This is my journal entry from February 23, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I'm glad after hanging out with my friends from AA last night, I feel very filled up this morning and ready to take on the day successfully. I didn't set an alarm, so I'd have a chance to wake up later if I wanted, but I still woke up at 6:56 anyway with no alarm. So straight off to the 8:30 a.m. yoga this morning, I have the simple realization that if I want people to be friendly, then maybe I should be as friendly as I can be. Maybe I have not been as friendly as I could be lately. So today I put my mat down and I start talking to the girl next to me. Have a nice little chat with her and enjoy the sweat and the yoga flow and the stretch today. I go straight home, clean up and go to my AA meeting. My sponsor's there and I see him. And there's two very attractive girls there as well. One that I asked to meet up with before, but I didn't get a response with. But she's still friendly. And maybe, you know, who knows? But I'm happy to see her. I don't get called on, but I enjoy listening to the discussion. I chat a little bit afterwards.
And then I head out to my massage with my massage therapist. I am there early. And we have a great discussion as usual during our massage. I stay and hang out with her afterwards for like 30 minutes because her next client cancels and doesn't show up. We talk about boundaries and people pleasing. And my suggestion to her is that she needs to make people pay up front for their massages like a friend of mine does, because it's too easy if somebody hasn't paid up front to just cancel. And she does have to pay like $40 for the massage room she's booking. So if a client cancels, she can get stuck for $40 and not make any money. So I suggest use the booking app and make your clients pay in full. And if they cancel within 24 hours, there's no refund. You don't get your money back. That's on you. And in that same spirit, she tells me that if you're going to have people talking about their life stories and writing books with you, then you should not do any free consultations. She talks about her boyfriend and his sister going back and forth on doing free consultations or not. And well, the sister came to the conclusion that the way to go was no free consultations. And eventually, you know, her boyfriend got on that same wavelength and stopped doing free consultations just recently after doing that work a long time himself, because the free consultations seem to devalue all of his work and get him with more pain in the ass clients. And I certainly don't want pain in the ass clients. I want people paying 300 bucks to talk to me for the first time and then drop in like 10,000 to have me help them write a full length life story memoir. That's what I'm looking for. Not somebody who just wants to talk on the phone about their life. So I'm very grateful we could give each other a bit of clarity about that.
I head home and have lunch, get ready for my ex-wife to drop the kids off. My ex-wife drops the kids off and their friend from across the street is going to do something today so she's not available. The kids go to the park with me. We bring the drone which is fun because it's windy and it's amazing how well the drone stabilizes itself. It takes huge gusts of wind and, you know, just automatically corrects for that which is really cool. I also throw my son a few balls and he has the tennis, the bat, and we bat the balls. He hits some really nice ones. We go back home and play the Harry Potter deck builder game, the Hogwarts battle, and we absolutely wipe them out, which is fun. And everybody has a great time.
Then when we wrap the game up, we head to my daughter's basketball game. The mom that laughed last week is not there today. It looks like her husband is there. And I'm playing around as usual, but he's not laughing at any of my antics. There's the one coach having the boys play one on one against each other. And this one kid is just wrecking everybody else. Of course, I'm like, man, let me play that kid. I bet he won't hardly get a point against me, but that'd be silly, wouldn't it? I just like showing off that I still got it on the basketball court. My son wants to do 10 laps around the court. And thankfully, we walk instead of run. So we walk 10 laps around the full basketball court. I make seven three-pointers in a row towards the end, which is like, holy crap, this is awesome. Then the guy from the rec center comes around to pick all the extra balls up. So maybe I'll bring my own ball next week so I don't get my ball collected and I can keep playing. My daughter has fun, makes some shots, and the coach does some things I haven't seen them do before to work on the game. Then we wrap up and head back home.
The kids drop $10 into the vending machines on the way out, money they got from hustling bracelets that they made with the girl across the street, and they're glad I don't block them from using their money on the vending machine because, yeah, I think that's a silly way to spend money, but they went and hustled it out of somebody, so. They want to dump it in a vending machine. Oh, well, we get home and everybody gets to bed. I shower while the kids are getting ready for bed, like putting their jammies on and my son finishes up his homework. Then everybody's in bed by like 9:30. A very nice, peaceful day with the kids. And I'm looking forward to a nice long night of sleep to catch up with that last one where I didn't quite have a full night.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.