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.