This is my journal entry from November 4, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Divorce Day — my real, unedited days, published in order.
I bought a speed dating ticket today—age range twenty-four to thirty-nine. I was born June 15, 1984, so depending on how you do the math, this might be cutting it close. Some people would say that makes me forty-one. Others might say, what if I identify as thirty-nine? Based on what ChatGPT told me, the logic is simple: just go for it and see what happens. It’s $25. The potential upside massively outweighs the downside, so why not try? The event is at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, which feels like a decent time to show up, sober, and take myself to the Whiskey Exchange to meet some women.
I’ve also been thinking about these diaries and whether I want them to be funny or more straightforward. The humor definitely makes things harder to edit, or at least I imagine it does since I haven’t fully tested that theory yet. I probably got carried away with the swearing and chaos in 9 Hours Later, but that was part of the experiment. Maybe this book will be different. Or maybe it won’t. We’ll see.
Today is Tuesday. I got up and took the kids to school, and afterward I found myself thinking about the girl who came over a few nights ago. My first reaction was pretty clear: she smokes too much pot and complains too much, and I don’t really see her as someone I want to pursue seriously. Then she started texting me about reading my books, and I caught myself realizing how much my own desire was driving the question of whether to invite her over again. It made me reflect on the idea that our bodies have multiple brains, that each organ has its own intelligence contributing to the whole, and it was not hard to tell which one was in charge in that moment.
At the same time, if there’s a woman who enjoys my company and I enjoy hers, without needing an elaborate ritual around it, then why not let it be what it is? Meanwhile, I can hit every speed dating event I can find and see if there’s someone I connect with even more who likes me just as much or more. In the meantime, I might as well enjoy the company I already have and let it be mutually beneficial. A real connection in front of me is worth a whole lot more than a perfectly curated dating profile or a speculative speed dating night. A bird in the hand carries real weight.
After dropping the kids off, I also wondered whether tonight might finally be the night I try the nude men’s yoga class at my yoga studio, something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. That thought definitely pulled me back into my own head for a moment. In the end, though, I went to the 9:00 a.m. yoga class instead. One of my yoga instructors taught it, which was nice as usual. The woman from yoga set her mat up behind me and said hi. We didn’t have much time to talk beyond that, and I’m not sure when we’ll end up in the same class again, but at least we’re on each other’s radar now.
After yoga, I took my car down to a nearby body shop because the one thing that genuinely pisses me off about my Toyota Corolla is how ghetto the paint looks, all ripped off and tired. I went in to see what it would cost, and they told me $650 to paint the entire car, any color I want. I wasn’t prepared for that decision on the spot, so I did what I’ve started doing more and more—I asked ChatGPT. I told it what it already knows about me and said I wanted a color that wasn’t normal, not your standard car color. It suggested purple, saying that based on what it knows about me, that would fit my vibe. I asked whether it should be lighter or darker, and it leaned toward a darker, more metallic purple.
A worker at the body shop, who was helping me there, mixed up a metallic dark purple on the spot, and it looked exactly right. You could clearly see that it was purple—it didn’t read as black—but it had this glossy, shiny depth to it that felt perfect. I signed the paperwork and paid. They only take cash and cashier’s checks, which I actually love. No credit card fees, no chargebacks. If more businesses did that, they’d cut out a lot of unnecessary middlemen—and at this point, middle AI too.
By the time that was done, an older friend came to pick me up in his Mercury Grand Marquis. He offered to let me borrow the car while mine is getting painted, which is huge. He drove me back to his place, handed me the keys, and plugged in a little device he has that resets the check engine light. He told me it cost about $40 and lets him check whether the issue looks serious before worrying about it, then clears the light. I drove his car home feeling grateful and also excited because I suddenly had a solid stretch of uninterrupted time to work on my books.
I thought we might work on his book together, but he wasn’t in the mood, which was fine. I got home and went straight into publishing mode. I worked on uploading my crypto book, getting the cover designed, and going through the remaining transcripts for my third diary book. I landed on the title Sober Through Separation, which documents my journey through divorce and will serve as the follow-up to The Kind Divorce. I processed the rest of the transcripts for that book through ChatGPT and also ordered proof copies for Is Bitcoin One Big Lie, which I finished today as well. If everything goes as planned, I’ll have two different twenty-five-page books arriving as proofs on Friday, and I’ll get to see how I feel about this shorter format in physical form.
I genuinely love the idea of having a large collection of books across many different subjects. My public business phone has been blowing up because ICP’s price climbed back over $5 after dipping below $3. People are going nuts, posting about me, asking me to come back and make videos. I’m flattered, but no thanks. I’m happy to publish a crypto book or two, but the video environment feels gross to me now. I love that, aside from that one week when I briefly created and then deleted the St. Pete Speaks podcast, I’ve had almost six months off from making videos—and I don’t miss it.
Doing books like this feels so much better. There’s a physical book I can hand to someone, an audiobook, and a Kindle version. The audiobook should be available almost everywhere once it’s approved and actually distributed through the audio platform I’m using, whenever that finally happens. This way of creating feels cleaner, calmer, and far more aligned with how I want to live and work now.
I’m still waiting—now more than a week—for I Was Famous on the Internet to show up on Audible. That’s fine. Once these books are up, they’re up indefinitely, and that’s one of the things I love most about books. They just sit there, quietly existing, waiting to be discovered. If I crank out a couple hundred books this year, that should work out very well for me over the long term. I imagine a future version of myself with more than a thousand books published and thousands of hours of audiobooks available. That idea feels incredible.
These diary books are genuinely therapeutic for me, even though I wasn’t very enthusiastic about recording this entry. I felt tired and vaguely resistant, like I could just skip it and nobody would know. But I didn’t. It feels similar to a Tenth Step in Alcoholics Anonymous—doing the inventory even when you don’t feel like it, because that’s the point. After grinding through book work all afternoon, I took the Mercury Grand Marquis to pick the kids up from school. Around the same time, a guy sent me $300 in crypto to talk on Sunday. He’s been wanting to discuss ICP with me for months, ever since before I deleted everything. He had the money ready and sent it straight to the Coinbase address I gave him. In a period where I haven’t been making much money, I’ll take that as a clear signal from the universe. Here’s $300. Maybe more people will text me after reading my books and want to talk. Maybe I’ll charge a couple hundred dollars for an hour on Zoom. Who knows. I’m not going to advertise it openly anymore. I’ll just keep my phone number on JerryBanfield.com and let people reach out directly.
The kids were a little put off by the car at first, but then they started enjoying how different it was. By the time we got home, they were having fun and complaining about the smell at the same time. I went early to the meeting because I wanted to talk to a woman I know. She’s in her mid-fifties, someone I’ve known for years. She’s attractive, and as far as I know, she isn’t dating anyone. We had a nice conversation, and I reminded her that I’d given her my book a few months ago. I told her about everything that’s changed since we last talked—dropping massage school, getting divorced, moving out, writing a bunch of books. She listened carefully, asked thoughtful questions, and updated me on her own situation.
The meeting itself was all men except for her, and she shared a couple of times, which was nice. When the meeting ended and she was walking away, she told me that if I’m ever feeling down, I should make sure to call her. That landed. I’d already been thinking about whether she might want a little piece of me. She’s pretty, mature, grounded—those are all strong qualities. I know one of the guys she dated before, which makes me think I might look like a solid option, assuming she’s okay with me seeing other women too.
At this point my dating life suddenly felt wide open, and honestly that sounded fine to me. I’ll probably text her tomorrow and ask if she wants to do something. She mentioned going to one of the art museums downtown, so I’m thinking of asking whether she’s been to another one or would like to go. When we meet in person, I plan to be clear. We’ve known each other for years, and we’ve been friendly for a long time, but I want to say it directly: I’m interested in dating you. I’d be open to having a relationship, as long as it’s polyamorous. I’m happy to offer what I think you may have been missing in your life. I catch myself mid-thought and laugh—there it is, edit that part out. Still, I enjoy watching for signs and seeing what manifests. Whatever happens, I’ll keep documenting it here.
The woman who came over Saturday night is another reason I might have to start using names soon, just to keep everyone straight. Or maybe the better approach is to make sure I talk about everyone respectfully enough that I can use their real names. Who knows—maybe they’ll read this one day. Or their future husbands or children might. Or maybe nobody will ever read this. Maybe just my kids. Maybe my grandkids or great-grandkids. Maybe in two thousand years people will read this and say, here was the first man who turned his entire life into daily autobiographies. On a tough day, maybe someone will think, Jerry loves me. Completely ridiculous, right?
After the AA meeting, I came back to my place and got ready to take my son to the tennis club for the ball machine reservation I made. I won’t have any other chances this week to take him there, so I was grateful everything lined up. We got there a little before 6:00 p.m. and left a little after 7:00 p.m. We emptied and refilled the ball machine four times. My son hit his usual share of balls out of the court, but his accuracy seemed higher than it’s ever been. He had a lot more balls land in and far fewer misses, and he looked like he was genuinely having fun. We even switched sides this time. I set the ball machine to fire wide left and wide right, and since it has seven shots, he got the extra one—the double. I practiced the strokes my tennis coach taught me yesterday and felt really good about how consistent my own hitting was.
After tennis, I brought my son over to my mom’s house, where I’d arranged for my daughter to come over as well. My daughter and my mom had a great time together. Earlier, during the break I had between the meeting and the tennis club, I wrote a letter to my brother to reconnect with him. I apologized for being so judgmental and critical of his life and told him that after going through my own divorce and dating again, I can see his situation with much more compassion. I also acknowledged that my views on alcohol had become extreme—that I didn’t want to be around it at all—and that this was part of why I didn’t come to his wedding. I kept the letter short, just under two pages, one page front and back. I printed it out and gave it to my daughter to bring to my mom so she could read it first. I want her opinion before I mail it.
She probably wouldn’t have liked the letter I sent to my brother in the past. If I’d had her proofread that one, she definitely would have told me not to send it. But that’s okay.
A little after 7:30 p.m., with a bag of popcorn in hand, I took the kids back to my ex-wife’s place to do bedtime. It felt especially good to have a full night with them because I know how the rest of the week looks. Tomorrow night I’ll be out at a speed dating event and will miss bedtime. Thursday will be tennis, a quick shower, a fast bedtime, and then getting ready for the woman from Sarasota to come over. Friday I’ll be out at a kirtan event with a local spiritual community, which means missing bedtime again. Saturday, my ex-wife and the kids will be gone on her birthday glamping trip. Because of all that, I’m genuinely grateful for tonight. I took the time. I spent hours with the kids. I took them to school, picked them up, and was fully present with them this evening. I know that’s enough.
At the same time, I’m really enjoying how much I’m getting out into the world, going to new places, and trying new things. I’ve been meaning to get my car painted for at least a year, and I finally did it, in part because I want my car to look better for dating. The divorce has been hard at times, but it’s also pushed a lot of expansion and movement into my life. I honestly think my ex-wife and I both wanted this separation because we both want growth. Because of that, I’m going to be very hesitant to enter another monogamous relationship unless the woman is truly exceptional and willing to offer everything I want. I used to be more critical of polyamory, but right now it’s starting to sound exactly right.
I can easily picture having several relationships, each one its own night of the week, and then a couple of nights to myself. I want intimacy and connection, and I want partners who genuinely want the same. Choosing not to masturbate has changed things for me. I feel a much stronger need for other people. I think a lot of our struggles come from doing things alone that would be more enjoyable with someone else. That shift has made me far more aware of how much I want real connection rather than something solitary, and I’m genuinely excited about it.
Later tonight, I finished proofing my third diary book, and it’s ready to upload. Hopefully in the next day or two I’ll be able to order a proof copy of that as well. After that, I looked through speed dating events and decided to sign up for the twenty-four to thirty-nine age range event downtown. We’ll see if I get away with it. The perfectionist, rule-following part of me says I shouldn’t—that it’s outside the age range and they might turn me away. Then the other part of me says, so what? If I show up and they say, “We said twenty-four to thirty-nine, you’re forty-one, you’ve got to go,” with no refund, that’s fine. It’s $25 and maybe thirty minutes of my time. Not a big deal. But if I get to sit down and speed date a bunch of people in that range—and maybe another forty-one-year-old woman sneaks in there too—that’s more than fine with me. What I have to gain is far greater than what I have to lose.
What’s hard sometimes is that our brains don’t calculate risk very accurately. There might be a relatively small potential loss—like the risk of wasting $25 and getting rejected from an afternoon at the Whiskey Exchange while I’m sober—and yet my mind treats it like a major threat. That’s a pretty low cost. Realistically, the worst-case scenario is that they say no thanks. Of course, my brain immediately tries to spice it up by inventing more dramatic outcomes, like a woman throwing a drink in my face when she finds out I’m forty-one instead of thirty-nine. But that’s obviously unrealistic, and the odds of something like that happening are extremely low.
The event organizers probably aren’t looking to turn someone away simply because they’re forty-one at a thirty-nine-and-under event. They just want to keep the age range reasonably tight. They don’t want someone who’s sixty there, or maybe even fifty. Forty-one is close enough that it’s at least debatable. The downside is small, and the upside is potentially enormous. What if I meet the woman of my dreams there? That’s a very high upside. And yet, I didn’t calculate it that way at first. I looked at this event several times and told myself I couldn’t go because I’m forty-one. Then it hit me: maybe I can go. Maybe I can’t. I don’t actually know until I try.
I thought I’d gotten away with it until I clicked to pay and the next screen asked for my birth date. At that point, I knew I wasn’t going to lie. I’m not going to pretend I’m thirty-nine and then pull out my driver’s license and have someone get pissed because I lied. I’m just going to be honest. I gave my real birth date. I’m not lying, but I am rounding. I’m identifying as thirty-nine for this event. I’m healthy, I look good, and there’s no real reason I couldn’t be thirty-nine. People regularly assume I’m in my early thirties anyway.
I’m glad this is recorded. I’m also realizing that maybe some of these entries can be a bit shorter. The longer they are, the more work it takes to process the transcripts and proofread them, and the more effort it takes to publish each book. If I’m going to be alive publishing books every day, efficiency matters. I think we’ve done enough for today. See you tomorrow.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.