My 5,019th day on YouTube, February 24th, 2025. It's a rainy day in St. Petersburg, Florida today. I've got the kids going back to school, and I'm going to take them this morning since Laura's going to pick them up to go to the dentist later. We get out the door, and I fine them a dollar a minute if they're not ready on time. It's amazing how effective money is as a control mechanism, but they both earn $20 an hour working, so it's not a bad deal for anybody. I enjoy taking them to school.
I have my two Lara Bars and a banana for breakfast as usual, along with my matcha green tea. We get the kids ready and we're off to school, drop them off, and I'm glad I've got yoga this morning, a power flow, because with the rain my tennis game that I usually have ends up getting rained out. It looks like it's going to be rained out, so I get to the power flow about 30 minutes early, catch up on my open chat messages, and then get to do the power flow. I'm a little off balance, and I wonder if it seems like yoga was easier when I was doing it five to seven days a week instead of three to four. But I've also been playing tennis and exercising my muscles in new ways. I hope I can get a run in. It's rainy, but we'll see about that.
Lunch and a crypto video
I get home and I plan to go to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at noon that I haven't been able to go to lately because I've been playing tennis. I really like the group there. On the way home I stop at Whole Foods. I'm imagining some bean nachos, so I buy a few different kinds of chips and I get some spicy salsa. I guess technically it'd be a hot sauce because it's not very chunky, but whatever you call it. I get an avocado. I get home, and I have a carton of beans, like a little can but it's in a carton, about a dollar fifty. So I dump the beans all over the nacho chips and then throw down some avocado, with some salsa and some onions I cut up the other day, and that's my lunch.
I then crank out a video about how crypto is a game and I figured out how to win, trying some different titles. I'm so glad to be back to doing one crypto video a day on my main channel and then one a day on my crypto reviews channel. I'm happy to see the crypto reviews channel thriving, and even my gaming channel is getting some views as well, which is awesome. So I get the crypto video cranked out.
What sobriety gave back to me
I end up getting to the meeting about 10 minutes late, which is fine. I miss the readings they do every meeting, but I've heard them thousands and thousands of times. I get down there, and there's a new girl at the meeting today. So I share about how my life's been awesome since I got sober. When I first went to AA when I was 21, I didn't want to grow up. I went straight home and drank afterwards. Eight years later, I hadn't grown up at all. I was basically the same level of maturity. Eight years had passed and I was just as immature as I was eight years before. Except this time I saw that my situation was desperate and I couldn't just stop drinking.
My life has been so good since then. It was a little bit of an adjustment getting used to being sober, to say the least, but man, it's been so good. My life's been so good being sober. I share this constantly because it sucks when you feel like you need something outside you just to live with yourself. In my experience, that's what it's like being an alcoholic or another kind of addict, and I'm glad I don't need that today. I'm glad I have food and water, good relationships, work I love, and a healthy body. I'm glad I don't need alcohol, drugs, or medication. I don't need any of that crap to get through the day. In fact, I just sail through most days. Rarely is there a day where I'm just trying to get to bed. I'm really enjoying each part of my day.
Leaning into YouTube and letting go of the grind
I get home after this meeting, and I've got hours and hours to work on my own, which is great because I've got six YouTube channels. I talk to my wife about gaming. I'm telling her I'm thinking about doing a little gaming. I'm not sure what kind of gaming I want to do. I definitely don't want to get into addictive playing of a whole bunch of games, tons of gaming and streaming. She asks, well, what are you going to give up? I'm going to cut back on putting so much time into crypto. I don't need to put much time into crypto. I've been trying so hard in crypto, and for what? If I'm right with my crypto videos, I don't need to do anything except make an ICP hype every day and review a crypto every day. So I'm going to cut back on the crypto videos I'm doing.
My music is coming along very quickly. It only takes me about 20 minutes to make a song, have a music video, upload it, and master it. So I don't need to be putting a whole bunch of time into it. I don't actually enjoy the process of making music that much. I enjoy the output. I enjoy hearing the different sounds. I enjoy playing around, but I don't enjoy taking hours and hours in a digital audio workstation and grinding out some song. I enjoy listening to songs I made and playing with new sounds.
So I crank out two songs, two crypto reviews, another crypto video, and a vlog for yesterday. I upload two gaming videos and two of my other old videos. So I upload 11 videos, four of which were re-uploads, and seven I newly filmed, all in about four hours. That's a pretty sweet workflow. It probably took a little over three hours to film seven videos. What an amazing workflow today. I'm glad I'm enjoying just leaning into YouTube.
Live streaming in the past was fun. It was cool having an audience, but it was also extremely limiting. I had to live stream things like Call of Duty Warzone solos or retro games, and I can't get locked into having to stream something like that all the time. YouTube videos give me the most freedom I have, and I do YouTube for freedom. Streaming ends up turning into a job, and I don't want to have a job.
Evening with the family
After that, I check Laura's location. She takes the kids to the dentist, then to Steak 'n Shake, and then stops by to drop off some milkshakes at her parents' house. I see she's at her parents' house, so I shut all my equipment off in the studio and I'm right there out front when she gets home with the kids. Laura appreciates that. I say hi to the kids. Madeline's mouth is numb because she got some fillings at the dentist. I hang out with them and help feed them dinner.
I have a really random dinner myself. I have some of their fries and milkshake that they got from Steak 'n Shake. Even though I eat mostly whole plant vegan, a little bit is not a big deal to me. What matters is the bulk of what you eat, and the bulk of what I eat is whole plant foods. So I have another chocolate bar to fill in a gap on a snack. I have some kale with tahini, just a random little dinner. That fills me up though. I have a package of dry oatmeal with sugar.
Then I play Monopoly, the Harry Potter edition, with the kids. That game ends up going long. Madeline ends up going out. She got Dumbledore's office and I got the Room of Requirement, and I got a card to steal Dumbledore's office from her. So she was pretty sad when that happened. My son gets a nice collection of properties though, and gets some house crests on the orange ones. It's a long game. I end up rolling the dice and playing the game for both of us. Finally, it's like an hour and a half plus after we started, and he has accumulated so much money. But I end up getting Madeline's properties, unmortgaging them, and then getting house crests on over half the board, all the expensive properties too.
So it was actually kind of sad. I enjoyed seeing my son have all this money and winning. It was actually kind of sad rolling the dice for both of us as he's getting ready for bed and he's in bed, and it's like, yeah, I won. But the joy was in playing the game with my kids, and that's a big life lesson. The joy is in spending the time and playing together. The joy is not in the result. The joy is in having time together. I feel empty winning, but I felt full sitting there rolling the dice, playing the game with them, not knowing what the outcome would be. So now I've won twice, my son's won twice, and my daughter's won once playing.
I also take my little mile run. It had been raining all day, and I finally get to do my little mile run in about nine and a half minutes. I commit to going to tennis on Friday. I'll miss one of my favorite yoga classes to go play tennis, but the guys at tennis are funny on Friday, so I enjoy all the laughs. I call my mom on the phone and talk for about six minutes. It's a big difference versus nothing. I take both dogs for a walk tonight because they've been cooped up inside. Melanie just eats everything, so I need to keep her off it. She eats anything, dirt, bird poop. She picked up a piece of glass and was carrying it around the other day, a big piece of glass too. So I want to keep her under more control. Less freedom, more control. If you enjoy these daily journals, you can follow along with my Life playlist. I get to bed at 10:40 with Laura and get a great night of sleep. We'll do it again tomorrow.