Hey, it's Jerry Banfield. Today on the diary we're on location at the Legoland Hotel, and I'm really excited to do a vlog on this camera for the first time, get out of the studio, and do something a little different. I know it's so nerdy holding this microphone, but here we go. I didn't get to do a vlog yesterday. I was kind of tired, it was around nine o'clock, and I'd just gotten in. I asked myself, should I do one real quick? Laura said, how about a shower and bed instead? And I thought, God, that sounds good. It's not like my vlogs are life and death. Nobody's sitting there missing it because Jerry Banfield didn't do a vlog one day. It's not like that at all. I do it for the joy of doing it. I hope it looks pretty good on the camera here.
So we're at Legoland. We drove there today. It's January 2nd, 2025 now. Wow. What's happened since yesterday? Well, yesterday was a full day.
Eleven years sober and the trap of the first drink
Yesterday was Wednesday, and I went to my AA meeting last night. That was really nice. We talked about the first drink, and what I shared is that alcohol is such a trap, and so are many other things in life. It was only hard for me to quit drinking because it did work. I did have fun, and it was instant gratification even at a cost. I had fun times with my friends drinking, and whenever I got sober I'd always think, well, how do I do that without it? It seems so logical to just quit drinking, because everybody on the outside looks at it and sees all the bad stuff. But from inside, it gets easy to fall into these traps.
So I love going to AA, and I'm coming up on eleven years sober soon. My life has been so good since then. If anybody gets anything out of my videos, I hope it's this: take care of yourself and live sober. In my experience, you can have all the fun and do everything you want without alcohol and substances.
A morning of work and giving back
This morning we woke up and I uploaded a video to X, a crypto video, and responded to a bunch of open chat messages. I'd been thinking of quitting my little marketing group. There have been seven, eight, nine people who've joined that group at $100 a month on open chat, and while I'm grateful for the money, I was also thinking I should just quit it because it takes too much time. But I think I'll keep doing it. Somebody new joined. And I gave away $1,000 in my open chat channel in the last three days, which I feel really good about. There are probably around at least a thousand people or so who got a piece of that $1,000, so some people got more than a dollar. I love giving money back to people.
We took my mom's dog in and out today. She's coming home from her trip. I was thinking, man, I went six months without talking to my mom last year. That's pretty wild. I'm glad I have such a great relationship with her today. I called pretty much everybody on my dog walk last night. I called my sponsor and I called my brother. I'm going to meet my brother for lunch in Orlando when he visits in February. I'm going to bring the family and he's going to bring his family some. I'm looking forward to that.
Getting into Legoland
This morning we went to Legoland. We left around nine something and got here a little after ten. There was traffic coming in. It's so funny, people on the way in are honking, blowing their horns in frustration. But then you have to sit right next to the person you just laid on your horn at. It's not like driving where you honk and hopefully don't have to see that person again for a while. Here you're laying on your horn in a line. There were a lot of people waiting to get into Legoland this morning, but we went on the left line and got into the hotel parking, which is great because you don't have to pay for parking.
Laura paid about $1,200 for this. We got two nights, and it includes two days of passes to Legoland. So we went today, and we're going to go again tomorrow. We're going to have lunch tonight at the Pirate Ship Shipwreck restaurant downstairs, which has a nice vegan option.
Almost nine years whole plant-based
I love my whole plant-based diet. I eat mostly whole plant-based, and it leaves me full. In my experience, looking and feeling fantastic health-wise, this is by far the best way I've eaten. I've tried a bunch of diets, and by far this is the one for me. I've been doing it almost nine years now. I still occasionally have animal products like cheese or ice cream, and less occasionally I'll have tiny amounts of meat, like sushi with some meat in it. I generally rarely have bigger portions of meat. Even on Thanksgiving when I cooked a turkey, I had a few bites, maybe five or six bites of turkey. I'm grateful that I'm able to eat that way most places I go.
When we got to Legoland today, Laura was hungry, so we got these apple fries. They cut up green apples and fry them, then put cinnamon sugar on them. They're delicious. We got that and some peppermint popcorn, and we rode this castle ride all together that Jack wasn't big enough to ride last year. That was fun.
Madeline, Fetcher, and the carnival games
Then we got to the carnival games. Madeline got this big stuffed animal from last year. She calls him Fetcher. She won Fetcher by playing a ring toss game two years ago when we were here. So she wanted to win another stuffed animal today. She has her own money, and she spends it pretty fast. Laura and I gave her $30 in the last week. I gave her $20 for the Legoland trip, and Laura gave her $10 for a really cooperative day going kayaking a couple days ago. I think they went on New Year's, the 31st. I remember recording a vlog about that.
So Madeline wanted another stuffed animal today. She won this little stuffed animal that's like a little cake, a little hot chocolate kind of thing. But that wasn't enough. She spent like 20 bucks to get that little cake stuffed animal. Then we looked on the map and found more carnival games.
I was talking about how my dad used to take us to Fiesta Texas, which is now Six Flags in San Antonio, when I was about ten to thirteen years old. We used to go there a lot. My brother and I wanted to do these basketball shooting games where you'd pay a few dollars and you could shoot a basket, and if you won you'd get a basketball. My brother and I loved playing those. We must have won five or ten basketballs over the years doing them, but we missed most of the time.
Eight more shots
We came up to a basketball shooting game where you could win a giant stuffed animal today. Madeline used her last $20 on it. You get eight shots for $20. Madeline took the first six of them, and I could barely even hit the rim because it's a little bit further back. Jack took one of the shots and I took one, and then they gave us an extra one and I missed again. So I took two of the shots, Madeline took five, and Jack took one. She started crying because she couldn't even get close to getting it in, and Jack had taken one of her shots, and I missed.
I thought, I know I can win this right now. I can win this big stuffed animal. Give me eight more shots for $20 more and I will do this. So I bought eight more shots and shot them all myself. And on the last ball, I hit the shot. So you get this jumbo stuffed animal. This thing's at least three feet tall. It's a huge stuffed animal. I can't even hardly fit it all on the camera. It dwarfs everything. She's going to call this one Blizzard.
What was funny is that this was the one she wanted originally. They had it hanging up in their basketball booth, but they told us she couldn't have that one. They needed to get one from behind. So they brought out another one and she didn't want that one. Then they brought out a black one that looks like our dog. Jack wanted it, but Madeline didn't. Madeline was crying because she wanted her own stuffed animal, and she said she gave it to Jack because I paid with my own money to shoot again. So we just stood there for ten plus minutes. Madeline crying, Jack not knowing what to do. He wants his sister to be happy, and he wants his own big stuffed animal. And you can only win one prize a day yourself.
So I told Laura, why don't you get up there and shoot some baskets? She said no, she won't do it. I said, come on, it's not that hard. She said she doesn't play basketball. But I just went the other day, three days ago or so, and did a vlog about it. I hit over a hundred three-pointers. I was there about an hour and a half playing basketball at the gym. I hit over a hundred three-pointers, won a two-on-two game, and won a one-on-one against the teammate who I'd just won the two-on-two with. I was practicing, and this was a comparable shot to hitting a three-pointer. It was closer, but they use a smaller rim, so you have to hit it exactly.
After about ten minutes, they finally called the manager, and the manager gave them this wolf stuffed animal off the wall. Jack agreed that Madeline could have it. We're going to go back tomorrow, and I said, I'll win you all another one of these tomorrow. I hope it only costs $20, but if it costs $40, if it costs $60, I've got it. But then it's like, where are we going to put this in the house? This stuffed animal is so big. Whenever they buy something, we try to get rid of stuff. This one is so big, though. Holy cow.
So we ended up walking off from that, Madeline carrying this giant stuffy that she finally agreed would be okay. She was still unhappy. And I was thinking how funny it is that getting what you think you want will often not make you happy. I've had a lot of that in life.
This was what I thought I wanted. It is nice to get what you thought you wanted, at least, because then when you see it doesn't make you happy, that's a worthwhile experience too. There are things like having a wife and having kids that bring a ton of happiness with them. At the same time, though, in my experience, if you can't be happy with no wife and no kids, you're probably not going to be happy with a wife and kids either. Madeline was still unhappy.
We went to this little Lego driving thing they have at the back of the park, which was close to where the basketball game was, the one where I won the blizzard. I felt really satisfied. I told myself, you know what, this isn't even about Madeline anymore, I'm going to win this game right here, because my dad never did stuff like that. I'm a different kind of dad, I guess, in small ways. Basically I'm a lot the same, but there are tiny differences.
So Jack and I get in line for this ride that says it's going to take 30 minutes. We wait like 10 or 15 minutes. Laura and Madeline sit there, and Madeline says she wants to go back to the hotel room. It's about three o'clock. Laura doesn't want to go, but Madeline just needs to go rest, go be inside and recollect herself. So Laura walks back with Madeline. Jack tries to get out of line, but I tell him, buddy, we already waited 15 minutes for this ride, we might as well wait the other 15 minutes. So they go back to the hotel room, and Jack and I stay in line.
A friendly conversation in line
The guy in front of us was super friendly, which is nice. He was there with his mom who lives near there, and his nephew, who was visiting from Blue Ridge, Georgia. He lives close to Orlando himself. I love when people are friendly. It's so nice when people are friendly. You're waiting in line so long, it's really nice to have a little chat. I'm friendly. I like to talk to people. I like to get to know people.
We played I spy with my little eye. So it was another man and his nephew and my son and me, all playing I spy. I picked blue, and there was this guy in a blue shirt and blue jeans, and nobody could get it for some reason, even though the guy was standing right next to us in line. The guy asked me, hey, is it a tool? Because we're in Legoland, there are tools on the wall, and we were at the driving thing. I told him, it depends on who you ask. It depends on who you ask.
Then Jack got his picture taken and drove around this Lego course. There was another dad behind us. Well, this guy wasn't a dad, he was an uncle, but I thought that was cool, that your uncle meets up and takes you to Legoland. I don't get to do that much. I guess I do stuff with my nieces and nephews occasionally, but not that often.
My son had a great time driving around in this little Lego car. We said bye to the friendly guy, nice meeting him and his nephew. By that time, I'd talked to them so long that I thought, this kid looks familiar. I wondered if we'd crossed paths, because we visited Blue Ridge in 2022 and 2024, and it's a small mountain town. I could have seen the kid walking around in a store, or there were some kids at the boat rental place we went to.
Conferences, speaking, and talking to yourself
I was talking with Laura today, and I told her I think it'd be nice to go to the four-year DFINITY event in Switzerland. I emailed three of the people at DFINITY to see if they wanted to collaborate on anything, do some interviews. I speak at conferences. I don't speak that often at conferences, but the videos I do give me great practice for public speaking, so I'm generally pretty engaging with an audience and a crowd.
If you can talk to yourself in a room by yourself, it's actually easier talking to other people. When I'm talking to myself, I can't tell if you're thinking, God, this is putting me to sleep, or if you're thinking, oh yes, give me some more jokes. I'm not getting a reaction out of you in real time. I'm not even sure if I'm talking to anyone or if I'm just talking to myself, because while some of these get views, the minutes-watched often tells me that by the end I don't really know if anybody's still listening. But I am still listening. I like hearing myself talk. So this is pretty much a win-win.
The $85 scrapyard and a six-year-old's savings
We go in the Lego store and my son buys an $85 Lego set using his own money. It's a scrapyard. This thing has 871 pieces. My son's six and he loves putting Legos together. I won't help him that much, and he should be able to put the whole thing together. It looks super fun. He's saved up over $120. My daughter just spends. She gets some money, she spends it right away. He's saved up over $120, and he'd been really looking forward to this.
So he and I walk out of there and head back to the hotel room. I go to text my wife, asking if we should come back, and at the exact same time, she calls me. It's so cool, because we'd been physically separated for like an hour. Nothing dramatic, she was just in a hotel room with Madeline while my son and I were at the cars. But that's like a telepathic connection, being on the same wavelength. Out of all that time with no communication, the moment I'm texting her, she calls me.
People practicing telepathy in line
That other dad I was talking to in line, him and his two girls, I don't know if they were his daughters, but the two girls he was with were playing a game where they were all trying to say the same number at once. They were going between 1 and 10, then 1 to 20, counting down 3, 2, 1, and then everyone says a number. They'd try to say the same number, and one girl matched somebody else four times. That was really cool.
It leaves me with hope for the world. You've got people playing games that are kind of like telepathy, working on their telepathy in line. Some folks are watching the worst fear-based content and thinking about all that crap, and here I am watching people in line at Legoland practice telepathic games, trying to guess the same number. I think the future could be awesome. I really think the future could be awesome.
Talking with my son about my dad
On the way back to the hotel room with my son, we were having a talk, and sometimes I really get in the zone with him. I love spending time with him and I'm so super grateful. It feels just like hanging out with my dad used to. I remember when my dad passed, the last time we went to the grocery store. I used to love to go do stuff with my dad, like go to the grocery store, and I remember feeling so horrible that I could never do that again. But now, doing stuff like this with my son, I think, man, all the stuff I loved doing with my dad, I get to do this with my son now.
It feels like anything you love, you can do it again. It may be in a slightly different form. You may be the dad instead of the kid. You might be the woman instead of the man. But you can do it again. So I was telling my son this. I've told him this a few times. I said I missed my dad when he passed, but having you here feels the same, and I'm really grateful for that. I told him, maybe when I pass, I'll come back as your son, and we can do this again. He said, yeah, dad, when I pass, I'll come back as your son, and we'll do it again. And I started crying.
I don't think about my son passing. He's six years old. The idea of him passing is something that rarely crosses my mind. He has his whole life in front of him. I was so grateful, and at the same time it was sad to think of my son passing. But then to look at the eternal love and eternal creation, you can just create the same basic thing. If you like this life on earth, you can create the same basic existence over and over again. If you want evidence of that, look around and see how many people are having a life very similar to yours.
Right now, Laura took the kids down to go play in front of the Castle Restaurant, and I thought this was a perfect time to record and test out this new setup. I'm filming this on a camera my mom gave me. I won't even bother trying to upload it until I get home, because this file is probably going to be gigabytes, and the upload speed in this hotel room is probably megabytes. I've got gig internet at home, so I'll just record these and upload them there. These will be cool, a little something different, a chance to share myself in a different context.
Why I record these little daily diaries
This is just nice for me to do, because I wish I'd had diaries like this recorded my whole life. I'd love to be able to go back five or ten years from now, take ten minutes, and listen to what I did. To hear it in my own words. It's amazing how much detail you lose looking back and remembering things, how little detail you actually hold onto. So I think this would be a cool thing for everybody to do, for everyone to just make little vlogs. I would love to watch so many people's little vlogs. I'm not even sure how to find other people's little vlogs where they just talk about regular daily life.
The people I follow, I'd love for someone like Dominic Williams to just do some vlogs like this. I don't know if he has time, but just do some vlogs. Today I went skiing. We worked on this problem at ICP. We talked to some government about utopia. It would be cool. Anyone I follow, I'd love to hear more of your regular daily life, to see you as a whole person.
Yesterday I also did a call with a guy who paid 300 bucks to talk with me again, which was awesome. We talked more about the deeper questions. I love sharing videos on the crypto channel that are more than just price hype. I love sharing stuff that has more depth to it.
I realized I should look at the camera instead of looking at myself. Narcissism 101: look at yourself on the screen instead of looking at the camera. I could teach graduate-level narcissism. Graduate-level narcissism, baby. Let's go.
The third-string camera
I'm really grateful my mom gave me this camera in exchange for watching her dog, which I think was a great deal because I had a good time watching the dog. This is my mom's third-string camera. Imagine if you had girls the way my mom has cameras. This is her third string, and she gave it to me because I told her, mom, this camera is riding the bench right now. I wanted a camera just like this one, a nice Canon with a lens on it, a lapel mic right here so the audio isn't sucky. It's my mom's third-string camera, so now it's mine, she gave it to me. I already had this tripod from years ago. This camera is better than the camera I bought to do vlogging years ago, and it's my mom's third-string camera.
Yesterday I did that call, and it turned out the guy played tennis too. Good. I was worried he wasn't going to go into his day. He missed one day, and I was like, oh my God, I'll never get to hear what Jerry did on January 1st, 2025. Then I figured I'll just put it as a combined January 1 and 2 vlog. Twenty-four minutes. Awesome. I could just listen to myself talk forever. Actually, I do run out of words sometimes. I wonder if I can expense some of this trip because I'm doing this vlog. I probably can, so we're going to look into that.
Yoga, and the strings of emotion
Yesterday I did a power yoga flow. There's a girl I had juice with a few days ago, and then I saw her in class a few days later. It's weird to have these strings of emotions. I waved at her in a parking lot, then I go in and think, I don't even want to talk to her today, and I don't even know why I feel that way. Maybe because something is going on with her. She didn't seem to want to talk to me that day either, and I was like, good, because I want to talk to you today. I really wanted to talk to you and get to know you better last week, but this week, whatever, go talk to somebody else.
Then she was there yesterday at yoga, so I looked around the room and put my mat next to her. I like to put my mat next to the person I have the best connection with, the one I'm friendliest with, although the other day I put my mat rows away from her. In the past, when people I'm friendly with came in and put their mat on the other side of the room, I'd think, well, F you then, put your mat over there, don't even talk to me today.
So I talked with her some after class. She brought a friend to yoga, which was cool. He was saying he needs to do his yoga practice more consistently. I was remembering back when I started doing yoga, how much more challenging it was. Just stabilizing was harder. My mind was so annoyed all the time. It's so easy now. I just do yoga and I enjoy it. But that's from doing yoga three to seven days a week for years. I love how my body is in such great shape now.
Almost two hours of tennis
After the power yoga flow I went to play tennis. I played for almost two hours with a guy who's better than me. He beat me 6-0 in the first set, but I counted how many balls I got in: over 300, around 350 balls in the court, 95 during warmup and then the rest during the game. He beat me 6-0, but we went deuce several times. I had winning shots. If I'd made one shot, I'd have won. Then it was 5-5 in the second set. I've only beaten him one set out of probably 20 or 30 sets. This one was close, but he turned it on. His shots started going in. I actually started off 2-0 beating him in that set, because my goal is just get the ball back. Don't worry about hitting winners. I lost 6-0 the first set because I kept trying to hit balls down the alley and sending them out. So I told myself, just hit the ball in the court. Even if it's an easy shot, just get it in. Don't go for the hard stuff.
There was a tennis coach next to us, and he said, if you're hitting balls in, you can just do whatever you want. If you're not missing your shots, you can do whatever you want. I'm like, really? If I'm hitting balls in I can do whatever I want? And what if I'm missing balls, can I not do whatever I want? Well, no kidding, if you're hitting balls in you can do whatever you want, and if you're missing balls then I guess you should just try to get balls in, and then you do whatever you want. So I was trolling the coach a little. I was laughing at him. But that's what I did, I just hit balls in.
Eventually it worked, because the guy I was playing against really melts down when he makes a bunch of forced errors. The only way I can really get him to make forced errors is to always hit his shots back. I love that I was born in 1984 and I can run all over this tennis court. I can get to most of the balls most of the time. As long as he doesn't rip them hard and fast to the opposite side of the court, I can reach most of the shots he hits, short shot, long shot, lob, back and forth all over the court. I'm amazed how fast I can get to the ball sometimes. So he melted down for a few games. He double-faulted, hit several errors, missed shots, melted down a bit on the forced errors. But then he turned it on and beat me 7-5 to wrap it up. It was really nice to have that level of competition.
A well-rounded, active day
Then I did the one-on-one call right after that. Laura was home with the kids, and I hung out with the family. I played the Harry Potter board game, took the dogs for a walk. I did three and a half to four hours of physical activity yesterday, plus I was standing most of the rest of the day. To me, that's so important. I spend so little time sitting around. Today at Legoland, sure, I sat down in the car while driving and sat for a little while a couple of times, but I've been on my feet moving around most of the day.
It's so important to me to be active, to eat a whole plant-based diet, to do yoga, and then to do something like Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not going to a meeting today and probably not tomorrow, but I went to one. I'll go to one Saturday when we get home and one Sunday. I go consistently five days a week. Having a well-rounded, meaningful life built on those pieces is what works for me, and I keep more of these everyday stories in my Life playlist.