It's January 7th, 2025, and it's my 4,971st day on YouTube. I'm grateful that I'm a full-time YouTuber. My main subject is ICP crypto, and this is a behind-the-scenes, what-did-I-do-today kind of vlog meant to help you get to know the real, authentic side of me.
A fun AI workflow for video titles
I'm grateful that for yesterday's vlog I tried titling it something more interesting, and I used this cool workflow. I recorded the video in my studio like this. On one computer, I recorded it, put it on Dropbox, and sent it to another computer to upload it. At the same time, I used Adobe Premiere Pro to pull the transcript automatically out of the video. Then I took the transcript and stuck it in ChatGPT and said, give me 40 video ideas based on the most interesting thing I said in the video. It came up with "All Eyes on Me," a title that was pretty cool, so I went with that. It was a fun workflow.
It's amazing how AI can execute ideas that would take me a bit longer, but in my experience it's really pretty helpless without my creative direction at this point. I don't see AI doing any serious reasoning that's not basically copying test answers from somewhere else and then regurgitating them. I don't think we're anywhere close to real general intelligence, AI that can interact much in the real world, because you need a ton of processing power for that.
Massage, movement, and standing up to talk
I put today's symbol, an infinity-symbol coin, on top of a massage table. I got a massage today. I get a massage every week. Massage is really helpful to relax. I've been so relaxed since my massage I can barely function. I'm just sitting around, laying around. It's nice to relax because I get real amped up a lot of the time too. I'll go do three or four hours of physical activity in a day, like play tennis, go to a power yoga class, walk the dog, and be active and standing up.
In my studio I stand up when I talk, because one of the biggest things I see people struggle with on their videos is that they're too boring. You just talk and never really get into it. Be interesting, be animated. Some of y'all's videos put me to sleep. I found that my own videos, when I used to sit down, were much more like that too. But when I stand up, I naturally talk and orate better. Orate's a nice word, isn't it?
I'm grateful so many of you watched that vlog yesterday, because I just love attention. I was driving down the road today thinking, is it really considerate that I do whatever I can to get people to spend all this time on their phones listening to me talk? And often what I'm saying is just really repetitive. But then again, you have a band like AC/DC and everybody just wants them to play the same songs all the time. "Back in Black." "You Shook Me All Night Long." "She's Got the Jack." People just want the same people to sing the same songs over and over again.
I didn't get to make any music yet today. I'm just trying to see if there's anything more fun I could mix it up with and put some sounds in. Doing something every day is important.
Friends, and a childhood always on the move
I talked to my friend from college today. It's nice to have friends who have known you for a couple of decades, because growing up with my mom in the military, I didn't have friends for a long period of time. You'd have friends for a few years, and then everybody in your life is new. Just when you start to make some good friends, just when I got to be popular in middle school, then we'd move. And I'm a nobody at some new junior high school, and it sucks. Just when I'm starting to feel comfortable in high school, we move again. And just when I'm getting comfortable in my new high school, then I graduate and go to college. But now I've been in the same place for quite a while.
The work: two crypto videos before lunch
This morning I helped get the kids off to school. Then I put three hours into my crypto videos and made two crypto videos in three hours, which is awesome. Considering the main thing I do for work is one ICP video a day and responding to messages, getting through the messages and doing two videos in three hours is great.
We're going to go to Disney this weekend because Laura's doing the marathon there, so I want to have a couple of extra videos scheduled. I was doing live streams, but the videos are so much more efficient. They get watched as much or more. Maybe I'll fit a live stream in somewhere, but nothing beats the consistency of cranking a video out every day at 6 a.m. on the crypto channel. I'm really happy to see how the viewership has done on that, and the minutes watched.
I finally caught up with a spreadsheet today. There are 14 projects that paid $100 this month to be in my coin marketing mastermind, and I've already shared at least 12 of them in there, some of them in four or five videos. So it's nice to be able to collaborate with the community.
At the same time, the ICP price dumped. Short term, I was looking at this as an income loss; if I were to sell, it'd be a couple hundred dollars down from yesterday. But whatever. I really appreciate that I've got enough money. I've got thousands of dollars in cash, and I have closer to $100,000 than zero in crypto, probably $50,000 or $60,000 worth. I get 15% APR on that, and I'm really happy with that. This is just my own experience, not financial advice.
AA, grace, and when "be positive all the time" breaks down
I went to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting today. They didn't call on me again. I met my sponsor there. The topic was trying to treat everyone like they're in AA. To me, the idea of going to something like Alcoholics Anonymous is to learn to interact with the world, to not be such a jerk, to be able to interact and be friendly and considerate with people and give people some grace.
What I was going to share, if somebody had called on me, is that it's okay not to be super positive and nice to people all the time. This guy was talking about how he got in an argument with another guy because he was riding his bike and a guy in a car came blasting by and almost hit him. Then at the stoplight, the driver pulls up next to him on his bike and they're exchanging words. My take is, if you're really acting dangerous and scaring people, it might make sense that somebody needs to encourage you not to do that. You don't necessarily need to get punched in the face, but if you won't listen to somebody arguing with you or yelling at you, something more severe might need to happen to get you to stop. I personally would rather not be the person to deliver that message.
I was thinking at the meeting today, sometimes people need to get punched in the face to learn to behave a bit differently. My dad spanked me and hit me, and I got punched and smacked here and there, and it helped me learn that there are consequences for your behavior. Yes, you can have fun and play, but you also need to be aware of your surroundings. It's unreasonable to just go around and expect you can do whatever you want, wherever you want. You've got to pick the right place at the right time to do certain things. You wouldn't want to live in a world where everybody just goes around positive and nice and everything you're doing is always great. It'd drive you mad.
Why I find the rest of crypto disgusting
In crypto, people have this crazy world where they think you should just be able to create a coin and everybody should pat you on the back about it and say your project's great and it's going to 100x. No. People get so toxic about the rest of crypto, and honestly I find the rest of crypto disgusting. Everything outside of ICP, even Bitcoin, has become disgusting to me at this point. The mining is grotesquely wasteful. That blockchain is unusable for the masses. It's become nothing but basically a meme coin and a way for people to try to make money. ICP has some technology that's genuinely useful. Everything else in crypto, to me, is disgusting. That's my opinion. People being overly positive all the time just doesn't work.
What I was going to share at the meeting is that there's a time and a place to tell people, no, I don't want that, I don't like that, I'm not interested in that, I won't participate in that, and to walk away. Just because you're spiritual and trying to be sober, or whatever you're doing to make your life better, doesn't mean you just people-please and say yes to everything. You don't have to be a nice, positive person all the time. I'm not a nice, positive person all the time. You cross me, and I will take action on it. The people closest to me will be the first to tell you that. My kids get online when they shouldn't, I'll find them. I'll take stuff away. I'll throw out their toys. You are not going to play. We all play games. Okay, I play with you too. Say hello to my little friend.
This is my reality
That goes out to every level. The government, you want to play with me? I'm not the kind of person who goes peacefully and just does whatever I'm told. I'm going to do what I feel is best. I don't like the word "right," but I'm going to do what I want to do, and I'm going to do what I think is best for everyone, even if everyone else doesn't think that's best. I'm going to play my role in the game, or the movie, or whatever this reality is. I'm going to play my role and do my thing. I'm not just going to be an NPC and do what I'm told and put my head down and be a good boy and hope I'm on God's nice side. I've come to believe that I am God and this is my reality, and I'm going to create it how I want to create it.
I hope that encourages you to take ownership too: hey, this is my reality, and it's okay to say no, to push people away, to take some space. An abundance mindset is realizing this is a big planet. There are a lot of people. You don't have to put up with the crap from your spouse or your family or your friends or your job. There's another spouse. There are more friends. Now, if you're just attracted to that same kind of drama and crap, then you're going to dump one alcoholic spouse for another alcoholic spouse, or one bad job for another bad job. Sometimes, though, the only thing you can do is just leave.
How criticism pushed me to do better
To me, trying to treat people better, be nice, and do unto others means that sometimes people need to tell me when I'm screwing up, when I've got things wrong, or when there's another point of view I should consider. I originally got into ICP because people told me that, and I didn't like it at first. People were critical on my YouTube channels. I was telling everybody I had most of my portfolio in Bitcoin, and the response was, really? Sure, I made good money just holding Bitcoin. I could have tripled my money in a year, same as I have with ICP. But it annoyed me. People were saying, Jerry, really? You've been in crypto since 2014, nine years, and the best thing you can figure out to do is stack Bitcoin? Come on, you can do better than that. That's when I got motivated to look for ICP.
So I appreciate people who help me see opportunities to do better. A lot of people are critical of my "crypto is going to zero" videos, and while those videos were useful at the time, why bother doing those anymore? Why bother even talking about those other coins? I love that I've positioned myself so that now, if you search for Internet Computer Protocol, your boy is going to come up on Google, on YouTube, wherever you are. I'm going to come up. I just talk about what I'm excited about. Those other coins, forget them. I see somebody riding around town with the coin I hate and I think, forget you. Yeah, just forget them.
Why I make these vlogs
My mom is watching the kids right now, so I can record this, because I love recording these. I hope the joy I have for living comes through and is useful for you. After my AA meeting, I went to my massage and had a great talk with my therapist. I shared the most interesting things that have happened within the last month, all of which I've shared in previous vlogs, so I won't repeat them here. She shared what she's experiencing now. I love having friends I can talk with, and especially I love having girls for friends.
I've said this so many times. I was talking to a guy recently and he said, I don't think my girlfriend will let me have other girls as friends, especially if they're attractive. I told him that's one thing I love about my wife. My wife is confident, so confident in herself and in me, that she's comfortable with me having girlfriends. She even likes that they help me be a better husband. I was talking with my friend today and said I want to increase the romance in the relationship. She said, well, what I really like is for my boyfriend to buy me little thoughtful gifts. I said I almost never do that for Laura. She asked, do you know what she'd like? And I said no. I got maybe one idea, which I guess is enough for right now. Then if I get another idea after that, we'll be good to go.
Eating like a robot and doing the dishes
I came home and ate. I didn't have any hummus today, but I took essentially a can of beans, an organic little carton of beans from Whole Foods, dumped them into some hard taco shells, squirted some hot sauce on them, and just ate it like that. I eat like a robot sometimes. My wife made some shrimp and smashed potatoes. I had some of the smashed potatoes and a single bite of the shrimp. Then I washed a bunch of dishes, spent at least an hour washing them, and walked the dogs with my son.
I love how playful my son is. I love how much joy he has for living. And I know that if his joy and playfulness annoys me too much, it's because I've got something shoved far enough up my rear end that I'm not playing either. I do love to think about how my son would get along with my dad, because I had a whole different kind of relationship with my dad than my son has with me. But it's a wonderful life. I wish everybody would do a vlog like this, because it's really therapeutic for me to just share about my life and to have this out there so I can watch it later. I'd love to know what I was doing 20 years ago.
The audience watching all of us
When you look at your life that way, I think all of us have an audience much bigger than we realize. There are people watching your life. Maybe not people, but there are spirits. There's an audience. It's like the Truman Show. You have an audience watching all of you, regardless of whether you think you're in a boring, regular life that nobody cares about. There's an audience. You could look at it as spirits that are disembodied, or God, or angels, or demons, or whatever your thing is, or relatives that have passed on, or children that have yet to be born. There's a big audience, and they can look at any part of anyone's life at any time. Not just that, but people who are alive can remote view other places too. So to me, the world, as I think Shakespeare said, is a stage. I act as if I'm on stage all the time. I'm performing. I look at it as being watched at all times.
Now, from a security standpoint, with the NSA being able to automatically monitor everything you say at all times on all these devices, yeah, you are getting monitored in real time, which is sad. It's sad for disclosure too, because if some of these projects and secrets have certain keywords, you can't talk about them before they know immediately. I have a friend who was deep into the intelligence complex. I was thinking before I went to bed the other night that he could tell me some stuff that would blow my mind. And I wondered, well, why wouldn't he talk to me? Wouldn't he want somebody else to know this stuff? He always jokes, I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. I was thinking, that's not joking, is it? He's being serious. He's saying it in a joking, jovial way, but that's why he can't tell me anything. He can't.
So I started wondering, how are they monitoring him? Does he have a phone, or just a regular security complex around him? I think he's got some kind of higher level of monitoring. I've heard in some of these disclosure discussions about people having implants that monitor your thoughts, and some advanced AI that monitors your thoughts. If you start having disloyal, disobedient thoughts, it picks up on it and alerts your superior. I was thinking before bed, holy crap, I bet this guy has one of those implants, because there's no getting anything out of him about any of the stuff he knows. So I figure I do need to go visit him. He's one of the longest-standing people I've known in my life. He's got all this knowledge in his head, but however they're keeping it in there, they're doing a really good job with it.
You probably didn't think this was where we'd end up. That's what I love about my vlogs. You never know where we're going to go, and that's exciting to me. If you enjoy this kind of free-ranging conversation about crypto, life, and everything in between, you can find more of it across my Money playlist. Thank you for spending this time here with me. It was good for me, and I hope it was good for you.
I'm going to get ready to put the kids to bed. I'm interested to see what titles ChatGPT comes up with for this. I'll try to stick the most viral clickbait crap you can imagine on it. But I've realized I need to just talk and do it as a vlog before I put the title on it, because if I stick the title on first, it cramps my style. I don't want my style cramped.