It's January 8th, 2025, and I have no idea what I'm going to talk about. So I'll just tell you about my day and hope it's interesting, even if you have to get ten minutes in to hear it. I've been on YouTube a long time, and I'm glad people care about my life and watch. I hope that sharing my life honestly is useful to other people. Today I'm feeling kind of bleh.
A Trip to Home Depot and the Patio I Want to Build Myself
I went to Home Depot with Laura today to pick out some bricks to make a patio in the backyard. I want to build the patio myself instead of paying a few thousand dollars to have someone else do it. It's not really a ton of money, but I'd like the joy of making the patio myself. All you really need to do is dig in the backyard and then lay some bricks down. Hopefully the tree roots aren't in the way, and if they are, this will be more interesting. I need 450 bricks to put in a roughly 150 square foot patio that Laura's wanted for years. We could just pay somebody to build it, but you know what? I want to build it. I like seeing that I did something. I like using my body to do manual labor while I listen to an audiobook or videos or something. It's satisfying.
But we get to Home Depot and Laura starts talking about the baseboards. We need to put baseboards back on after the house flooded. And I say, well, I can put the baseboards on. I can just buy a table saw, cut them at a 45 degree angle, measure them, stick the baseboards in, and put some nails in. I could do that. That's not that hard. Although the baseboards are big, and it would be a significant amount of cutting, and if you don't measure them correctly, you have to throw them out or end up with something that looks jacked up. Laura says we should hire a professional, and I say I don't want somebody in my house putting baseboards on all over the place when I can do that myself.
So we had a little bit of a fuss over it. Laura was trying to feel better afterward, and she said, oh, it's nice, we had a little date, we haven't had an argument on a date in a while. And I said, no, it was your bad mood that caused the argument. You should have contacted the insurance company, because I don't know if they need to have the drywall ripped out. Why should we do anything with the baseboards until we figure out whether we have to get the drywall replaced because of the flood? The insurance company paid for it.
Tired of Being Treated Like a Child
I'm tired of being treated like a baby. I was born in 1984, and I feel like this whole system treats us like babies. I live in a house that the bank has an interest in, so they get to dictate the terms. I have to pay insurance because I have a mortgage. And I had to have a mortgage because I didn't have enough money to buy the house myself. And then everybody gets to treat a person like a child: well, you're going to do this, and you're going to do that, and you have to pay this, and you have to do that. I'm supposed to own this house. At least there's no HOA.
I went on a bit of a rant about it. I also talked to a guy today in a one-on-one call, and it's funny how the current system is set up. If you're not blowing your money all over the place and your parents don't give you a whole bunch, generally the longer you've been on this planet, the more money you accumulate. But it gets to be so pointless. What's the point of having been born 60 years ago and having a whole bunch of money? What are you going to do with it?
I look at it like this: the longer I'm on this planet, the less I have to lose. If you cut a finger off in your 20s and the medbed technology the disclosure channels keep talking about doesn't come out, you could have to live with that for 80, 100, maybe 1,000 years. But the longer you've already been here, the less time you'll have to live with anything. People don't like you, bad things go poorly, you're going to be out of here soon anyway. It's like senior year in high school. You know you're about done, so you can really let it go. Don't sing Frozen. That's what's nice about hanging out with people in their 70s or 80s. They don't care anymore. They'll just sit there and fart, like, so what? I'm going to die soon, I don't care what people think of me. That's nice.
So this is a whole ridiculous system where people who don't need all this money have it, and the people who could really put it to work don't. It's ridiculous, and I'm tired of being treated like a child. By the time I pay off my mortgage and these student loans, I'm going to die right afterward. So why even bother paying them off? The older you get, the more pointless it becomes if you have debt, because you're not going to pay it anyway. Sure, I'll take this free money before I check out of here and go on to the next big reality. Who wouldn't take a loan at that point?
Communication Versus Arguing About the Words
So I come home and Laura says, you yelled at me. And I say, I didn't yell at you, I talked in an even tone of voice. If you want to interpret it as yelling, you go right ahead, but in nobody's mind did I yell at you. She says, well, you were mean to me. And I say, all right, just because you were more passive aggressive and threw your mood off on me, and I was more direct about mine, don't make this like I did it by myself. You did that, I did this, let's move on.
It's so pointless in a relationship to stand there and say, well, you said this. Who cares? Tomorrow you're not even going to remember. I can barely remember. If I don't record this video tomorrow, I will not remember 90% of my day. In a week, I probably would not be able to remember that Laura had a fuss at Home Depot until we went out on another date and we might remember it.
I was talking to a friend who was saying it bothers her when her boyfriend says she said something she didn't say. And I say, so what? Let him make up any kind of crap he wants to. You don't need to fight with him over it. Instead of arguing "no, I didn't say that," just ask, well, what are you saying now? Can you talk about what we're doing now? You're aggravated now, I'm not, so let's move forward. Why use the past as a reason to be upset in the present? Sure, if somebody really did some messed up stuff to you, it can make sense to say, hey, that was kind of messed up, you did that, and I'm not happy about it right now. But arguing over "I said that, you said that," who cares?
Communication is about understanding each other. Don't let the stupid words get in the way. Words are just a vehicle to share an idea, a vehicle to share a common experience. Let's not let the words get in the way and argue about the words. I hate arguing about the words. I used to think I wanted to be a lawyer, but I would not want to be a lawyer.
And Laura did call the insurance company about that mortgage, and it turns out there's no deadline. They sent a letter that tried to sound a bit coercive, saying hey, we gave you this flood insurance money and you have to fix your property. Well, it turns out there's no deadline on it, so long as we keep doing a little something. The drywall is fine and the flood insurance company paid for it, but I don't want new drywall in the house right now because we don't need it. I just don't want somebody taking out all the drywall. If somebody's going to take my drywall out, I think it'd be kind of interesting to foul it all up myself and have some halfway-done-looking drywall over the house. It's better off if we just don't touch it. How mundane is this guy's life? I think it's nice.
Owning My Part of the Fuss
This is like my 10th step in Alcoholics Anonymous. I told Laura, I'm sorry for my part of the fuss today. I had a part in it, and I'm sorry for my part. I don't know what's going on with me today.
I was in the studio this morning putting together a dance music set. And then I think, screw my music, the average watch time is 30 seconds, why even make it? But I have fun just button mashing the keyboard. Nobody else likes my button-mash keyboard music, but I think it's fun and I enjoy making it. And if I enjoy making it, it's like baking a cake. Do I need to eat it? If I enjoy baking the cake, that's good enough, isn't it? I already have videos that a bunch of people watch, and I'm putting clickbait, sensational titles on the vlog and sharing those on crypto channels, and some of you are listening to the most mundane details of my life.
Do I even need to put videos up? Why not just button-mash all my stuff in the studio and not put a video up at all? I guess I feel like I don't want to be a crypto guy forever. I envision a future where people think my music, my vlogs, and the gaming content I made before are the most amazing things I've created. But I'm kind of stuck with the crypto content for now, unless ICP goes south, in which case it won't be remembered because people liked it. I think this is going to be a great year for ICP. This is a magic moment, right before it blows. Imagine being out on the nuclear bomb test range right before it goes off. Who's going to be excited about this place that's about to blow? The kids.
The kids came home from school today, and I had kale chips ready for them. I went through the hydroponic garden in the house, cut all the kale off, and dumped a bunch of olive oil, tahini, and salt on it.
Beans, ribbon candy, and the small wins of an ordinary day
Those were good. I took another little package of beans today, ripped the top off, and dumped them into some of those nacho cheddar hard taco shells. I didn't even heat them up. I've got to start putting those in the toaster oven. Five minutes in the toaster oven and they're not nearly as crunchy. Today I just dumped some old salad dressing on top of it, and it was good enough. Then I went over to my mom's house and dropped my son off there. She had some ribbon candy from visiting her sister in Massachusetts, and that was pretty good. I'm glad I mentioned that ribbon candy, because if I hadn't, we would have really missed out.
I went to power yoga today. My accountability buddy was not there. The girl who said we could be accountability buddies was not there today. I'm thinking, where's my accountability buddy? You have one job. She wasn't there. So I figured, well, I failed as an accountability buddy too. But there was a girl there I hadn't seen in a while, and it was nice to see her and catch up. And I'm glad I didn't get a crush on anybody in yoga today. It made things easier.
Why I started making music again
A crush is actually what got me back into making music. It's been about a year and a half now that I've been cranking out music again. I wish I'd cranked out one good song in the last year and a half. You know how depressing it is sometimes? I'll ask myself, what's the best song I've made? And I think, I don't want to listen to any of my own songs. Getting displaced makes me feel so apathetic sometimes. I don't want to listen to anybody's music. Screw everybody's music today.
But then I hopped on Twitch and scrolled the music feed a little bit, and I found some girl playing violin, which was pretty good. And for once I actually didn't drop a 2,000-bit chat just so I could get some attention the second I show up in someone's stream.
The guy at the AA meeting who got into ICP
This guy at the AA meeting today was talking about how he likes attention. He said he would just walk into a bar, pay everybody's tab, and walk out. I said, wow, that never happened to me before. He said, yeah, I spent a couple hundred thousand dollars doing that in the last year. I'm like, bruh, what? But here's what I did: I got him into ICP. He said he's watching all my videos now, and I told him, good. Put your money in ICP and you're going to have all that $180,000 back, plus a lot more.
What's sad, though, is that a whole bunch of people will probably buy into ICP late. I'll be selling when they're buying. When the price gets into the hundreds, I'll be selling. Y'all can have my rewards. I'm good. Once the price is accurately valued, here, have mine. And then I'll be the one FOMOing back in. See, y'all should have bought this when I told you at $10. And now here's my ICP for $200. Great, good doing business with you. That's my own running joke with myself about how these cycles tend to go, not a prediction about what anyone should do with their money.
Dominic's video today was awesome on the AI side. I keep thinking, how amazing is it that I'm in on this right now? Hardly anybody in the world knows about this, and I feel perfectly positioned, not just with my ICP, but with all my videos and everything else too.
Whether I should travel to crypto events
There's some little ICP event in Miami coming up. I thought, maybe I could go down there. It's about a four or five hour drive. I could go. But I've got to say, if I'm not going to be a featured speaker at an event, I'm not going. If the event isn't built around me and people aren't coming to the event to see me, I'm not going. I'm just not needed there enough to justify the travel.
I've also been wondering whether I should go to the Dfinity thing in May. If they don't want to pay for me to go and have me as a speaker there, I don't need to go that badly. I keep asking myself, when I've gone to events before, was I actually a speaker there? There was one eight years ago I barely even remember. Steam Fest. Anybody remember Steam Fest? Anybody following me back then? I went to Steam Fest in 2017, and I think I spoke on one panel. But they didn't pay for me to go or anything. I paid something like $1,000 or $2,000 to get there. It was cool, though. My one friend came, and that really made the trip. I ended up spending most of the time hanging out with him, going out to restaurants, sleeping in, and writing blog posts on Steem in my room.
So I've been chewing on this for a while: should I go? And my answer keeps coming back the same. I'm not going anywhere if you're not paying for me to be there. If I'm not speaking, people aren't coming to see me, so it's just not that important that I show up. The only exception is if it's extremely convenient. People do come to see me at AA meetings, not as a YouTuber, but because I show up to see them and they show up to see me. Whether I make it to one particular meeting or another generally isn't that important, but it's convenient and it's good for me. So thank you for letting me talk through this. It's nice. I'm clearing some things up just thinking out loud here.
Why everybody should keep their own vlog
This is exactly why I think you should have your own vlog too. If you have one, share it. I would genuinely love to listen to the boring details of your everyday life so we could compare boring details with each other. It's pretty narcissistic to think other people would want to hear about me going to Home Depot. Maybe that should be the title of this one.
Do I really need to run my video ideas through ChatGPT? I've been doing this a while. I should know by now when I say something in a video that's basically the clickbait headline. Do I really need these AI training wheels, feeding my transcript through to find the title? Well, that last one seemed to work well. Some things I'm so used to thinking that they don't stand out to me anymore, like the fact that my wife encourages me to have girlfriends. That made a good clickbait title for the last one of these. That's something I wouldn't have come up with on my own.
Is that all you have to say, Jerry Banfield? I tried talking in the third person one day, but it was just too difficult. Like, hi, this body's name is Jerry, he's an alcoholic. Hey friend, how are you doing? Oh, Jerry's fine today. Yes, thanks for asking about Jerry, he's had a nice day. But I think talking in the third person actually helps you separate a bit. This body is kind of like something I'm doing. I've gathered all the energy and put it together into this thing, but I don't need this thing to live. This is my creation. I made this. It's just a ball of energy I put together, starting in my mom's womb, with that one sperm and that one egg.
Comedy, handkerchiefs, and other realities
I'm not really in a position to do comedy directly, but if I just do vlogs, they might have a little comedic element to them. I listened to a comedian named Brad Upton. My dog walker told me about him. I listened to a couple of his routines on YouTube, and I liked it because he didn't swear at all in his two Dry Bar Comedy specials, and it was still funny. I was actually laughing. I put my AirPods in, whatever these are. That's my handkerchief there too, by the way, basically a straight-up nose drip on that thing all day. But somehow it dries out in my pocket. I keep wiping on it all day and it somehow dries out. Anyway, he was funny.
It's so hard to find good stuff, though. Sometimes I just want to listen to somebody play the piano, and that's probably easy enough. But then I'll want to listen to some comedy, and I go looking and it's like, well, not quite that kind of comedy. There's so much stuff in the world that it's hard to even find it sometimes. If you want to see more of how I think about all of this, I keep it organized in my ICP Crypto playlist.
Now think about how big the universe is. There are so many realities. The only reason you think you're stuck in this one is because you've forgotten how to find the others. I went to bed and woke up today disoriented, thinking, man, that was a lot of dreams, a lot of other realities. We're back in this one? Sometimes when I'm dreaming, I feel like I just came out of a blackout, like I was doing a whole lot of other stuff and just happen not to remember it right now. I've come to believe I'm not just lying in my bed with all of this being brain stuff happening. It feels like I go totally into other realities and then pop back into this one. All right, I think that's good for today.