This is my journal entry from January 22, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
Step one of my day today is to go pick the kids up and take them to school. I have a nice time seeing them today, and I'm glad to feel useful helping save my ex-wife a little bit of time, plus this only chance I'm going to get to have to see the kids today. So I enjoy chatting with them, and finally I get to read my son's Pluto book this morning. I drop them off, then head back to work obsessively on my letter, especially after finding a guy yesterday that can deliver them and he says he's going to start Friday or Saturday. We need to get this letter figured out. I dictate another hour-long letter, this time with the idea that the outside of the letter should say open and then the letter should be about open, being open and openness to new ideas. I spent hours dictating this letter, it starts off with like 16 pages of transcripts. I get it down to like eight pages of transcripts, but something's not feeling right with it.
I go to personal training and I see my personal trainer at 1230 as I'm working on this letter. And I noticed a woman who works at my gym is at the front desk as well. I then talk with my trainer and ask rather, you know, maybe I should ask her out or if that would be a good idea. And our conversation concludes with me thinking that I should wait and see if there's a natural opportunity that comes up. I've gotten all kinds of phone numbers in my life from just forcing things like I could easily walk up to her at the desk and just be like, hey, can I talk to you and then ask for her phone number. But in the past when I've done that, it generally goes nowhere because there's not quite the energy. I think that the woman at the desk is pretty flirty and friendly with me, but my trainer, from knowing her at work, he says, well, she's generally that way with lots of other people, too. That's just her personality. And I'm like, oh, okay, I was taking that personally, and I guess it's nothing personal. And if there's anything special here, there will be an opportunity that naturally comes up to talk to her.
After that I hang out kind of awkwardly for a minute and use a Stairmaster to get a little extra cardio after the workout and to think whether I want to finalize this decision today or not. And then after that, I'm like, yeah, I'm just I'm not feeling it. I'm not feeling like there's that connection there today. I say goodbye walking by the front desk and it feels like the right move. I head home and I get back to work deep on the letter again. And the more I work on the letter, I'm thinking shit like this long letter like this is not going to work, which is what everybody said. I tried delivering eight of the long help letters around my neighborhood, but putting a letter that says help on people's front porches doesn't feel quite right either. It sounds a little too desperate and doesn't match the tone I want. Plus, it takes so much money to print these longer letters out.
I then go to yoga because I wanted to go to a yoga instructor's class. But when I get there like five or ten minutes early, there's already a handful of dudes that have all put their mats like right around where her mat is. Like, damn, this girl's got a nice little following of guys that want to be right up there next to her during class, which that was my plan, too. And I put my mat down off to the side to try and get a little less heat, but it doesn't work. My trainer had also talked to me during our personal training session about dating girls and keeping active, he said, you know, rest is rust and motion is lotion, which I very much agree with. At the same time I was telling him that I'm like I just don't want to date a girl that's less than like an eight, you know. I want to date girls that are very attractive to me that I'm really excited about. And what I've seen over the last few months is I've tried to ask a bunch of girls out that you might number rate them as like sixes or sevens. And it's just annoying when a six or a seven doesn't want to go out with me. I feel like I shouldn't even have asked in the first place. And then if they did want to go out with me, there's a high likelihood I'm wasting their time. I went out with one from my online dates and it doesn't feel like it's worth my time.
Also, a woman I'd been talking to sent a follow-up message yesterday saying, oh, she need to take her time. Thanks for my message. And she'd get back to me. But no message from her today. I'm like, I don't understand why you even send a message like that. Why I am so on top of my messages. Like, are people so overwhelmed they can't even respond to text messages and messages people send? That's crazy. After that discussion, though, my trainer's like, I told him the only girls I had my eye on right now were the woman who works at my gym and the yoga instructor that I went to see today. And he's like, damn, you got your sights set high. I'm like, yes, I'd rather be single than waste my time with someone I'm not that excited about.
I think about how my worst case scenario would be drifting into an unhappy marriage out of loneliness. I'm like, that's my worst case scenario. I'd rather be single that entire time than be stuck in something like that. And this is really good for me to be getting here because over the last few months, as you might have noticed, I started to feel pretty desperate at various times, feeling like I needed to have a woman. After the yoga class, which ends up being nice and hot and sweaty, even though I did a nice arm workout with my trainer, I'm grateful I can make it through a power flow a few hours later. And I do wish I'd had a little more time for my food to digest beforehand, but it's all good. There's a beautiful redheaded girl next to me in class. She offers me the spray bottle, but I say no because it's my mat. Then I don't know what else to say, but at least I'm happy she did turn to me and say something, even if it was as small as that. I'm thinking, man, I want to do a little better trying to get some conversation or something to happen in these damn yoga classes. I'm not sure what to do, but right now, just showing up is, to me, the gateway where things get happening. It seems like girls need to get to know me and recognize me before anything's likely to happen, but who knows? It depends on the person, right?
I head home, and I've got clarity. As my boy from AA calls to talk to me that I'm doing a meeting for tonight, he reinforces that a letter should be short, not some eight page thing, but it should be a short to the point letter. And I realized talking to him, my letter fundamentally needs to not try and pitch from a position of strength and sell something because let's be real here. If I was in a position of strength with what I'm doing, I wouldn't be putting fucking letters on people's doorsteps. Clearly, I'm in a position where I could use some help, and that's why I'm putting letters on people's doorsteps, not because my business is so successful and I'm making so much money and I have so many clients that I thought I'd just also put letters on somebody's doorstep to try and promote it. I realize the theme of the letter needs to be just a clear ask for help, which is where the theme started, but this one should be much more clear and direct about the help and not try and act like I'm directly selling them something.
With this in mind, I eat dinner, which is a salad, and then in 30 minutes, I dictate and go through and make a new version of the letter. However, this one will have the word open on the front of it because open also signals that I will be asking people to open the letter, and I'm looking for people who are open-minded, and I am open to feedback and advice. So open is the perfect word to put on the front of the letter. But then inside the letter, it starts off saying, thank you for opening this. We don't know each other and I'm asking you for advice. In order for you to give me advice, I'm going to need to tell you a little bit about myself so you can give me some guidance. I then do a few paragraphs on my history, on all my business online, my books, etc. And then I ask, if you were me, what would you do to make a local business? Then I wrap the letter up with my contact information and acknowledge most people won't respond and that's okay because it gives me time for the people that do respond. ChatGPT thinks this is a great version of the letter and I start printing out copies of it. I print out like 80 copies of it because my guy from AA who's going to door deliver for me says he'll be ready Saturday, which means I ideally should have at least four or five hundred of these ready to pass out for him to pass out because he's going to be going door to door for five hours on Saturday and Sunday. So I need to have my letters ready for him to pass out.
And I'm excited to just be completely transparent and lead by example. Like what I love about this letter that I've written now, it leads by example. It says, look, I don't have all the answers. I asked people in my life already for advice. I'm living based on my principles and values. I want to help people, but I'm not sure how to do it. Here's what I can do. Here's what I've done. What do you think? And it's a great example. It's like, hey, if we just honestly reach out and ask each other for help, there's all kinds of problems we can solve. And it would only take a handful of meaningful connections for things to totally take off. That, to me, is really exciting. And the cost of these letters to print is so low that basically I'm just paying for the labor to pass them out, and I can always pass them out myself too. I'm thinking if I can pass thousands of these letters out, I'm going to get some really helpful feedback. And meantime, I'll be supporting somebody else who wants to work and pay their rent. It all feels perfectly aligned. I get a new copy of the letter done. My friend from AA gives me feedback on it as well.
Then I go to the meeting. And I do the lead at the meeting. I dress up nice. And my new clothes are received well. I feel fantastic in them. And I look great in them to other people as well, which is perfect. We read the to the wives section of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then I do a 10 minute lead. We have a discussion. And then I end up talking with my friend after the meeting for an hour. We have a great discussion. He is in his early 20s, so he has said he hasn't been on a date in years. We talk a lot about women and dating, but he also says he feels like a failure because he has a job that he doesn't really enjoy, but he just goes to it to make money, which is interesting because I feel like a success for being out here doing my own thing, trying to make my own business work. It's funny because he's actually making money, but I right now am just exploring. He feels like a failure, even though he has his living situation. Financially, he's doing great. He's making money. He has almost no expenses, but he feels like things aren't going well. I'm over here with a negative several thousand dollar a month balance in my finances, and I'm not dating anyone either, but I feel like my life is going great.
One of the best things I take out of the conversation with him that I really want to remember going forward is I end up telling him that I'd rather be single than date below my, I was trying to put this in boxing terms, I'd rather be single than date below my weight class. Like, I want a girl that's amazing. I want another girl like my ex-wife, but, you know, slightly different. I want a girl, my ex-wife is very attractive. Like I told him, my ex-wife's at least a nine when we met. And she still is absolutely gorgeous. And every girl's gonna have issues with her personality. Every girl has a personality, but not every girl has a great body. And my ex-wife's had a great body the whole time, the whole 15 years we were together still to this day. And I'm not gonna settle on that. I'm not gonna accept some woman that I'm not very attracted to because I'm not going to be the best version of me with some girl that I'm not really attracted to. And even when I am really attracted to a girl, I'm not just going to let her, you know, run my whole life and do whatever she wants either. Like a girl that I'm very attracted to, to me, is the gateway to being an equal. A girl that I'm not attracted to is only ever going to have the chance to be dominated by me because I'm not going to be an equal in that sense.
And I have a great epiphany realizing that I would rather be single for the next 10 years than to keep going from one relationship I'm not excited about to another. Like, no. I have so much to do, so much I care about in my life. I have kids. I would rather be single than date someone I'm just not excited about. Because settling like that is one of the easiest things I could do to bring myself down, you know, gets me into drinking again or dating a woman whose habits ruin my health and fitness, because me dating a woman like that is more likely to ruin my commitment to health and fitness than it is to help her. People's negative habits often tend to drag other people down rather than lift them up. Although the exceptions are much more interesting, like how my ex-wife helped me get healthy instead of me dragging her down. There are exceptions, of course.
So I get home and I look at the letter again, make a couple of small changes and I'm ready to shower and go to bed. I'm wondering if I should text a woman I'd been talking to, but she hasn't texted me back in a week and a half, and I'm tired of always being the one that sends out the text messages. The one thing, a woman who's going to be awesome and amazing for me will not be someone that can't respond to text messages. If you don't have time to respond to my messages, if you just leave the conversation hanging and don't follow up, if you need several fucking days to reply to my message, there's nothing worth my time there. And my time is valuable and I'm not going to waste it. So I'm not sending her a message after I sent her the last message. If she doesn't care enough to keep the conversation going, there's not enough mutual interest there. I'm not going to keep texting her and hoping she'll remember that I'm alive. Either she can do that, she can send a message back and start things up again, or I'm good. I'll find somebody. I want that energy. I reflect on a woman I had a crush on in yoga in 2023. That's the energy I want. If there's not that level of energy and intensity there, then I don't want it. And I'd rather be single. And I go to bed feeling very good about having that clarity.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.