A Day in the Life of a Full-Time YouTuber: What It Really Takes

I have been a full-time YouTuber since 2012, and the question I get most is some version of what a normal day actually looks like. My answer, after years of filming myself, is that it is long, repetitive and very hard to separate from the rest of my life. Nothing about it is glamorous. Most of the work is filming, uploading and deciding what to make next, and the rest of the day is whatever is happening with my kids, my mom, my dating life and my body.

Here is my honest conclusion: the day-in-my-life format works, but only when you stop performing it. In my February 21, 2025 vlog, which I counted as my 5,016th day on YouTube, I wrote about being worn down by the quantity grind. I had been publishing around six videos a day, and I was asking whether I should make fewer, longer videos instead.

In my March 7th vlog I decided to start live streaming on Twitch again. I admitted that about a third of my streams had become me giving away a dollar or two at a time in chat, and that I had been chasing Twitch Partner and a growing audience. I wanted the stream back to being a place where friends could hang out for free. The next day, in my Twitch and yoga vlog, I wrote that I was keeping my life simple and trying to say hell yes or no to what I do.

By the time of my July 16, 2026 vlog, the picture had changed. I was dating again after a divorce earlier that year, I was building small AI apps and games, and I was getting 30,000 to 60,000 impressions a day, about 1.2 million in 28 days. I also said plainly that my net worth was negative $200,000 and that I felt vulnerable about the business. I wanted it to work, and I was not pretending otherwise.

By August 4, 2026 my community had grown to 22 members, and I was still publishing six videos a day with the schedule set about a week ahead. That post also shows the part I do not put in the highlight reel: I cried in a yoga class over a woman I had dated for a week or two, and I wrote about trying to say thank you instead of staying sad.

My dating channel taught me the clearest lesson about storytelling. In my August 21, 2026 post on dating mistakes I explained that my generic how-to titles had a click-through rate of one or two percent, while titles that told my own story, like "I spent $350 on Hinge," pulled more clicks and more watch time. I think a real personal experience is what AI cannot replace, so that is what I aim for now.

My speed dating post from August 30, 2026 is the one that changed how I think about all of it. Women I met asked whether I was there to meet someone or to generate content, and I did not have a clean answer. My ex-wife came to feel that nothing in her life was private anymore, and I count that as one of the real costs of this work. My current view is that a full-time creator life can work, but it can take over everything. If you are not ready for that, do not expect to be a full-time creator.

What you will find below is every member post in full, from the February 2025 vlog through the August 2026 speed dating post, with dating, Twitch, yoga and the YouTube business running through all of them. Read them in order if you want to see how my thinking moved: from grinding quantity, toward streams and stories that come from real life, and toward a simpler rule of hell yes or no. If you want the business side from other angles, my definition of success as a creator and why I quit streaming cover related ground.

If you are building a channel and want me to look at your own schedule and content, you can get a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

I Went Speed Dating. They Asked If I Was Using It for Content. (August 30, 2026)
I Turned My Dating Mistakes Into YouTube Videos. It Worked. (August 21, 2026)
Saying Thank You for the Queen: Yoga Tears, Six Videos a Day, and $300 Yesterday (August 4, 2026)
July 16, 2026 Vlog (July 16, 2026)
A Day in My Life: Twitch, Yoga, and Saying Hell Yes or No (June 17, 2026)
My March 7th Vlog: Returning to Twitch, Crypto Calls, and a Date Night (June 17, 2026)
A Day in the Life of a Full-Time YouTuber: What It Really Takes (June 17, 2026)

I Went Speed Dating. They Asked If I Was Using It for Content.

From my video published August 30, 2026.

They Asked If I Was Actually There to Meet Someone

Last night, I went to a speed dating event where I got a chance to talk to over 20 women one on one for about three minutes each. Naturally, most of them asked, "What do you do?" And I said, "I'm a content creator." They're like, "Oh, really?" I'm like, "Yeah, I've been doing this since 2011, full time since 2012." And then many of them got skeptical and asked, "Well, are you actually here to meet someone, or are you just trying to generate content?" I said I definitely would love to meet someone here, but I get a guaranteed result of generating content. I knew this would be interesting enough that for my Jerry Banfield dating channel, I could absolutely film videos based off of this speed dating event. And sure enough, when I talked to all these women, I had conversations that were perfect for generating content.

The point of this post is to highlight the question: am I trying to live my life first, or, as a content creator, is my entire life all about creating content? I did a video yesterday that you all seem to have enjoyed. It's gotten the most views of any of my new videos, with lots of watch time and comments, called "YouTube Rewards My Worst Self. Real Life Punishes It." The speed dating example is perfect, because when anyone finds out I'm a content creator, it's like, "Are you going to tell my story in a video? Are you just here to make a video out of this, or do you actually care about it?" I don't even know anymore.

When Your Whole Life Becomes Content

This has become the complicated thing with content creation, because the easiest way to generate content is to live my life in a way that naturally leads to me making content. For example, going speed dating while being a content creator naturally leads into a video, to the point where I can hardly separate my work from the rest of my life anymore. This was one reason my ex-wife wanted a divorce. I just talked to a guy from the MaxFi team on my Jerry Banfield Crypto Reviews channel, and he shared a similar experience: he got that silver YouTube plaque, got famous online, made a bunch of money, and ended up getting divorced, because some people do not want to live like that. Everything in life becomes there to generate content. My ex-wife, when we were together, came to hate that any conversation she had with me, anything going on with anybody in her family, could turn into my next YouTube video and become part of my content. She felt like nothing was private anymore in her life.

So when I'm dating, I feel that I need to let women know up front: look, I'm a YouTuber. I'm a content creator. I'm a legitimate one. People actually watch. And the platform pushes me to focus on promoting the extremes. Like I talked about in my video yesterday about YouTube rewarding my worst self: when I come out on YouTube and say I'm just an ordinary guy having a regular life and everything's going great, nobody wants to watch that. When I was married, my vlogs got very little viewership. Now that I'm divorced and dating and I do vlogs about dating not going well, people show up. When I do a date and say, "Oh, I had a great time with this woman," nobody cares. When I do a date and say, "She canceled on me seven minutes beforehand," people love that.

Two Women, One Night

I even have a conflict right now that comes down to: do I want to make great content, or do I want to be an honorable man dating? I met two women last night. I got one number from the speed dating event, and this woman seems very enthusiastic to hang out with me. And I met another woman at a mixer that I went to, because I figured this would generate more content — if I stay at home, that won't generate more content. And I want to know for my dating audience: is going to speed dating worth it? Is going to mixers where people wear wristbands showing whether they're single or not worth it? I don't know, so I need to test.

Now both women I met last night want to go out with me tonight. I have a date with the one I'm most interested in earlier, but the other one is an hour and a half drive away, and I want to see both of them. I already spent an hour talking with the first one last night. The other one, from speed dating, I only got about three minutes with, and she seems even more eager to hang out with me and move faster than the first one. And even talking about each of them here individually is problematic if they watch my videos, because there's full transparency here. But it doesn't matter, because I guess I'm a content creator first and foremost, aren't I? I know there's some woman out there who will love this enough that she'll put up with me talking about everything, and maybe she'll even like it. Some women are like, "Oh, that's so cool, you're a content creator." Others are like, "Oh, okay," and they don't want to talk, which is fine.

Honorable Man or Better Content?

So I'm thinking at this point: as an honorable man, I would simply tell the second woman, "I don't think it's going to work out to see you tonight." But for content, I should definitely double book, right? That's better content. I should just double book both of them. The first one set it up so that she said, "I've got three hours, then I could see you." I thought and spoke too fast — I said, "Oh, three hours with you sounds great." But then this other woman wants to see me, so I'd need to cut the first date short, down to an hour, to go see the second one. It would make much better content if I try to see both of them in one night, because if I'm having a lot of fun with the first one, then I'll just cancel on the second one. But that's dishonorable in real life, isn't it? That's rude. That's what women have been doing to me — flaking and canceling last minute, because they found some guy they wanted to go out with more, or whatever else happened in their life.

And yet, when I asked a couple of my guy friends, they said, "Definitely double book. You know how women have been flaking and canceling on you, so what if that happens? Go out with the first one. If she's not really exciting after the first hour, just tell her you had a nice night and you're heading out, then go see the second one. And if you're having too much fun with the first one, just tell the second one you're canceling, can't make it, and would like to reschedule."

See, that's better content, isn't it? You can already see the video titles coming out of my mind. If I just go out with one woman and I'm a decent guy, there's not really an interesting video title there. But if I double book two women, then whatever I do is going to be interesting content. "I double booked two women and had to cancel on the second one." Or, "I double booked two women and pissed the first one off by leaving to go see the second one." You can see how the second case is guaranteed to be better content. So my brain is trying to calculate: is it more important to be an honorable man, or is it more important to make money, get viewers, and pay your bills? Because making more degenerate content is much easier for paying the bills and getting views. Making content that's wholesome and genuinely helpful to people is not usually rewarded on YouTube. There are exceptions, but I didn't delete millions of followers casually online because things were going great and it was a nice place.

The Matrix That Drains People Like Batteries

In my experience, content creation is very much like a simulation — like the Matrix — there to drain people like batteries. And I feel like I'm going in like Neo, trying to help pull people out of the Matrix, saying, "Wake up, you're getting drained like a battery." But then I can't help but wonder: am I actually waking people up, or am I helping more people get drained? If I try to genuinely wake people up directly, be an honorable man, and lead by example, that's not usually going to get the views.

So I'm not sure what to do tonight. The part of me that wants to just be a loving, considerate man wants to tell the second woman, "Sorry, I can't make it tonight." And the part of me that's a content creator says, "You have to double book. Absolutely double book. That's guaranteed content." Because even if I double book and one of them flakes and cancels, then the story becomes, "I double booked and she canceled." Perfect. If I only book one, there's nothing. You can see that if you really want to be a successful content creator, this is what you're looking at.

And this is not special to YouTubers. Stand-up comedians, according to the ones I've listened to, say their whole life is generating jokes. Ironically, they make their best jokes when their life is full of misery, suffering, and crazy stuff — making better jokes is hard when everything's going smooth. That's why a lot of the best stand-up comedians — not all, but certainly some of the best — have had crazy personal lives, because that makes for the best jokes. When you can genuinely laugh at your pain, like Kevin Hart, and pull from your own personal experience, those make the most heartfelt, relatable jokes. So for me, if I want to be a successful content creator, having a life that is naturally more chaotic and drama-filled instantly gives me better content, and it gets more clicks. And honestly, I'm enjoying this. This is fun. But if you're not up for living this lifestyle, don't think you're going to be a full-time content creator.

What This Lifestyle Really Takes

If you don't want to start wondering all the time whether you're somewhere just for a video or whether you're there to actually meet someone — in any circumstance — don't do this. This lifestyle isn't for you. And if you want to really know what it takes to truly be a successful content creator, understand what I've lived: I had more subscribers than MrBeast up until 2016, and I deleted more followers than most people will ever get. Now I'm rapidly growing again from scratch. In less than six months, I've gotten millions and millions of impressions on YouTube. I just instantly started up around 12 new Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts, and all of them are churning out thousands of videos on autopilot with clips taken from my long-form YouTube videos. I'm crushing this as a content creator — I've got three channels monetized. I know this life.

But I feel like this is almost a lifestyle kind of like the mafia: you get into it, and I've found it's difficult to get out of it. It's difficult to even stop being in it. It's difficult to not think of every single thing I'm doing as generating content — even parenting my kids. That's one of the few places I feel like I can stop generating content, but often they're sitting here playing video games at my house while I'm doing work.

I hope you've had some new insights from the world of content creation. Come join the Jerry Banfield Family on Skool, or message me and share what you're doing — ask for my feedback, show me what you've got.

I love seeing what other content creators are doing, and I love talking content creation. If you want to know what it really takes to start from zero, or to do better with where you're at now, I've got you.

I also have a coaching program for YouTubers and content creators available on my website, where you can also schedule a one-on-one call with me.

If you want to go deeper on what this life actually takes, everything I'm learning about building as a creator lives on my YouTube Coaching playlist. I can't wait to see what my next video is — and whether I double book these two women tonight or not.

I Turned My Dating Mistakes Into YouTube Videos. It Worked.

From my video published August 21, 2026.

I got divorced last year, and since then I've been dating and starting a brand new YouTube dating channel. I've been turning all of my dating stories into content that is quickly building an audience that loves my videos, and that content has been shown 186,000 times already in just the last 28 days on YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen my dating videos on a brand new channel, and what I'm doing goes against what you see a lot of other people doing. So I'm going to explain this strategy, so that if you're a YouTuber and you want to get the best results with your videos, you can do the same thing.

What I'll do is look at the analytics and the videos and explain my strategy, because what a lot of you are doing is making these generic video titles, and AI can just do that now. What I've done on my dating channel that's special is I make very human videos. So let me look through some of these videos and show you what's worked best, because getting a thousand views on a cold, brand new long-form video is absolutely amazing, and it's bringing people to jerrybanfield.com.

I've also got an option up for YouTube coaching if you want me to help you, and I have dating coaching as well. I've been on YouTube for 15 years. I've built six new channels, gotten millions and millions of impressions, which will soon be called views on YouTube, and I've built up several channels from scratch.

What a brand new dating channel looks like five months in

When I first started this newest channel out, it was getting less than 100 views a day, and then it started getting 100 views a day on average. But this new channel has now gotten 416,000 impressions just since March, which is five months, with an average view duration of four minutes, which is awesome. Plus, I've gotten 18,000 more views on my shorts, and I've got a few thousand views and 50,000 impressions on my livestreams. So this channel is on the way to being my fourth new monetized channel started from scratch this year. At this rate, give it a few more weeks, maybe a month, and this channel is going to be monetized.

If anything, the channel seems to be growing faster on average. The views are down a little bit because of shorts views, but the watch time more than doubled in the last month, views are up more than double, and subscribers are up more than double. So this channel has got nice momentum.

What I'm doing on it that's special: sharing my own story

Most of you, if you're going to start a dating channel, would start a channel that is preaching, that's telling people what to do. And to be sure, I've certainly made some of the first videos on my channel that way, although I did also do "I'd rather get no Hinge matches, my real profile." But this is what a lot of people do with their videos: "Men are missing opportunities." "Men don't stay single." "Why dating apps..." "Do Hinge roses work?" "Why Hinge users..." Men do this, men do that. A lot of the worst videos on my channel have been these more generic sounding videos, where they're tutorials, or they're "study dating instead of suffering through it." They're telling people what to do.

But my best videos are like the one from six days ago that's already gotten 1,400 views. That is a video telling my exact experience. Same thing here: "I spent $350 on Hinge." "I started cold approaching women." And here's a story: "She sent me seven texts when I went quiet, then I ruined it." Now, there's one, "Single men are being lied to about dating," but that's kind of the exception among the top six of these videos. "I thought I was respecting her. She felt rejected." A couple in there are more general videos, but then this one, "She tried to kiss me. I backed away."

So my top videos on this channel have consistently been these story videos, and I've done less of them. More of my videos have been the how-to kind, or "your single life sucks," why things, how things. The best thing that's working on this channel is sharing my authentic stories. I did something. I experienced something. She did something. These are very human.

Your human experience is what AI can't replace

What I'm seeing on YouTube today is that if you want to grow a channel, it needs to offer the most human experience possible. Right now, if you're creating generic self-help kind of videos, like how to do this, what men should do, general statements, AI is able to make videos like that, and almost everybody else is saying the same thing. But when you start sharing your unique human experience, for example "I stopped pretending to be friendly with women," I guarantee you this title works so much better than if I'd have said something like "Stop pretending to be friendly with women" or "Why being friendly with women doesn't work," because that sounds like everybody else's titles and AI can easily generate videos that explain all that stuff.

What's not easy to replace is a real authentic human experience, and what's uncommon is people directly sharing from their own experience. Especially in dating, almost everybody's just reacting to other dating content and telling people what to do. It's uncommon to have somebody that actually says, hey, I did this, then that happened, she did this, and then I did that. That's much more relatable.

That's why on a lot of these videos, when I first started doing more generic videos, the watch time was much lower when people were just seeing my videos and me telling them what to do. My watch-time data gives specific evidence of this. My watch time on earlier videos was often much lower and people were just not even watching, even though some of the videos were shorter. People were not vibing with them that much. I did some livestreams in there, but then I started shifting to an approach of "here's what I did, let me tell you the story," and the average view duration started to go up a lot as people were very interested to hear what I did.

The click-through rate has also gone up. In my analytics, while I was talking about more general experience and grinding out videos, the average click-through rate was like one or two percent. A lot of people weren't even that satisfied with the videos I was making, because they were just more generic, tradable advice. You could just ask ChatGPT and it gives you the same kind of crap. But then I started shifting to making videos talking about my experience and what I did, and the click-through rate goes up on that, too.

One reason the click-through rate goes up when I'm sharing my authentic experience is that it's more unpredictable. It's not so preachy. It's easier to listen to. People are more curious. Whereas when I'm out there just telling people, well, here's what you do, and here's why, and this is about women, and this is about men, it's basically most of the other dating content, and it's boring and transactional. When I'm making videos saying, "I spent $350 on Hinge, then I deleted it again," that's a story. That's my real experience. When I say "I started cold approaching women, it worked immediately," that's a clear story and a clear human experience and a clear curiosity gap. Okay, I want to hear the story of that. Whereas if I put a video out saying, well, you need to cold approach women, here's why, there are a hundred other videos like that already on YouTube. It doesn't stand out.

When you're small, social proof works against you

And then when I start telling someone else what to do, they often are like, what do you know? Who are you? Especially when you're smaller on YouTube, you have the authority of social proof working against you. So if you're a smaller channel on YouTube, your human experience is your hook. That's why, for titling this, it's about my human experience building a brand new dating channel up with my authentic stories.

This is why it's hard to grow channels lots of times, because of the fewer views you have on a video. Sometimes when you start a brand new channel, some of the videos get more views because the channel is brand new. But once that new channel advantage wore off, my videos kind of sucked in terms of the views they were getting for quite a while. Some of those are older, and my newer videos will actually get many more.

Rewriting my own titles as stories

Here's an example of a video I did: "Study dating instead of suffering through it." If I had put the title on this one to say "I started studying dating instead of suffering through it," that's so much better than telling someone else what to do. A lot of people are tired of getting told what to do. Or this one, "How I text before a first date: build anticipation or end it." If I'd titled this video instead "I blew it texting this before a first date," I guarantee you that gets probably double, if not much more than that.

Instead of "Flaking on dating apps," or "Flaking is normal, don't take it personally," if I say "She matched me on Hinge, she was so enthusiastic, she gave me her phone number, and then she flaked on the date," I guarantee you that gets significantly more views. Because the first version is something AI could generate. It's what everybody else is saying. What people are not doing is sharing their actual lived experience.

For example, "Feeling unlovable in dating is a trance you can break." I told a really nice story in that video, but the title essentially hid the story. If I had written the title as "I felt unlovable in dating, and here's how I felt better," or something like that, it tells the story. Same with "Dating a lot doesn't mean you're desperate." I could go back and change some of these titles at this point, but I might as well just make new videos, because I already did thumbnails and it's so easy to make videos. I don't know that it's even worth changing these; I'll just make more. But that one, I guarantee you it gets more views if I say "This woman said I'm desperate because I'm going out on all these dates." It's a story, it's a hook.

Some of these did better, and here's an example of where I started shifting to this: "A single mom ghosted me, my dating coach said send this." In my analytics those videos went 60, 160, 260, and this one 278 views when I made it a story. "Make dating fun again" didn't do as well. Then 337 views on "I spent $10,000 on a dating coach, still single." Very clear, and some of these started getting momentum. This one didn't have as good a story, "I can't date like I did 15 years ago," and I went kind of back to the generic approach after it. And obviously sometimes you can come up with something that works anyway, though that one would probably have worked better if I'd have said "Why I only date average women" or "I'm done dating beautiful women" or something like that.

Stories get views, and they get reactions

That one probably would have worked better; it was a good hook. But then I start sharing my exact experiences and all my videos start to get more views. And then something else happens: somebody actually reacts to my dating content. The more you do generic things like "Women go crazy for average men who do this," the less likely people are to react to it, same as something like "You can't find love while trying not to get hurt." Some of those actually dipped in views compared to the ones that were taking off.

Then look at how "I thought I was respecting her, she felt rejected" took off. Or "I deleted Hinge three times. Here's my profile." These started to kick off. But not only that, people started reacting to these videos as well. Podcasts and another channel started reacting to my dating videos, because when I start telling my own stories, that gets attention and that gets reactions. When I'm just doing what feels like AI-generated how-to content these days, with generic clickbait titles and hooks, that doesn't draw reactions that often either.

But when I start doing videos like my newest ones, "I went out with 20 women in 2026," "Dating's broken, men need to fix it," "I'm learning to let women wonder if I like them," "I was better at dating before I tried to be nice," "I stopped pretending to be friendly," I did this, people are reacting to these a lot more. That then gets me free views additionally and brings in new viewers to my channel from other channels.

Why this matters if you're building from scratch

I've shared this to help you see that if you want to build a channel from scratch, this to me is essential to get a nice foundation. As you get bigger and you have more perceived social authority, you can change more to telling people what to do. But still, in most cases, telling stories is harder to replace, easier to stand out with, and in my experience is generally going to work better, because almost everybody else is telling you what to do. Very few people are coming out and saying, this is what happened to me and this is my story.

If you found this helpful, I am a full-time YouTuber. This is all I do, at my website at jerrybanfield.com, where you'll find links to all six of my channels at the top. Any of you who spend money to buy anything get to be on the leaderboard, and I show you off in almost every video.

The first thing to buy is my lifetime chat access, because you can talk to me every day and ask me any question. I check it every single day. The community is in there with you. There's no moderation on this. It's just a chat on my website that I control, and there's no third parties moderating it, which is amazing.

For the best experience, I have dating coaching, with Zoom calls and text support in between, and no monthly commitment. It's absolutely fantastic if you want to dive much deeper and work on yourself. I help men, I help women, I help old, I help young. Anywhere you're at, you can find love in your life. Everything is totally customized. No program, no BS set of courses to go through. I listen to you and I share from my experience.

If you use Skool, I've got a dating community and a whole Family on Skool on all different topics.

If you want a one-on-one call and to schedule that in advance, I have that as well. And if you have something urgent you want to talk about and I'm online, you can jump in and talk to me in as little as 10 minutes.

I appreciate everyone on jerrybanfield.com who's on here supporting me. I only read comments on jerrybanfield.com, and you can send a comment on my tip wall if you want to share your thanks and appreciation.

Thank you for reading this. I hope it was helpful, there's more in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and I hope to see you on jerrybanfield.com soon.

Saying Thank You for the Queen: Yoga Tears, Six Videos a Day, and $300 Yesterday

From my video published August 4, 2026.

A Beautiful Morning and So Much to Be Thankful For

It's August 4th, 2026, and this is my Jerry Banfield show vlog, giving you my real, raw, authentic life. I just had a beautiful experience this morning at yoga, and last night as well, that I want to share because it'll help you tap into the magical, beautiful experiences waiting for you. I also want to thank everybody, because that is huge and it means the world to me. We're up to 22 people in the community now. One person joined at $96 a month, four others joined at $9 a month, and one member scheduled two one-on-one calls with me today. I'm super grateful. I made over $300 yesterday, and thank God. I told my mom, "I might not have to move in with you now," when she was over last night. She was kind of defensive about it — and dang, I still had spaghetti on my mouth while I was telling her, trying to wipe that off. I'm really grateful, because I'm really good at what I do.

My Content Philosophy: Six Videos a Day

I was watching a Gary Vee video yesterday, which I don't usually do. He said he laughs when people call themselves content creators and then tell him they only published five pieces of content in the last week. He said that would be like telling him you were training for something physically and you did five pushups all week. He said he published 378 pieces of content yesterday. That's my philosophy too: I publish six videos a day — six ten-minute videos like this one, every day. Yesterday I only got five. The day before that, I got 17. My videos are scheduled in advance on most channels, and I want my videos scheduled at least a week in advance on all my channels, so I can take a week off and still put out 42 pieces of content. I'm even wondering how I can do more than six videos a day in the same amount of time.

I went through and did this AI workflow — I'll get to the dating stuff in just a second. I took 20 livestreams, and the AI, using my graphics card and the rest of my PC and about half of my Claude Fable session credits, went through all 20 of them — 20 hours of video, actually probably 25 or 30 hours of video — within a few hours and cranked out something like 25 gaming highlight videos yesterday. That's so nuts. All I need to do now is upload them. Wow, I'm so grateful for this AI technology, because now I can work by myself and crank out so much content.

The Dating Front

On the dating front, I got several more matches on Hinge yesterday. I tried using a boost and had — I'm not even sure — five, six, seven likes on my profile, and I matched with a few of them. I think I'm going to unmatch a couple of them today, because I can only talk with so many women, and if I'm not that excited at this point on a dating app and they live a ways away, it's not going to work. I've got to keep a tighter focus.

This morning I got up feeling full of energy — easily aggravatable, but full of energy. I took the kids over and dropped them off at their mom's house, and then I went to a yoga flow at a studio I don't usually go to. I've been thinking a lot about the queen — the woman I dated for a week or two. Man, it was such a powerful, beautiful experience. For most of the last week my mind has been stuck on how sad it is that it didn't work out. But first of all, you don't know that it didn't work out, at least with her. And second of all, having a beautiful experience with somebody is something to say thank you for. That first week of spending 12 hours together was so beautiful and so euphoric — an experience I will always treasure. And it was a great learning opportunity, especially the next week and a half, of what not to do. At the same time, I don't think it makes sense for me to reach out to her again, because she's the one who wanted space and said she was less interested.

Saying Thank You Instead of Staying Sad

I went to yoga yesterday and I thought I saw her — this beautiful woman who looked a lot like her — and my mind was going, why is she reacting so positively to me? It took me a minute of talking to this woman to realize I knew her from somewhere else. I've actually known her for a year, and she looks so similar, at least in the yoga studio, to the woman I had dated. I was really happy to see who it was, and we had a really nice conversation before and after class. And I just kept saying thank you. I've been digging into almost a constant chant, a prayer, constantly saying thank you. Because when I look at it and think, "Oh, it's sad it didn't work out with that woman I dated," that point of view is valid. But can't you also say thank you? Thank you for that experience. Wasn't that awesome — a week where you thought you'd found someone, a week where it felt really great? And imagine that it's going to happen again. Say thank you. And it's going to happen again even sooner, because it seems like everything with my dating has been accelerating. Dating used to feel slow and miserable — getting separated, everything was almost pain, and nothing was working. Now it seems like the women are coming at me faster and faster, and they're more and more exciting, and I'm like, dang, I might be about done being single, or I might have a lot more fun adventures ahead of me.

I went to yoga this morning at a different studio, because the one I usually go to didn't have quite the right times today — and I have a massage 12 minutes after recording this. There was one attractive woman there, so I put my mat down near her and put out all the good vibes toward her, like I talk about on my dating channel. I'm big on this: women are often subtle communicators, and there's a heartfelt, almost telepathic connection between people. If a woman is interested in talking to me, she'll make it easy for me to talk to her. This woman jetted out of the class right away, so I'm like, well, that was easy — she didn't want to talk to me, and that works just fine. It's always great to put out love and put that energy toward people.

What really felt nice is that I ended up having a good cry in that yoga class. Some country song came on about a woman who went the other way, and God, dude, I just started sobbing. That one really took me by surprise. I was thinking about the queen, and I was praying: please let her see how special what she could have with me is, or please let me find that with another woman where we both feel the exact same way. To me, that's an ideal way to pray, because yes, I would love for it to work out with the queen, but at the same time, I'm open to having it work out with anyone else where both of us feel the same way. I know what I want, and I'm not going to attach it to one specific person. My first choice currently would be the queen, but I'm open to anybody else. The world is full of women, and I've got two dates scheduled on the calendar for Thursday right now. I'm looking forward to that, and I'm feeling so grateful today.

I just want to keep feeling like this — keep chanting thank you, keep feeling grateful, keep having my heart open. I feel like this whole experience has strengthened me. It's funny — some of you were so concerned when I was feeling a bunch of emotions. But to me, it's a sign of strength that you can feel a gigantic, intense range of emotions, even show them publicly, and then, boom, you're back stronger and better than ever. That's how I feel right now.

YouTube Feels Like Early Udemy Again

I'm super grateful my YouTube is kicking off, and everything feels like Udemy. For those of you who have followed me back a while, like 2014 — everything feels like early Udemy, like 2015, such a magical time. I know what's going to happen, and it's awesome. My Crypto Reviews channel keeps hitting one-out-of-tens on so many of my videos, and I'm really grateful for all this traffic on YouTube. I hit a one-out-of-ten on the YouTube coach channel too, which has been one of the most frustrating channels, because starting a YouTube coach channel from scratch is hard — nobody's ever cared about YouTube, and nobody cares what some small YouTuber has to say about YouTube. But that channel finally got a really nice one, and if that's a journey you're on too, you might enjoy my YouTube Coaching playlist. My games channel has so many videos scheduled out, and I just got a one-out-of-ten there as well. This experience with this woman was just what I needed at just the right time. It was so perfect, and I just pray that I keep saying thank you.

Today I thought back to a lot of the women I dated, and all the magical experiences I had to prepare me for where I'm at now, and all the great times I had with my ex-wife. I'm grateful she's got someone she seems to be really enjoying, and I'm glad that on her journey she doesn't have the time and energy for as much drama as my dating journey has been. At the same time, I'm probably looking for something more difficult to find. I want a woman to have kids and a family with, and it's harder to line all that up — but to me, it's extremely rewarding when it all is lined up.

I really appreciate all your love and support. This is probably one of the most magical times to be in the community, now that we've got 22 people — when it's small, when you've got a bunch of people just joining and posting and really excited, and there are still few enough people that I can pay individual attention very well to every single person in the group. If you want to be part of that, join the Jerry Banfield Family while it's still this intimate.

I really appreciate your love and support. I'm feeling all of it, and I hope I'm giving it back to you effectively.

July 16, 2026 Vlog

From my video published July 16, 2026.

I'm Jerry Banfield, and this is my July 16, 2026 vlog as a full-time YouTuber. I have no idea what I'll title this — I'll put the most clickbait crap I can on it, whatever turns out to be the most interesting part. So, what's alive for me right now? I'm recording this in the morning on July 16, 2026, and I'm talking about yesterday.

One of the cool things I did yesterday: I built an entire game with AI from scratch. It's kind of like Vampire Survivors, you can play it for free, and it's really cool. I had so much fun playing it yesterday, and I couldn't last longer than six minutes on it. What else can't you last longer than six minutes on? I'm also filming this vlog back in the studio today. It's just so much easier and faster, and the video comes out better.

A Date Tonight and an Open Heart

I have a date planned seven or eight hours from now, and I'm just so filled up with excitement. I feel so vulnerable. I texted her this morning a couple of hours ago, I haven't heard back yet, and I'm just having fun dating. This is exhilarating. It's fun. It feels scary, but dating has mostly just been stressful since I got divorced at the beginning of the year, and I'm so grateful there is fun and there is joy in it now. Which is funny, because on my Jerry Banfield Dating channel I just did a video on Sunday asking, is anybody having fun dating? I realized this process should be fun.

What makes dating fun is when I open my heart — and yes, I risk getting hurt. My mom says, "I just don't want to see you get hurt." And my answer is, well, I don't want to see me go through life without loving. It's hard for me to text women if I don't have some emotion behind it. I've had such a great text conversation over the last almost seventy-two hours with this woman I've met, and we had so much fun texting yesterday. She even got invited to do some work and earned some good money yesterday, and she needed to adjust her schedule for today. I'm glad I called her when she asked about that. I told her, all right, cool — so you can see me at night instead of during the afternoon, and that's fine. Man, it just feels so exhilarating.

At the same time, I feel a little out of control, a little wild. I remember this is how dating felt as a teenager too, but I'm grateful now that it's been a couple of decades since I was a teenager. The same feelings are there, but they don't overwhelm me so much. My logical mind and my grounded life take me through the day without totally losing it.

Add Me to Your Contacts

I'm so grateful for YouTube. One of my members saw that I just raised the price of my membership and started offering one-on-one calls every week — twenty-five minutes a week — and he messaged me on Skool and said, can we just exchange numbers? Can I add you as a contact and just talk to you when you're available? And I realized that's a great thing to do. Instead of depending on Zoom, it makes the whole relationship more organic. So I said sure, I added him as a contact, and I gave him my phone number. Right now I've blocked all the time off today for the date, so it doesn't look like there's any availability if you try to schedule a call with me — but I do have time, and I'm pretty flexible.

That was a nice realization: anybody who wants to add me to the contacts on your phone and be able to just call me, what you can do is join my community and then send me a DM in there saying, here's my phone number — can you add me to your contacts? Then you can just send me a text like, hey, are you available to talk today? Or, when's your first availability today for a call? It can be a little less formal, we can talk on the phone and have more organic conversations, and you can add me to your life as a contact — as someone you can call and someone you can talk to — which I think is super valuable.

I feel very vulnerable with my business right now. Man, I really want this to work. And with the woman I have a date with later, the biggest area of insecurity for me right now is my finances, which are out there for everybody to see. Like I've talked about openly: I'm Jerry Banfield, I'm 42, I'm a single dad, and my net worth is negative $200,000. Well, our country has a big, huge debt too, and we're doing all right. At least there's room for improvement. And while I have debt, I also have assets. I have a lot to offer, and the debt is just one of my liabilities. I'm also very kind and understanding. Yesterday, when she asked to adjust our plans, she was afraid I'd be upset. I told her, look, 99 percent of the time I'm going to be kind and understanding, and the 1 percent of the time when I'm not, I will always make amends for it.

I feel so good opening my heart and offering it. At the same time, I feel so vulnerable — like I'm out on the battlefield running around and I could get shot. But it's not actually the battlefield. It's not going to be over if I get hurt. And it's great validation: however it works out with this woman, this process is what I need to be able to do.

Building My Own Apps and Games with AI

Yesterday was also really inspiring on the technology side. A blockchain pal messaged me about his shorts and Opus Clip. So I made my own version of Opus Clip with Claude — I already pay $200 a month for Claude, so I just built my own version of that tool right on my computer. Honestly, the shorts didn't come out that well. It was kind of awkwardly moving my face around trying to keep it centered, and the AI didn't do a very good job picking the most interesting hook — it basically cranked out a bunch of boring shorts. But I'm amazed at what I built with AI, and it didn't even take that much of my usage. It's incredible what you can build with this.

Another thing I made is kind of like a little Minecraft-Roblox game called Island Spark Hunt. And then there's the one that's like a Vampire Survivors clone. I just cranked all of those out, and it was pretty easy.

How I Plan to Grow the Family

I've been wondering: what am I going to do to get more people to join the Family? Should I stick to organic traffic? Should I start paying for Google ads? This morning I woke up and realized my ideal audience is probably YouTubers, because you can talk to me about YouTube — that's a clear area where people need help. And YouTubers are pretty easy to reach because they have channels. So I'm thinking I might do some influencer marketing.

But I realized step one is to have all my organic content — all my videos, every day — scheduled well in advance before I try to go for anything paid. It doesn't make sense to spend money on outreach when I'm already getting tens of thousands of impressions a day — anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 impressions daily. That means my videos, thumbnails, and titles are showing 30,000 to 60,000 times a day, which adds up to about 1.2 million times in the last 28 days. So step one is to just keep pumping that organic message out there, because that's the most likely way somebody is going to want to join the Family. And really, if one to three people a week join and most people stay, that's going to be a full-time income.

Helping a Friend Quit His Job and Start Living

A friend called me yesterday. A month ago, I encouraged him to quit his job. He's in his mid-twenties, and the job felt safe, but it felt like it was holding his whole life back. He put in his two weeks a couple of weeks ago and quit. Before that, I sat with him for an hour and a half one night in person, and he asked me, why are you telling me this? Why are you taking this time to help me? I said, because other people took their time to help me like this, and it really changed my life. I told him, it looks like right now the biggest thing you need to do is quit your job and get out there and explore. You don't like your job. You're tired of it. You're just keeping it because you're scared. Quit that job and then explore.

So he called me last night and said, dude, I'm working and I'm having so much fun. He's trying different day jobs — he worked with another friend, and then with a couple of other friends doing different kinds of work — and he said, I feel like I'm really living my life now. I told him, I'm so proud of you. That's huge. That's huge that you've done that.

I also told him where I just met this woman — at yoga — and he said, I'm going to start going there. I said, you need to go there. He's a good-looking guy in his mid-twenties, and he could easily meet a woman there and end up with a girlfriend, which is something he's missing right now. It's been years since he's had a girlfriend. I told him, just show up there, be the usual nice guy you are, and put out that good, loving energy. Like I talked about in my dating video on how I attract a woman and encourage a woman to approach me without saying anything — he may have a woman approach him. He can literally just go there and practice.

He also said, I want to be a yoga teacher. I told him, you're definitely going to have a girlfriend doing that. I've thought about doing yoga teacher training myself, even though I don't want to teach yoga classes. I tried leading a yoga session when I was in massage school, and here's the thing: I'm good at doing yoga — maybe I'm great at doing yoga — but I'm not great at leading a yoga class. There's a whole different mindset to it. I could learn how to do it, but it's just kind of boring to me. I'm not as enthusiastic about combining my speech with my body. I'm very intellectual. Some of you say I think too much; I say some of you don't think enough. I think and use my mind to try to make sense of the world around me and understand what's happening, and it allows me to see clearly a lot of the time — to see through a bunch of deception and lies.

Speaking of deception, I also watched Bobby O's video destroying the BitTensor TAO guy. And man — Bobby was willing to debate, but this guy doesn't want to debate him.

Lying on Stage and Getting Celebrated for It

From what I can see, the BitTensor TAO guy is getting up on stage and lying to people. Almost everything he says is a lie or a misdirection. Everything is kept utterly simple to avoid any of the details, because the details don't look very pretty. He makes these giant claims — that BitTensor TAO is the third major innovation after the internet and Bitcoin, that it's like Google — even though it has nothing in common with Google. The BitTensor subnets can leave whenever they want to, which is nothing like YouTube, which can't just leave Google whenever it feels like it. My God, this is crazy. How much of our world is people getting up on stage, blatantly lying, and then getting paid and celebrated for doing it?

A New Direction for My YouTube Coach Channel

Yesterday I also got an idea for my Jerry Banfield YouTube Coach channel. What can I do on that channel that will be better than just making YouTube coaching videos that people don't watch? What I need to do is review other creators. The YouTube Coach channel is a great channel for videos talking about what other people are doing on YouTube — one channel where I don't have to talk about myself the whole time. That would be a great channel to attract the creators themselves, attract their audiences, attract other YouTubers by showing creators as case studies, bring people into the Family, and also help you discover new creators. Because what's crazy is that it's actually kind of hard to discover creators on YouTube. YouTube pushes the same kinds of creators at you all the time.

It feels like an absolute honor that YouTube has shown my videos around the platform 1.2 million times in the last month, because it shows other people's videos around so much more. It feels like such an honor that I can even get into the algorithm at all. And I have faith that everything is going to work out financially.

What I Think About All Day

I do obsess. I think all day about three things: this woman I have a date planned with later, my YouTube channel, and taking care of my kids. That's all I think about, all day, every day. I'm very focused, and most of my biggest thinking goes toward YouTube, although this woman has taken over a lot of my attention. I even set my own little ringtone and text tone for her on my phone, because I'm tired of hearing the default one and getting my hopes up. I got a couple of texts this morning, and I was all excited — and then I looked and thought, why are you messaging me this morning, man? Come on now.

I don't want to dime anybody out in particular, but there's one guy who always messages me asking for stuff, and his life is always a disaster. I already helped him out, and he won't do anything to get his life together. He always needs help because he's always destroying his own life. Step one in life: you've got to stop destroying your own life, man. I don't want to help someone who's ruining their own life with alcohol and drugs and then just being an asshole all the time to everybody who helps them. The logical thing in that environment is to stay away.

Four Nights with the Kids

I had a nice time with the kids yesterday. They came home from camp, played video games, and we went to my daughter's basketball camp, where my mom was. Then my mom came over and played Exploding Kittens with us, as usual. It was nice to have four nights in a row with the kids — that's the most nights in a row I've had in quite a while. And I'm going to take them on a trip to Michigan, my first trip with them without my ex.

I'm just really grateful for where my life's at. I'm really grateful for living open-hearted, because it's so hard to do things in life when you're closed-hearted. At the same time, it makes perfect sense that when you get open-hearted and get punished for it over and over again, being defensive, trying to protect yourself, and withdrawing start to make a lot of sense. But that also makes life thoroughly miserable, because you shut out all the love. I've just felt so great since I met this woman on Monday, and it feels like opening my heart for her has also translated into opening my heart with my kids more, with my mom more, and in my community more. I just pray that I can keep my heart open no matter what happens in each aspect of my life — no matter how much money I make or how things go with this woman.

I also just got a date scheduled through a matchmaking service with another woman who looks really compatible. For a while it seemed like there was so much scarcity, and now there are options. But I don't care about options. I just want one amazing person — someone to have an awesome team with. And as for all the haters talking about how bad Jerry Banfield Dating is, and all the people hating on me about how I'm wrong about ICP — I can't control that. What I do have is a lot more influence over whether I have a great dating life and what I do in my business.

Let's See What Tomorrow Brings

One guy messaged me last night who has followed me for a decade. He said, remember, you've done some amazing things over the last ten years, and you're going to do that again. I told him, thank you — that's really nice. He sent me ten messages full of ideas. If you want to be able to send me messages like that, join the Jerry Banfield Family. I'd love to get a closer connection with you, so I can get to know you and not be in my own head so much, and so I can help you expand your life — and so you actually have a content creator you follow who knows you instead of just talking at you.

So this is my vlog for today, and if you want more of my thinking on growing a channel like this, you'll find it in my YouTube Coaching playlist. Let's see what happens, and let's see what I've got to say tomorrow.

A Day in My Life: Twitch, Yoga, and Saying Hell Yes or No

From my video published June 17, 2026.

It's March 8th, 2025, and this is a vlog with me, Jerry Banfield. I think you'll enjoy hearing what I did today because I think it's awesome. I think everybody should keep a diary. We got up this morning and Laura and the kids decided they were going to go to the market with her parents. Today was my first day getting back to live streaming on Twitch again. I hadn't live streamed in only a couple of weeks this time, which is great. I went live on Twitch today for about two and a half hours. I filmed several crypto videos and several music videos, and it felt really good to do the live streams without the giveaways, to just show up and film my videos and talk with the people who are live on Twitch.

I'm filming this technically on March 9th right now, on Twitch, just hanging out with the people who are talking here. It's great. I was really happy to get back to live streaming on Twitch. It felt really good, and I'll definitely go live most days to film my videos going forward. I remember about a decade ago, before it was so easy to live stream, thinking how much I wished I could record my videos live while I was on Twitch. I've got it set up now, so it's really nice to do.

Ethiopian Food and a House Without Kids

I got my videos done today, and I'm excited because tonight we're going to a relaxing yoga event. I'll tell you about that in a minute. My wife got home from the market with the kids and brought some Ethiopian food. I asked her to pick it up at the market in St. Pete, because one of my favorite foods they have there is the vegan Ethiopian food. It has this bread that's almost like a thin slice of pizza, but more porous and rolled up, kind of like a fajita. I don't know how else to describe it other than that it's brown, like bread you can rip really easily. Then they have a bunch of different ways they cook lentils and beans, and they add steamed cabbage and potatoes and other things. It feels so good. So Laura brought that home from the market for me.

Madeline had a sleepover last night, and they met up at Yogurtology, while I was at home recording my videos on Twitch. Jack had a sleepover with Laura's sister and her daughter last night too. So Laura and I got to wake up without the kids in the house, and it was really nice. But when Jack got back, I started to feel this little sense of aggravation at first. I realized it was just so easy and relaxing not having any kids in the house. It's so much easier being an adult with no children to deal with. Now, I love my kids and I wanted them very much my whole life. At the same time, having that space where there are no kids and it's just Laura and me, versus the one kid coming back, it's like back to reality. But I wouldn't change anything. I'm very happy with it. Sometimes the things you love in your life can also be irritating, whether it's your job, your partner, your house, or whatever it is.

Harry Potter Monopoly and a Long Rest

Laura came home ready for a nap after having the whole morning with the kids. I hung out with the kids and got them food, and we tried to play Monopoly, but Madeline was in a fuss and having a hard time enjoying it. Then I drew a card that sent her to Dumbledore's office, which Jack had just bought, worth 200 house points. It's Harry Potter Monopoly. That put her out of the game, so thankfully it didn't take very long. She went to her room, and Jack finished me off in Monopoly as well. Then they went to sit on the couch and I took a little rest on the couch with them, and then rested with Laura for a while. Laura spent three hours in bed. I probably spent an hour and a half lying down myself.

After that I got up and there was a flurry of activity. I started uploading the videos I'd filmed on Twitch. While I'm on Twitch, I want to really crank out video after video, and then upload them when I'm off stream, because Twitch is a great time to film but I don't need to be uploading while I'm filming too. That's better done off stream. I'd rather just crank out recording all the videos on stream. So I got the videos uploaded, then went for my one-mile run. Any day where I don't have much physical activity going on is, in my experience, a great day to go for a one-mile run to get the heart rate up, get a good sweat going, and combine that with normal physical activity like walking the dog, moving around, and being active.

I also went to visit my mom at about 5:45 to have a bag of popcorn with her. That's about as late as I usually eat. So I went over there, had a bag of popcorn with my mom, and talked to her.

A Sound Bath Violin Yoga Night

Then at 6:25, Laura, the kids, and I got in the car to go to the Body Electric. They had a special event tonight where a yoga instructor partnered with a Florida Orchestra violinist to do a relaxing sound bath violin yoga. It's so beautiful. I went to the first one by myself and had a really great cry. I went to the second one with Laura, which was really relaxing. So I wanted to go with just Laura this time, but I asked the kids and they said they wanted to go, so we gave them the chance. It's $33 each, so it was $130 for us to go to this, but it has been well worth it in the past.

We got there and got all four spots together. I saw lots of people I know, both from yoga and from Alcoholics Anonymous. Then I was wondering who was going to fall asleep. The first position she put us in was a fold, which I couldn't get comfortable in very easily, but Madeline and Laura got comfortable pretty fast. As for Jack, who's six, I'd told him beforehand, this is a lay-down yoga, are you sure you want to go? He did pretty good. He was quiet almost all the time, although he started whispering to himself during the very end of it. He rolled around a lot and knocked his blocks over a few times. But Madeline fell asleep right next to him, so he wasn't that loud. Laura got very relaxed. This was the least I was able to relax in any of these sessions, because I was paying attention to Jack, but it was still very relaxing. The music was beautiful, and we were all very relaxed going home. Madeline was a little cranky because she had fallen all the way asleep and then we woke her up to go back home, but we got her into bed and Jack into bed.

I washed the sheets for them today. I washed through all three of our twin beds today, every bed except Laura's. When I got home I took the dog for a walk.

Why I'm Keeping My Life Simple With Crypto

On that walk I was thinking again about a potential another Jerry Banfield token, but I remembered that my specialty, what I'm world-class at, is cranking out a lot of content quickly. I'm not very good at running a business. I don't want to run a business. I don't want to deal with a token. I didn't even want to deal with the little meme coin I created. So I'm reminding myself to keep my life simple.

I listened to a video that popped up in my YouTube For You feed. It was cool because it had a lot of interesting ideas about quantum physics and everything, and I like to get out there and think some new thoughts. It was called "The Strangest Idea in Science That No One Really Dies," and it's by Cool Worlds. I put it on double speed. I also listened to the rest of the interview the Personal DAO founder did with James Allen and Aaron Bremser, and I listened to a video about OpenChat.

I started to get a little resentful, thinking these projects should be giving me more money. I've done a lot to pump their ICP projects up. With the Personal DAO founder, a year ago I would have just covered his project and done an interview with him for free, no problem. But since then, I've gotten ripped off by projects going to zero that lied and ruined everything for investors. I've pumped up projects by a huge amount of money and they gave me nothing in most cases, or very little of the tokens for my contribution. I feel like I'm devaluing myself doing that. I'd rather make videos that get the most views and carry my message to the most people possible. Usually when I do a video about a specific coin like OpenChat or Decide AI, those videos don't do as well as a more general video in terms of getting views. And views equal people paying $300 to talk with me, paying one to ten ICP to join my OpenChat communities, watching a bunch of other videos, and getting my other channels monetized.

So I got a little resentful on the walk. At the same time, part of me feels like I should just let the founder of Personal DAO do a free interview on my channel. But why? You have to pay for everything else. Some crypto exchange isn't going to list his token for free because they like him. And he already did an interview, maybe for free, with James Allen and Bobby O, or Coin Nation, so the ICP community has already heard about it. So I told him that if he wants to do an interview with me, it's 100 ICP or 33,000 of the DAO tokens after the SNS launches. He said he'd get back to me after he has time to do his other interviews and think about it. But I know I'd rather just say no to anything I'm not very interested in.

Hell Yes or No

What I've learned in life is that ideally you want life to be hell yes or no. Like, I really want to do this, or absolutely not. What often ruins things is a lot of lukewarm yeses. Oh, okay, I guess I should do this. Or, I ought to, or, I kind of like it. If you want your life filled with lukewarm crap you don't really want to do, then say yes to a bunch of stuff you weren't really interested in. A lot of times when I hear people say they're busy, what I think is, you're not busy, you just don't know how to say yes to the right things and say no to everything else. So I'm intending to make sure my life is filled with things I really want to do. If you want to hear more of how I think about these decisions, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.

For example, I really want to go to the dentist every four or five months to get my teeth cleaned, because I love having clean teeth. So I love going to the dentist and not having to get all my teeth pulled. My father-in-law just got all his teeth pulled. My dad is dead, so he hasn't needed teeth in 11 years at this point, and his teeth were doing pretty bad before that. My mom needs to have all her teeth pulled. I want to keep my teeth clean. So even things like going to the dentist, I really want to do, and I'm passionate about it. I go every four months to keep my teeth nice and clean. That's my lesson for today.

My March 7th Vlog: Returning to Twitch, Crypto Calls, and a Date Night

From my video published June 17, 2026.

It's March 7th, 2025, and this is my vlog. Technically it's March 8th when I'm recording this, but this is my vlog for March 7th. Do I really need to say that every day? The biggest thing you might be interested in is that today I decided I'm going to start live streaming on Twitch again. I'm actually recording this live on Twitch right now, the next day.

Why I keep quitting Twitch, and why I'm back

Here's how this came about. I was talking with my friend TK while I was walking my dog. I've known TK since college, and he comes and hangs out on my Twitch sometimes. I've quit streaming on Twitch so many times. But earlier this year, I was saying that the one thing I want to be consistent on is streaming on Twitch, because I love recording my videos on Twitch.

What has consistently made the experience of streaming on Twitch suck for me is that I keep doing it in a way where I'm trying to become a Twitch partner and I'm obsessed with growing the streams. Most recently, what I was doing was giving a bunch of money away in chat. About a third of my streams were just me giving money away, a dollar or two at a time. Some streams I gave away more. I did a thousand dollar Bitcoin giveaway once. But I spent so much time and energy giving money away. Then I would raid these other Twitch streamers and give them a bunch of money, like $400 in February. And then I'd be watching these other people's Twitch streams, even though I'm not generally into watching people's streams.

I've been on this quest to get Twitch Partner so I can get that verified checkmark, so then I can go around and show off my checkmark in other people's streams, so then I can get even more followers, so then I can have my chat go too fast while I'm talking, so then I don't even pay attention to people and I feel overwhelmed, and then there's a bunch of critics and haters. So it's like, what am I even doing? I love just streaming on Twitch and hanging out with the people who love to be here. I don't want to clog the chat up with giveaways. I want to be here for the people who just want to watch, who want my attention totally for free, where you can just hang out and chat and it's easy. I want people who are here for the best free experience with me. I don't need to get a certain viewer count. I don't even need to make any money off my Twitch.

So I had this conversation with TK yesterday, which was really helpful. He said he missed mine, that he enjoys watching my live streams where I record my videos. I don't think he generally watches YouTube as much, and he doesn't seem to watch my YouTube videos that often. I do have a lot of YouTube channels, six of them, so I put out six videos a day. It can be difficult to even keep up with all my videos. But TK has consistently over the years enjoyed watching my live streams on Twitch, on Facebook, and even on YouTube. The main place he likes to watch is Twitch while he's at work, and he enjoys listening to me film my videos. That feedback is really helpful, because I enjoy having the live audience to film my videos with too. So at least on March 7th, I'm deciding that starting tomorrow I'll begin live streaming on Twitch again, which I'm now executing today.

The rest of the day

The rest of what I did today started with taking the kids to school first thing in the morning. Then I talked to my friend who's a music producer and asked him how I could get the loudness adjusted on my music in Ableton so I could play it live. He gave me a program that costs a few hundred dollars I could consider. For now, I'll just keep playing around and see if I can do it without buying that, and then maybe I'll think about it.

Then I went to my power yoga class and had a nice class. The Friday morning 9 a.m. class at Body Electric has consistently been my favorite yoga class over the years. I missed it several times in the last month to play tennis with the guys, so I'm glad I was able to make the class today.

How I show up to people versus how I think I do

I went to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting right after that. There was a girl there who's been sober a few years and has had some health challenges, and I'd been a bit cold with her. I was very warm when she first came in, but over the last year or so I've often been kind of cold, not talking to her, not saying hi. So today I made sure to be warm with her, to tell her I appreciate that she stayed sober through these health challenges. I'm always happy to see her, and I appreciate her being at the same meetings I'm at. I actually had that on my to-do list.

I think how you treat people in individual interactions is important. In my head, I'm so warm and loving and approachable. But I'm noticing, especially after an issue I had with a family member that I've thankfully released, that how it looks to other people versus how I think I'm acting can be drastically different. I often come across as cold and aloof when I want to be warm and nice to people. Of course, I don't want to be too warm. I don't want to be coming on to somebody's wife or girlfriend. I was a bit too warm in that yoga class a few years ago, and since then I've backed it off to being too cold in a lot of instances. So I'm looking to hit that sweet spot of warm and nice, but not too much.

A crypto coaching call, and the cycles of business

After yoga and the AA meeting, I came home, had a quick snack, and then I had a call. One of my previous crypto viewers who'd scheduled a call with me before scheduled another one today. He has hundreds of thousands of dollars of crypto, including much more ICP than I do, and he wanted me to help him get it off of Coinbase. So I talked him through setting up an internet identity, securing his recovery phrase, and how to buy an internet identity as well, so that he could help somebody else exit and get ICP staked for even cheaper. He asked if we could go longer on the call. I had the time, so he paid an extra $250 for an hour and 40 minutes of my time, which was awesome. I really appreciate it.

At the same time, it cut into my video filming time seriously, so I barely had time to get out and record a couple of videos for my channels. But it's such a balance. Over the last few weeks, there's been hardly anybody who's paid to schedule calls with me, and now there's the one today. There's one scheduled Sunday, and somebody paid for one Wednesday. It's funny how it goes in cycles. I'm really glad yesterday's crypto video wrecked, in a good way. It went off as hard as any of my other ones, and I'm glad that crypto review channel is growing also. If you ever want to see how I work through this side of what I do, a lot of it lives in my YouTube Coaching playlist.

An unexpected date with Laura

After getting some videos filmed, my daughter went home with a friend from school for an overnight. My son came home, and then we took him to soccer. I talked to my brother a bit while I was at soccer, and Laura's parents showed up too. After soccer, my son went home to stay overnight with Laura's sister and her daughter. That meant Laura and I suddenly had, at 7:40 at night, a time just the two of us, kid-free and unexpected. I was like, we've got to get out and do something.

Laura said it might be nice to go walk around at the pier. I was thinking I'd love to go have dinner, even though I normally don't eat at night. I normally cut my eating off around 3 or 4 p.m. and don't eat until the next morning. However, I've learned that things in life should be looked at as tools, and there are times to use certain tools and times to disregard them, like not eating at night. When I suddenly get a date with my wife, yeah, we're going downtown to the pier at eight o'clock and we're going to sit down for dinner at eight o'clock. This is a time to go ahead and have a meal at night, because you can enjoy a meal with your wife at a restaurant she wants to go to. She said she's wanted to go to Doc Ford's at the pier for years.

We got there and they told us a 15 or 20 minute wait, which seemed crazy to me, since I don't even normally eat after 3 or 4 p.m., and here at 8 p.m. there could be a 20-minute wait to even sit down. But there's a time to go out of your normal routines. You don't want to be so rigid that you're stuck in "this is how I do things." But you do want to have healthy routines that support you on a daily basis. The wait only ended up being five minutes.

They tried to sit us right in front of the guy playing live guitar. I personally hate live music, unless it's like Deadmau5 or maybe some Eminem and D12. Almost anything besides that, I hate having somebody playing a guitar. It's just noise I wish wasn't there. Laura likes it, though. But the music was too loud, and we couldn't even talk without yelling. This isn't our third date where we need to get in each other's intimate zones and whisper in ears. We've been married since 2012 and we've been together for 14 years. I'm not trying to holler at Laura in front of a guitar. Thankfully, they sat us 30 yards away. Laura was happy to hear the music, and I was happy it wasn't too loud. We had a great conversation.

I asked for a veggie menu and got some vegetables, some vegetables with some stuff on them. My wife got a grouper sandwich and some fries, and I had a couple of bites of her grouper. Of course, the waiter tried to give me the grouper sandwich. He's like, grouper sandwich? Nope, that's for the wife. I'm the one who got the vegetables with some stuff on them. Then we went home and got to bed, had some extra quality time, which was really nice, showered, and were in bed before 11. So, responsible and fun.