This is my journal entry from March 15, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I'm up today and looking for a yoga class I can hit this morning. I still have my week at a local studio, so I book a 10.30am power flow at the local studio this morning. Meanwhile, I'm feeling today is the day to get the book I've been finishing published and submitted. I have named it Divorce Day, and I get everything else I need together to submit it to KDP with Amazon. And I'm really excited because this book is three months old at this point. And this book is the longest book I've written in 150,000 words. And it's time to offload it. I feel great relief getting this book submitted right before I go to yoga class. I go to the yoga class and I'm so glad the woman from the recovery meeting is not there. I have a nice relaxing flow with my shirt on for once. Then I walk downstairs and hold the door for a girl that's attractive and actually friendly. I have a nice conversation with her in the parking lot. She tells me there's a couple of places her husband, and of course she has a husband, but I'm so happy she's friendly and attractive and tells me that her husband plays Ultimate Frisbee at a couple of places in St. Pete. And I note those on my calendar because I've been looking to play and I'm excited to have that as an option. There's two different games on Sundays that are available.
I head back home and my ex-wife brings the kids over for a little bit. The main topic I'm thinking about with them is, do I want to buy a PlayStation 5? I've been thinking it'd be really fun to have some games to play. And I'm so tired of being at home and lonely. Thankfully, I feel a bit better after going to the meeting last night. But still, I feel like there's nothing exciting in my life. I'm listening to recovery literature about the addiction to excitement that we adult children of alcoholics have. And I'm like, I do. And maybe what would help would be to just put a predictable excitement and fear into my life with video games like I've done for most of my life. My ex-wife surprised me by noting that I have played video games in moderation at various times, often throughout the time she was with me. And she thinks that would be a reasonable option given I don't do like anything else like watch TV. However, or at least, you know, anything like just for me. I'm out playing tennis with other people. I'm going to yoga, which supports the studio and helps my body. But I don't have any kind of useless activity like watching TV in my life right now.
Thus, I am looking up after my ex-wife and the kids come over. I'm looking up Call of Duty Black Ops 7. And the new zombies, they have the old characters like Nikolai, Richtofen, Takio, and Tank Dempsey. Like, man, that'd be kind of cool to play with them again. The new blackout mode, or as they've renamed it, is much more like blackout now. And that you don't have these loadouts. And the loadouts is what really sucks for trying to play Call of Duty Warzone casually. Having to go in against sweats that have all the perfect perks and stuff equipped. Makes it a lot more about getting your loadout and makes getting a loadout overly important and kind of ruins the rest of Warzone. Blackout was so good for not having those loadouts. That said, when I used to have my loadouts, it really did help me win a lot of games and dominate the players who weren't as good. So for playing casually, I'm like, you know what? I could go for that. But I'm going to think about it. I'm not buying a PlayStation today. And we're going to move forward without that.
After my ex-wife and the kids leave, I work on coming up with a better business plan because what I'm doing is not working. This week has made that clear. But I do have an insight that what I need to do is give out booklets and I should be giving out booklets that have specific problems. I talked to my friend and he helps me see that what I need to do is I need to have some intermediate offer. I can't just cold drop somebody a booklet on their doorstep and expect them to want to pay me $300 immediately for a session. Ideally, since I already have books, they can buy books for just a few dollars, but there should be something for maybe $100 ideally to step it up. I am sold after talking to ChatGPT and thinking about it and reflecting on my past that having a $75 phone call option will be a really nice way to monetize booklets. I'm thinking that what I'll do is give out a whole bunch of little mini booklets on all different kinds of subjects, like a book on weight loss, sobriety, and I can even write fiction books. And then I'll pass all those booklets out and all those booklets will then send people to jerrybanfield.com where they have access to my books. And then where everybody reading anything from me can pay the same $75 for a 30-minute phone call. The 30-minute phone calls are nice because I can do stuff around the house while I'm on one of those calls. Anything that doesn't require me to be actively paying attention, I can fold laundry. I can be cleaning around the house and things like that. So it's really nice. Phone calls are nice for that. And it's also something that could be done not necessarily in person either, like somebody traveling that I handed one of my booklets to in person could find, you know, could call me and schedule coaching. Somebody who's lonely could schedule a phone call every single day with me if they wanted. And that would just one person scheduling a call with me every day would be about enough to cover the rent. Thus, I'm really excited now with this phone call option and all the different booklets. I think we've stumbled onto a really nice path going forward.
I head off to my recovery meeting with this in mind. I chair the meeting and have a nice conversation with the people there. We don't spend as much time talking afterwards tonight, but my one friend does tell me he's marketed his business really hard, which I didn't even know about, which he got me thinking because he did so much marketing. He said he dropped thousands of business cards and only got a few calls. Now, business cards are pretty low touch, low commitment things. But it got me thinking, like, I really need to take my marketing to the maximum level somehow and figure out, you know, a better strategy than just cold dropping a sales letter. The booklets seem like a way to get some depth. The phone calls seem like an easy enough way to get some money in the door. And if I have a bunch of booklets, that'll really work well. I head home and take a walk around Crescent Lake and am in bed early.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.