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.