lucky Charms. It's funny, because the real Lucky Charms would go fast in my house, but everybody hated the organic version. I like it, although Lucky Charms definitely tastes better. I'd just been thinking about it, like, I want some of that, so I got it.
Making music in the studio
This morning I got up and cleaned the kitchen, and I managed to make three music videos today, which felt really good, on my original channel. I love making the videos just by playing around in my studio, hitting random buttons and loading up a few synthesizers all at once. I even submitted a new album this morning with 17 tracks on it, about an hour and a half of music called I See Ambient, like Internet Computer Ambient. It's a bunch of freestyle tracks. It's not the kind of music that gets stuck in your head as much, but I think I enjoy making it. It's playful, it's fun, and to me it's music that leaves you feeling better after you listen to it. It leaves you feeling inspired and hearing some new sounds.
I don't want to be stuck in a trance. Most music is made to get you into this trance, to just zone out and disembody. My music is meant to kind of break your trance. So I hope you'll try it. I'd love to get over 100 followers on Spotify; I've got about 91 right now.
Time with the kids and a day on the court
I'm glad I got to go to the store with the kids today and spend some time with them, washing dishes and stuff this morning, because the whole rest of the day I didn't get a lot of time with them. They went to do an activity at the Morian Clay Center downtown with Laura's family. They were out the whole afternoon, from about 1:30 p.m. until 6:45, when I went to my AA meeting.
I went to play basketball again today as well, and I hit 83 three-pointers in about 40 minutes, which is a three-pointer every 30 seconds. If you think a 25% field goal percentage for three-pointers is pretty good for somebody who's just shooting basketball for fun, then you're talking about taking a shot every seven or eight seconds and making one about every 30 seconds. There were several times I hit two to four three-pointers in a row today. I actually played a four-on-four game today, and I made three or four three-pointers in that game as well, but they scored in ones and twos. So at one point I had scored about half our team's points, which was fun. I had fun playing today. It's so nice, after practicing hitting all those three-pointers, to get to put it into action in a game.
How I eat
For dinner I had a whole thing of the hummus I'd bought, with carrots and celery, some Triscuits, and a cucumber. I don't usually have dinner anymore; I meant to have a second lunch. I eat three meals a day, but generally breakfast, brunch, and lunch, because it seems to work better for my body to eat earlier. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably just skip dinner, because I'm still really full three hours later. It's nice to let your food have time to digest before bed. I'll probably be in bed in about an hour and a half.
Familiar faces at the AA meeting
I went to my AA meeting tonight, and there was a guy I'd been thinking about a week ago that I hadn't seen in about a year. I'd thought it would be nice to see him again, and I saw him yesterday at the AA meeting and again tonight. I love that. There was also a girl I'd thought about, that it would be nice to see again because I hadn't seen her in a while, and she was at the meeting too. I hadn't recognized that she was there in a full meeting of probably 40, at least 40, maybe close to 50 people. And she shared. I haven't seen her in months, so it was nice to see her again for the first time in quite a while.
My sponsor was there, and we had a nice conversation. I realized I did the steps with him about five years ago, and I was wondering, do I even remember how to take somebody through the steps? I asked him, you came over to my house, right, and I had you read steps one through four on your own out of the 12 and 12, and then we did step five and read through and talked about some stuff. And then I had you come over again another time or two and we went through the rest of the 12 and 12. That's what we did, isn't it? It's amazing. It's a good thing I have these diaries, because now I can look back.
Why I keep these diaries
I'm wondering, though, will I ever listen to these diaries? How far away do they need to get before I listen to them? I definitely wish I had some diaries from a year ago, and I do have a few. At this point, do I want to re-upload the old diaries? I've got enough work with the new ones. I tried going back and recording days in the past, and all I can remember about some days from a couple decades ago is a minute or two. It's amazing how much detail you lose.
There was a girl at Legoland sitting at a table and journaling. Laura said, that's a serious commitment to journaling. We were at breakfast and she was sitting by herself at a table journaling. Well, these vlogs are definitely on par with that. I think this is good for self-reflection, like a tenth step in Alcoholics Anonymous, to just look at what you're doing. I think it's ideal to have a life that I'm comfortable sharing publicly. I'm giving you the details of my life here, the things that are most relevant.
On privacy and the unseen audience
To me, the main issue people have in their lives is thinking that you get to have a private life. In my view, you don't get to have a private life. Maybe the other human beings who are alive can't see what you're doing in your private life, but that's a minority. I've come to believe the disincarnated souls, the ones who are between lives and will be born soon, make up a huge audience that can see everything everybody's doing all the time. Once you become aware of them, there's no privacy.
I remember, when I used to be doing things myself, shall we say, thinking that my grandfather could see me even though I was alone in the house. I remember thinking how creepy that was, like, doesn't he have something better to do than watch me do this? But I also thought, he doesn't have a body anymore, he can really go wherever he wants to.
I had a dream a few years ago where my dad came to me. In the dream I was a professional tennis player, with people in the stands watching me play tennis, which is funny because only in the last four or five months have I gotten into playing tennis. I don't think professional tennis is on the horizon, because I enjoy playing tennis but it's not something I want to do the way I do my videos. I'm a professional content creator. I do these videos every day. I don't know that I want to play tennis every single day. I had fun playing basketball today, but there are things you do as a hobby and things you do as a pro. To me, I'm a professional at making videos; I've done probably 10,000 videos, thousands and thousands of hours of them.
Regardless, in this dream I was a professional tennis player, and my dad came up to me after the match. I said, Dad, where were you? I didn't see you in the stands. And he said, well, I'm up there, I was watching, I saw the whole game. And I said, well, where were you, I didn't see you. And he said, you just needed to look more carefully, look harder. He said, I come to all your games. I was kind of blown away. Then I remembered that he was dead, and I got all sad and hugged him and cried and fell on my knees, and woke up. But I remember the line he said: I come to all your games. I woke up with that. To me, in practical terms, that feels true: my dad comes to all the more significant events in my life.
I think about how I participate in my son's school. I'm there before and after he goes, I'm there for his performances, and I'm there for special days. Most days I'm not actually at the school, but I could show up anytime. I could pop in at any moment, especially if I were a volunteer like Laura is. And that's how I've come to look at it when you've had people who have passed. In my experience, you're not separated from them. They're not gone. They can pop in anytime you invite them.
Once you're aware of that, and you understand that dreams are a very effective mode of communication with people who've passed on, you can even start to connect directly and mentally with people sometimes. If you set an intention that you want to communicate with someone, you can match your frequencies up, like a Venn diagram, and get them to overlap enough to communicate. I've done that, especially when my dad first passed and I first got sober. I did it a lot of times. While I was awake, I had the equivalent of a mental conversation with my dad, and I could very strongly feel his presence.
I don't need that as much now. I was very lonely after my dad died, and now I've got people to talk to. I have people to talk to all the time. To me, the people who are on stage, if you look at this as a big play, need your attention most. You don't really need to interact with the audience as much. The people on the stage are making the play, making the drama. The audience is there watching. This way of looking at things has been really helpful for me.
Passing on what I've learned
I had a great talk with a guy about relationships and what I've learned in mine, things like monogamy and romance. It was really nice. This guy was born a few years after me and he's in a much newer relationship than I am. It was a great pleasure that he was open to sharing all these kinds of things. Nobody ever talked to me about this stuff, and the way I was able to share it with him meant a lot to me.
I love that when I learn something, I'm able to pass it on and someone else can learn it more easily than I did. That gives me great hope for humanity. We don't have to learn everything the hard way. Some of us learn things the hard way, and then many of us who have learned something the hard way can teach it so that many people can learn it the easier way, and we can all collectively advance.
One of the cool things I heard a while back is that they have to keep making IQ tests harder, because there's some kind of collective intelligence at work and old IQ tests tend to get easier and easier over time. It's as if the collective learns how to take an IQ test, so you have to constantly update the tests. It's not just answers leaking out or something. It's that the collective, if you ask enough people who have taken the test, somehow learns how to take it. I think that's really cool.
Choosing love over fear about the future
I have so much hope and positivity about what's possible for humanity. You'll notice I'm not into getting sucked into all the negativity. I'm not saying negativity is bad. Negativity is also relative. What you might think is positive, someone else might think is negative, and vice versa. What I'm saying is that I feel a lot of love and joy for the future, and I don't feel much fear or apprehension about it.
At the same time, I've been thinking I want to work with a hypnotherapist and see if I can remove and understand some of the fears I still have. That's one of the biggest differences I can feel today, looking at my kids versus remembering being a child and a teenager myself. It also makes me think of some of the stories Wayne Dyer told. He described having entities do surgery on him, and what they said they did was remove a lot of old, stuck fear. I can feel that there's some old stuck fear in my body, fear that the kids don't have, accumulated somewhere and just stuck there. And I believe there's a way to release it. Wayne Dyer had that experience in his 70s. Like what I was sharing with the guy I talked to at a meeting, I'd love to have that experience 30 years younger, get some of those old fears cleared out, and see what I can do.
Sometimes you say no to what you'll come to love
The last thing I'll talk about in this diary is that I may continue listening to Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. It's funny how I remember starting this book and thinking, no, I'm just not getting into this. Sometimes the things you really want are the things you'll be most likely to say no to at first. I was looking for more books to read, and my mom and my best friend from college kept telling me about these books they love. I'd start reading them and my first reaction would be, no, I'm not getting into this. But now I'm really glad I did get into this one. And it was okay to put the book down at first.
Sometimes you'll know you really like something because if you stop, you miss it. Whether it's a person you don't see for a while and then really want to see again, or a book you're reading, or even some of my own music where you listen and think, that was trash, and then weeks later you're still thinking about it. Maybe it's something you're going to love, and you jump back into it. If any of this resonates with you, I share more of these reflections in my Life playlist, and I hope you'll keep loving these vlogs as much as I love making them.
A Day of Transformation: Confidence, Crypto Grants, and ICP
From my video published June 17, 2026.
You're about to experience March 12th, 2025 here with me, Jerry Banfield. I'm actually filming this the next day, and I think everyone should do a vlog like this because it's really helpful to take inventory of your life.
Finding My Confidence With the ICP Grants
One of the most interesting things that happened was a big change in how I look at the projects I'm working with on Internet Computer Protocol. I had asked five of them for thousands of dollars worth of their tokens in exchange for promoting their project. I went into it with this attitude of defensiveness, feeling like they should give it to me but betting they probably wouldn't, and being overly sensitive to comments. Then for some reason I had a shift. It was like, hold on, I found my confidence. Wait a minute, I'm one of the best people in the world to do marketing for OpenChat, Decide AI, ICPSwap, Water Neuron, Tracks, Gold DAO. There's hardly anybody else in the world in a better position than me to do marketing to help them sell more of their tokens. And they have more to gain from my marketing than anybody else.
I did one Decide AI video and it moved the market cap millions of dollars. I didn't even hype the price. I just talked about the tech and how I'm using it. People put in hundreds plus thousands of dollars, it stacked up, and that moved the market cap up millions. So I remembered my value. I started thinking back to how I used to approach dating. I just asked girl after girl out, went out on date after date, and got rejected over and over again. The first time I asked a girl out she said no, and I was all sensitive and hurt. But a decade later, I'm so used to getting rejected that it actually leaves me feeling good. At least I'm trying.
I remembered that in my crypto situation too. These projects only cost anywhere from a dollar to ask. The most expensive one, Decide AI, costs like $20 or $30 if you get rejected because they already sent the money. Some of the other projects only cost a dollar or two to ask. So the most I could even lose is five or ten bucks on some of these to ask for thousands. I realized I'd been doing this all wrong. These projects are going to give me this money, and I'm going to ask until they give it to me, and I'm going to tweak my pitch. The more of them that give it to me, the more the others will feel like they want in also.
Decide AI already sent the first one. Several of the others are passing currently, except I still need to submit one to Water Neuron, and I need to wait a little because they already transferred a bunch out. But I got my confidence. I'm going to ask until they give me the money, and in my mind there's nothing better they could do with this money than give it to me. I'm good at marketing, so I'm easily able to convince them of that. It's funny, a radical transformation from being all squeamish and awkward to being like, show me the money. It's a really nice transformation.
Part of that came from listening to Vanessa Van Edwards talk on Mel Robbins' podcast. Sometimes things just click. I noticed I was feeling anxious when I went in to look at the proposals, and I thought, what am I doing? I'm going to get in here and dominate this, because that's how I got here. I got to be a full-time creator by getting in and dominating, getting rejected, getting suspended, and getting banned, and taking one thing after another by having thousands of videos that hardly anybody watches, and just keep going and going. I'm grateful to record this in a vlog, because this was a day of big transformation.
The Rest of the Day: Kids, Bobby O, and Yoga
What else did I do? I got up and took the kids to school, was there by eight o'clock, and spent a little time snuggling in the back with my son after dropping my daughter off for safety patrol. I read my OpenChat messages and listened to Bobby O's older videos. Bobby O is the number one person who gets me hyped up about Internet Computer Protocol. He sees the big picture and how the tech fits in, and that's what really matters. The price, the graph, the charts, the narratives, even the individual projects don't really matter. It's the big-picture tech fit that really matters.
Then I got to my yoga class. I'm enjoying being a friendly person, and I can exercise my personality in a way to be popular. The way to do that is to like other people, so I'm really practicing that, especially at yoga, to like other people and to appreciate other people. And it's working. In most of the yoga classes I go to, there's somebody chatting me up. I'm very friendly with a lot of the people there, and I'm always trying to get to know people better.
I got to yoga class about 15 minutes early. I told my brain to just remember where I put my mat the day before and all the other details. There was a guy I hadn't seen in quite a while, so I put my mat next to him to catch up. This was a guy I had been a little cold with before, because sometimes if somebody's a bit too warm, we get like, hey, what's going on, why does this person want so much out of me? And I realized that I was pushing away the very people who could be my friends, like I wanted to be lonely. So I had a good chat with this guy and asked him what was going on and where he'd been. I had a nice yoga flow.
Tennis Against a Better Player
Then I went to play tennis. I'm grateful the weather was cooperative. The last two times I went to play tennis the weather was good, except for the coaching clinic, so I guess two out of three times. I got nice weather, no wind, nice sun. I won the second game, then lost the first set 6-1 and lost the second set 6-3. Anytime I can get three wins in against the guy I play on Wednesdays, I feel really good, because he's a significantly better tennis player. He's got a hard, fast serve, he can run all over the court, and he can hit pretty accurate shots. If I play up to the net, he'll easily lob them or hit them past me to the side. This is a guy who has played more tennis than me and is better than me, and I'm really grateful to get to play him. I won at least four games out of 16, which is doing great for me. I had a good chat with him and went home.
A Crypto Video for Friends and Family
That's when I had this transformation about what I'm doing with these grants. I need to be in there, confident, let's go. There's nothing better you could do with your treasury than to send it to me and have me promote it. After that nice transformation, I filmed a couple of crypto videos.
I had a great conversation with my wife and realized that I need to have a video crafted for my friends and family. I do all these crypto videos for people around the world, millions and millions of impressions, and people spend thousands and thousands of hours watching my channel every month. And yet I hardly send any of this information to my friends and family. I need a video crafted for friends and family who know nothing about crypto, who are busy, and who would just like to find an investment they can make some more money on. So I recorded a video specifically to send to them, and I hope it'll be useful for other people to send to their own friends and family who aren't crypto people but just should know about this.
I'm thinking, what happens when I'm ultra rich off of ICP and my friends and family say, hey man, why didn't you tell me about that? The price is so low right now, it's the perfect time to tell them all about it. I practiced doing the video with Laura. I gave her the basic version and she said I needed to dumb it down further. So much of this stuff, you think you're simplifying, but she doesn't know how money works on the back end, doesn't know how the internet works or the tech. I was telling her about stuff she didn't even know why she needed, because she didn't know how money and the internet work, which most people don't. So I made the video with that in mind. It's nice with friends and family because I can see the questions they're asking and make specific videos.
Reaching the Non-Crypto Masses
I also had a realization about my videos. I've been thinking about how to get out to a broader audience, but I'd been mistaking that for trying to reach a broader crypto audience, when really where I need to get to is the non-crypto masses. That's the broad audience. I need basic videos that explain basic stuff, bring ICP into that, and those are the videos that are easily shareable.
At the same time, I've made a bunch of videos for a more advanced crypto audience, and sometimes they don't like the beginner ones. But the beginner ones are often the ones that do really well over time, especially if you make something nobody has covered before. If you're the 500th video about Bitcoin mining, that's not going to get as many views because a bunch of other people already covered it. So I'm going to try to find where I can really fit in videos that people haven't done before and explain things for beginners in a way that nobody else has, in a way that's not covered well. I feel really good about that.
Forgetting a Paid Call
I was on a live on Twitch and I filmed some music videos too, and I completely spaced. Somebody paid $333 to talk to me for an hour, and for the first time I forgot. I straight up forgot. I was on my live stream and realized, oh my God, the call started 15 minutes ago, and I was literally on a computer and just had to click start Zoom, start meeting, and be in it. I messaged them on OpenChat, thankfully because they'd already messaged me there first, and said I was sorry, I'd been on a live stream and totally forgot, and that I could start now or they could reschedule. They said let's just reschedule, they'd already left. So I sent them a coupon.
A week off the calls and time with family
They rescheduled to Saturday, so I'm glad that was something we could handle. I want to make sure I remember the schedule: I had a call Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday, and then I have no calls for a week, which is great. I don't get the $300 an hour during that stretch, but I also get a whole week to spend with the family. We're going to go glamping and go to Universal, so I'm going to have a nice week without the calls to spend with the family, and I'm looking forward to that.
Getting asked to speak at the AA meeting
Then I went to the 5:30 Alcoholics Anonymous meeting today. I actually drove instead of walking, so I ended up getting there early for once. One guy asked me, he's like, hey, the other speaker didn't show up, do you want to speak? I'm like, sure, I'm always down to speak. The first guy spoke and really warmed the audience up. I love this guy, we have great talks. He got a little swearing in and there was lots of laughter, and I'm like, I'm gonna let it out now.
So I talked a lot about early sobriety. If you want to see a similar meeting I have online, you can search for Jerry Banfield's seven-year AA speaker meeting on the Jerry Banfield Experience YouTube channel. That seven-year AA speaker meeting was pretty similar to this one. Man, I had that room tearing up. The guy before me who spoke was laughing so hard he could hardly stop. The guy to my left when I was sharing was just laughing the whole time too. And at the same time, another guy was like, I really appreciate it, the way you shared leaves me feeling like I'm not alone. Because early sobriety is often a time of facing your own insanity and how crazy you are without a drink. Then you can see why you drink, because you're that crazy sober. So I really enjoyed sharing that.
A successful moment of parenting
I got home and had a really successful interaction with the kids. Madeline was kicking a soccer ball too hard and scaring Jack, and taking the soccer ball I just got for them and playing with it herself. Jack was crying. I encouraged him to express his feelings and talk about what was happening. As Madeline saw him start talking, she just walked off. I got my feelings hurt by that same kind of behavior last year and made a three-month resentment out of it, so I get it.
But Jack shared his feelings and was able to not spiral. And Madeline was able to move on without spiraling either. Nobody got in a fight or got in trouble. I told Jack, I love how you got your feelings hurt, you talked about it, you got it out, you learned something. That's incredibly productive. He kept saying, Dad, I got my feelings out, you like that? I'm like, yes, I love that. That's so much better than going into all this insane behavior and fighting and resenting. What you did is you processed hurt feelings and moved on very quickly, very effectively. In my experience, that is a really valuable skill. Some people die and never learn how to do that. I didn't learn how to do it until just years ago, and it's still hard sometimes.
So I'm so proud. I love that I get to parent my kids and help them learn these skills so much faster than I did. I helped put the kids to bed last night, took the dog for a walk, and listened to an old Bobby O video. I really got down with the idea that I want to do videos like this, ones that have such great information in them. You can find more of these everyday reflections in my Life playlist. I visited my mom for a little bit, then went to bed nice and early with Laura at 10:20.
A Day in My Life: Yoga, Tennis, ICP, and Family
From my video published June 17, 2026.
My friends, this is a day in my life. It's March 5th, 2025, here with me, Jerry Banfield. I decided to remove the "I'm a YouTuber" stuff from the title up there, because this is an autobiography and apparently nobody cares how many days I've been on YouTube. So I'm making this technically the next day, but Wednesday was another lovely day.
I woke up at 7 a.m. Laura takes the kids to school today, because I'm going to pick my son up later and she'll be out at night. I had a power yoga flow class followed by tennis on the schedule. I started to film a video about how billionaires are able to accumulate ICP while sabotaging the price. But then the stupid "sign in with Google" prompt pops up and doxes my email addresses all over the screen. So I restarted the video and went off to power yoga, all annoyed about Google. Later I finally took the time to figure out how to disable that prompt in Chrome.
Power Yoga and a Natural Hello
When I got to power yoga, there was a girl I also know from AA who I hadn't seen in a while. So I put my mat down next to her and caught up. My daughter told me a couple of days ago to just be my natural, friendly personality, because that's how I am. I'm grateful when I don't sabotage that by being weird or trying to ignore people. It's nice to feel natural. So I just put my mat down next to her and chatted.
The yoga class was a little intense. We held side plank for a minute and did the other elbow up to the knee. It was a great workout. After the class there was also another girl I hadn't seen there in about a month, so I said hi to her, and then went to play tennis.
Tennis in the Wind
The wind was gusting up to about 20 miles an hour, with consistent 10 to 15 mile an hour winds, and it looked like it might rain. But I told my friend that Thursday and Friday are booked up, so let's just meet and try to play today. We got the first set in and he beat me 6-2. I told him he had more to lose in the wind than I did, because the wind for my play style isn't going to affect me as much.
In the second set he started to spiral. He's a very consistent tennis player. I think he's won all but one set against me in months of playing every week. But this set he started hitting all kinds of shots into the net and wide and over. The wind was getting to him, because when it's blowing one way, you serve one side and need to hit it harder, and the other side you have to hit it more gentle. His short shots, he was trying to place them, but I adjusted pretty well. I was dinking little shots that the wind was just barely blowing over the net, and my serves were dropping extra short. So I was up 3-1, but then it started to rain. We went home, and I was glad we were able to get a game in.
Crypto Videos and Locking Up ICP
I came home and recorded a better version of that same crypto video, one I'm really happy with, and it took off in the views, which I'm happy to see. I got a call scheduled for Thursday and Friday too, which is great. Somebody paid 300 bucks for a new call, and I'd been weeks without having a single call.
Today I put an offer on an account that has 1,500 ICP in it. I'm thinking I want to lock more ICP up instead of holding it liquid. In my experience, the biggest danger with holding liquid is that I sell early. How stupid would it be to dump 1,500 ICP for 100 bucks each and then watch it go up to 500, 600, 700? I know how dumb that feels, and I can't stand to do it again, especially with all the passive income on the ICP. When you sell early you miss out on a huge amount of rewards from that passive income.
So I put an offer in. The account is asking for around 1,550, and I scraped a lot of my liquid ICP together and put in an offer of $1,400 for it. Even if I bought it right now, I can't take control of the account for almost a month, so I'm willing to be patient. Maybe they'll accept my offer, maybe I'll need to put in a higher one. We'll see. But I think I'm going to lock up a lot more of my ICP.
Picking Up My Son and Seeing My Mom's Joy
I go pick my son up from school today, because Laura is going to hang out with her friends. One of her friends is getting married, so she's spending the day before the wedding with them. Laura's mom is kind enough to pick up Madeline from school and take her to her after-school activities. So I go pick my son up, and we have a good time. He listens. I made two new songs, so he listens to those on the ride home. I give him something to eat and then take him over to my mom's house.
He and my mom are having so much fun together, which is such a blessing. You see my mom get to have so much joy in her life, and my son really likes his time with her, which is awesome. I've wondered lots of times what the point of my mother and all the pain she's endured over the years was. Why? Why? And now, seeing her get some joy hanging out with my son and being there, it's like, okay, this is starting to make a little more sense.
I go home and crank out some more videos. I get a crypto review done, watch some of my old gaming videos, which I love, get my autobiography for yesterday filmed, and upload all of it. Then I go to get my son from my mom's house when my daughter comes home, and he doesn't even want to come home. He wants another hour there. My mom says that's fine. So I clean up around the house and finally get my son at 6:30, after he's been over there three hours. I get him home and I get to see my daughter after she's dropped off from school.
An AA Meeting About Resentments
After saying goodnight to the kids, I go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The same girl from yoga is there again. It's kind of funny to see her twice in one day, when sometimes I might not see her for weeks or months. She brought her dog this time, so I get to pet it a little, although the dog ends up throwing up on my chair. That's no big deal. I have dogs. I know how they are.
It was a great meeting. We talked about resentments, which I thought was just the right topic, since this week for me has been all about releasing resentments toward a family member. It's been extremely therapeutic. It's nice to hear what other people are going through, because that, to me, is how I get perspective and don't feel sorry for myself. I see what other people are dealing with and realize what I'm going through is the same kind of stuff. At the same time, I tell myself, let me not pick up any more resentments against anybody else. Let me do these crypto review videos without resentment, being more matter-of-fact, like, "Hey, this doesn't look like a great investment to me, I just think you all should know that," instead of "I hate this, let's kill it."
Bath, Shower, and a Grateful Night
I get home from my meeting. It's a little chilly and I only wore a short-sleeve shirt, so I don't spend too much time talking afterward. I take my dog on a little walk and then take my bath. I soak in the tub for 20 minutes. The night before, I spent about 40 minutes in the bath and was really in the zone. Tonight I was thinking, man, I've got stuff to do, let's wrap this bath up. So I soaked for 20 minutes, got out, and then took a shower right after the bath.
I hadn't taken a shower since Monday afternoon, and it's now Wednesday night. The shower really leaves you feeling clean. With the bath, you get out and it's like you just soaked in your own filth and spread it around a little bit. I get out, talk to Laura, and go to bed. We're in bed at 10:30, and I'm really grateful for another happy day in my life. If you enjoy these daily entries, you can find more of them in my Life playlist, and I'm glad to have the chance to share this one with you today.
A Day in My Life: Crypto, Freestyle Rap, and Vegan Lunch
From my video published June 17, 2026.
It's February 13, 2025, and this is my 5,008th day on YouTube. What I'm really excited about today is this: I tried a brand new game billed as the world's first fully on-chain, play-to-earn, real-time multiplayer game, and the team behind it sponsored me for 30 ICP plus 30 more ICP worth of the in-game token. I got the game fired up and I'm actually playing it in the background right now while I talk. I'm making money on it, which is really cool. At this point I'm just holding down a button and drilling. I am genuinely grateful that the crypto videos I do pay the bills.
That sponsorship works out to a couple hundred, around $400 ish. All I had to do was film a video and play a game. Super easy. It took less than an hour and it was fun. That's a great deal for me, it's a great deal for them, and it shows off what the technology can actually do. It gives people a way to get on the blockchain and use it and appreciate it. I'm using the ICP blockchain right now while I'm playing this game, which is super cool. The smart strategy in the game is technically to go row to row instead of straight down the columns, but I told people I'd be over in a certain spot if they wanted to come see me in game, so you could actually run into me there too.
Thinking about what I want to be next
I've been thinking a lot today about whether I want to be a freestyle rapper as my next thing. I really want to be a music streamer on Twitch, but what kind of music do I want to make? What am I most gifted with? I've made some dance music. I've made a bunch of instrumentals. But to me, the freestyle raps are the most special thing I think I can do, because they're so fun. I laugh during my freestyles. I've been obsessed with the question of what I need to learn to get better. Yes, I need to practice freestyle raps, but how do I even do that? I need to think about rhyming more words together.
I watched a video today with Eminem talking about how he says words differently and is always thinking about how to rhyme all these words together, and how he just writes down all the word combinations he comes up with. I'm thinking, is this what I'd really like to do next? Crypto is paying the bills today with sponsorships like this, which is awesome, and I'm very grateful for that. But the freestyle rapping is so much harder than making dance music. AI can make dance music now, and I've made dance music I've genuinely enjoyed listening to, but freestyling takes something else.
I've been listening to a bunch of Harry Mack videos lately and watching other Twitch music streamers, which has been fun. Something that can actually be kind of difficult is trying to find new music you enjoy and branching out. There's almost a fatigue we encounter by trying to take in something new. You get tired almost taking it in. But it's so important to take in something new to expand those brainwaves, to branch out, to enjoy life. So today I took in lots of new stuff and listened to some Harry Mack freestyles.
A day of tennis, yoga, and conversations
I went to yoga today, and I'm really happy to get back to posting this as a vlog instead of live streaming it. My thinking is that I want to do my live streams just as music streams. That's my thing. I want to be a music streamer.
I played tennis tonight, and there were only five guys on the court with me, and we were having fun joking around. Our tennis instructor was talking about how she was top 10 in the state of Florida. The competition here is insane because you have all these tennis academies. Tennis is mostly an outdoor sport, although they do have indoor courts, and there are a lot of tennis academies in Florida. It's brutal competition because people send their kids all over the world to play tennis. She told us how, at 17 years old, she was top 10 in the state and had a really bright outlook for her tennis career, but she got tired of her entire life being about tennis, of not being able to have a social life, of barely doing anything but going to school and doing tennis. That was cool to listen to.
She was also talking about how, if you want to be a professional in a sport, you really need to start around six years old. I was telling my son that he likes playing soccer, but I don't think he wants to be a professional soccer player, and I'm glad. I've gotten my son out on the tennis court hitting balls off the ball machine, he's played basketball, football, and soccer, so he's experimented. He says he wants to be a builder when he grows up, like a general contractor or an engineer or something, which I think is great. So I had those discussions today. I picked the kids up from school, which I enjoyed, and I listened to some Deadmau5 tracks, the unreleased ones I hadn't heard before, which was cool.
Lunch at a vegan restaurant and a Valentine's dinner
I had lunch today with my sponsor and the guy I play tennis with, who's in AA, and we had a great time eating at House of Vegano. It was so cool because I eat mostly whole plant vegan, and to take two guys who aren't vegan eaters to a vegan restaurant was satisfying. Some vegan restaurants have a hard time making it as a business. It's a very niche thing, although it's getting more and more popular. But I took them there and they actually enjoyed it. They both got the ramen bowl and both said it was really good. It was really satisfying to take people who aren't vegan to a vegan restaurant and have them come away with a great experience. I've been there with my wife, with the kids, and with my father-in-law, so I'm always taking people out to House of Vegano. I'm going to write them a Google review too.
This morning I had a Larabar for breakfast and some of the key lime popcorn from Sunshine City Popcorn, and then I started wondering, did I overdo it on the sugar? Is my head feeling weird because of the sugar? Then my wife bought an ice cream cake, and she put together a fantastic family Valentine's dinner for the kids. She cooked a steak in the air fryer that came out awesome tonight, and I even had a little bite of it. She made shrimp and scallops for the kids for a little surf and turf. I ate all the cocktail sauce, dipping the fries in it, and for some reason I thought she'd eaten her shrimp, so I didn't even leave her any of the cocktail sauce.
Posting on X again and a thought from my AA meeting
I started posting on X again today as well. I talked to Aaron Bremser yesterday, along with some other people in my open chat, and they said they really enjoyed my X posts. The X posts do reach people, but videos are the main thing I do, and I don't want to get too caught up in constantly posting and obsessing about what I'm going to post next. So I intend to do the X posts more intuitively, to just let the posts happen, posting when I really have something I want to say. I don't need to grind on X posts all day like it's a job, because I've already got YouTube videos. Right now I'm uploading six videos a day: two music videos, a vlog, and three crypto videos. I've already got my work cut out for me. X is not a job at this point. Will it become one? I don't know.
I went to my AA meeting, where we were reading to the wives today, and we had some good discussions about that. My thought was that there's a delicate balance between loving and accepting people on one hand, and criticizing people, not putting up with their crap, on the other. My wife did great loving me through my alcoholism, but where I actually got sober was when she refused to keep putting up with it. My dad told me I abused alcohol. Another girl I dated, a couple of years before all this, said I needed to quit drinking. When everybody in your life lays the same criticism down on you, hey, you should stop drinking, you drink too much, you're an alcoholic, that's worth considering.
In crypto, I've had a lot of feelings about whether I should make videos that are critical and negative. Some people say to just lead with the heart and be nice. But in my experience, my heart doesn't always want to be nice. My heart has teeth, like that Deadmau5 song, and it's looking for something to eat. I'm not always looking to be nice. You get out what you put in, and I've come to believe that some people's behavior needs to be questioned and criticized. People grinding out crypto videos, selling junk coins, creating cryptos that rip people off with no value, that should be questioned and criticized. Criticism can be very loving and helpful. If you enjoy these slices of my daily life, you can find more of them in my Life playlist. So that's what I did today. That's my day.
Talking With My Hands: Body Language, Tennis, and Daily Habits
From my video published June 17, 2026.
I'm recording my vlog for February 27th, 2025, my 5,022nd day on YouTube. Right before I went to bed tonight I was listening to something by Vanessa Van Edwards about how important it is to talk with your hands. In most of my videos, you've just seen my head, with everything else cut off. Apparently that makes it much harder to trust someone, because it's much easier to lie using just your mouth. Your hands are far more expressive, and it's much more natural to see someone the way you would when you're actually talking to them in person.
So I've changed my office around a bit. I've backed that camera up, and I'm standing right against the wall where I'm talking now. I zoomed the camera out so it doesn't feel like I'm so intimate and in your face, and now you can see my hands move a lot more. This is even weird to me, because I'm so used to having the camera zoomed in on just my face, where my hands can relax down at my sides or make these little motions. But when I'm talking in person, I am much more expressive. I realize I am very animated. I have the ability to be much more interesting and exciting and all over the place than I usually am. With these head-only videos, I've been getting away with being lazy. Now I want to stop being lazy and get much more animated. It's amazing how one little video can change your mind, expand and open things up, and get you thinking.
Learning from a secret service agent
I also listened to a video yesterday from Diary of a CEO with a great title, "Secret Agent." She'd been in the secret service and the NYPD, and she was talking about how much your body language communicates. I really resonated with how she described the way the people you surround yourself with make such a big difference. I've been saying for a long time that your partner is so important. You need to pick a partner who will help you. Your partner is the most important person you pick in your life. Whoever you're living with really can push you up or take you down. That interview is actually how I got back into listening to Vanessa Van Edwards again. I'd listened to her before, but for some reason I hadn't really internalized all of it as it relates to my own creativity.
I just love constantly learning and taking in new information, and then getting a chance to share it and apply it. What I love about how I work is that I apply things immediately. I take something in and immediately put it into practice. I do have to be careful, because if I take something in that messes me up, then I'm immediately applying something bad. But even on that point, the secret agent (I can't remember her name) talked about the importance of just making decisions, at least doing something. I'm always doing that too. I'm deciding to do this or that, always taking action. That's really good for me, because it keeps me always learning something. Each decision you make and each action you take results in learning something.
Watching the pros lift my tennis game
My tennis game was so on point today. I'm speaking as if this is the same day, though technically I just woke up the next day, but my tennis game was incredible. I'd finished watching Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi play in the US Open, and something about watching professional tennis players lifted my own game. I was slaying tonight in the tennis clinic. I was cranking these hard forehands right over the net. We were playing doubles, and I'm so happy there were three other players besides me. We were doing doubles, one-on-one, and then rotating players, so I played with everybody. For the first time, I won every single doubles round. They were just having a hard time returning my shots. I was cranking my forehand right over the middle, running up, playing aggressive at the net, pounding the ball down. I even got a lefty shot in there at some point. Just watching professional tennis players helped me be a better tennis player.
Yesterday I played the same way. I played much better, even though my opponent is still far superior to me. I enjoyed my play more from watching the professionals go at it. Then I understand my own perspective better: I'm just not that special. I'm a regular tennis player. This is a game of tennis.
Your stuff is not that special, and that's good news
That was one of the points the secret agent made: stop thinking you're special, that your problems are so different, that you're so unique. Almost everybody can relate to you. If you'll share with people, you find out they're having the same issues you are. That's why I've found that being a very open person has been so helpful, because you'd be amazed how much other people can understand you. We're all going through the same stuff. Your stuff is not special, and my stuff isn't special either. There are lots of people who do YouTube. There are lots of people who have creative jobs. There are lots of people learning to play tennis who have a family and kids. In my neighborhood, there are lots of people who got their houses flooded. Your life situation is not that special. And because it's not that special, there are tons of people you can ask for help. As long as you have discernment, when you ask somebody for help you can tell whether it feels good, or whether it's the kind of thing you want to keep away from. In my experience, that combination of openness and discernment has made a huge difference.
It's amazing how much more animated this is, talking with my hands. I'm so excited to explore it.
A full, healthy day with family
Yesterday, which is technically the same day as this video, I went to a power yoga flow in the morning, which was great. I was up there doing push-ups and vinyasa flows, standing on one leg and everything. It really gets me fired up and full of energy. I also did my one-mile run under nine minutes for the first time in forever. It's been at least a decade since I ran a mile in under nine minutes, and I didn't even feel like I was running that fast. I was just hauling. For the first time, I was kind of surprised when it was over. I was enjoying the run and having a good time, and I couldn't believe it was over already. This little one-mile run every day is firing me up so much. I absolutely love it.
I had hours this afternoon to spend family time with the kids. I washed dishes, got them food, and made some kale chips, using both kale from my hydroponic garden inside the house and kale from the garden outside the house. We had kale chips and asparagus for dinner, super healthy, super filling, plus a nice after-school time with the kids. We were getting the baseboards put in during the day, so I moved around some furniture. I recorded several videos, and I'm really excited to try this more relatable, hands-on format to see if it helps my videos. A lot of other people have copied me over the years, and other people have copied them, so a lot of crypto content is just this headless, talking-at-you experience.
I had another wonderful day. I went over to see my mom at the end of the day and walked the dog. That's when I listen to stuff on double speed too, which is nice because I can take things in twice as fast. Now, you don't want to take in junk twice as fast, but if you can take in good information twice as fast, that's just wonderful. I'm going to keep doing the videos in this format with the more hands-on approach. I uploaded some more gaming videos and didn't make any music on this day, but I'm always thinking about making my music and wondering how I can make it a little better, how I can have more fun with it but still do it really fast. If you want to follow more of these daily reflections, you can find them all on my Life playlist. It was such a great experience, and I really appreciate the chance to film this for you today.