This is my journal entry from December 10, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Divorce Day — my real, unedited days, published in order.
After dropping the kids off at school this morning, I came home and got ready for a life coach to come over and record her book. I had not seen her in months, and so much has changed for both of us since the last time we talked. When she arrived, I was excited to see her. She came in ready to work with her book draft already open on her computer. She set everything up in my studio and went straight into recording.
One thing that immediately struck me was how different her recording voice sounded compared to how she is in person. She is incredibly animated when she talks normally. She raises her voice, moves her arms around, gestures constantly, and even reaches out and touches my arm while she is talking. But the moment she started recording her book, all that energy disappeared. She sat still with her hands folded together and spoke in a very soft, almost monotone voice.
I let her record the first five minutes like that, and then I stopped her. I told her to be herself instead of trying to sound formal. I encouraged her to move her hands, move her body, and treat the recording like a performance. I said she should imagine herself on stage and put her heart into it. She tried again and brought up the energy slightly, but afterward I told her to go even further. I kept pushing her to raise the intensity. Move your hands. Move your body. Narrate this like it matters.
I told her this recording might be the only time many people ever hear her voice telling these stories. This is her moment. I even quoted the Eminem line from “Lose Yourself” to make the point. I wanted her to treat the recording with that level of commitment. At one point I literally grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little while telling her to go for it and put everything she had into the narration.
On the third attempt, everything changed. She settled into the performance and narrated more than forty minutes of her book in one continuous run. This time she really went for it. Her story is incredible, and hearing it out loud made that even clearer. Based on how things went today, she should be able to finish the rest in one or two more sessions. I feel honored to be the first person hearing these stories spoken aloud, knowing that many other people might read them one day.
Moments like that are deeply validating for me. This is what I do. I have a setup where someone can walk into my house and record an audiobook that easily. I love doing this work. After months of wondering what I was going to do with my life, it suddenly feels obvious again. I am still a content creator. The difference now is that the content is books instead of videos. I am good at this, and people genuinely want books and want help creating them. That realization feels exciting.
We had a lot of fun during the session, and after a couple of hours she headed out. As soon as she left, I texted a friend to see if he wanted to play tennis. We met up at a park. The weather was perfect, about seventy degrees with a partly cloudy sky. When we started playing, I surprised him by winning the first three games in a row, especially considering that a couple of weeks ago I had beaten him in both sets. A friend quickly recovered and came roaring back to win the first set 6–4.
The best part of the match was how much we were laughing. The second set turned into a battle, and I eventually managed to win it in a tiebreaker after coming back from behind. Both of us were playing sloppy tennis. We missed a ridiculous number of shots and made plenty of dumb errors. A friend hit more balls into the net than I have ever seen from him. At one point he smashed a shot straight into the net and immediately yelled, “God damn it!” I doubled over laughing because the whole moment was so ridiculous.
While we were playing, a group of guys showed up on the pickleball court nearby and started trash talking exactly the way my friends and I used to when I played racquetball in college. They were yelling things like, “You fucking bitch, you got one point now!” and “God damn it, motherfucker, get that shit over!” It sounded exactly like the kind of trash talk we used to throw around during competitive games. Listening to it made me laugh and reminded me how much I enjoy being around guys playing sports and talking shit. It is one of those simple things that brings pure joy.
At one point during the match, two older women walked out toward the tennis courts. My first reaction was immediate and a little sarcastic in my head. I thought, I don’t think so, ladies. You probably meant the pickleball courts, right? We would love to have you out here, but you look more like pickleball players. A moment later it became clear they had actually meant to go to the pickleball side. What happened next was interesting to watch. The guys on the pickleball court had been loudly swearing and trash talking the entire time, but the moment the two older women stepped out there, all of it stopped. Nobody asked them to tone it down. The energy simply shifted, and the yelling and profanity disappeared instantly. It was funny to observe, though there was something a little sad about it too.
A friend and I finished the second set after that. The score stayed close until the last game or two, when I suddenly started dumping shots into the net or hitting them out of bounds. Even with the sloppy moments, we also had some incredible rallies throughout the day. Early on, during those first three games I won, I kept hitting these dirty winners that barely cleared the net or landed short and off to the side where they were almost impossible to reach. We both ended up laughing constantly. I honestly do not remember us laughing that much during a tennis match before.
The match turned into more than just tennis. We talked a lot between points and after games, and eventually we sat there talking until a little after three o’clock. By the time we wrapped up, we had spent almost three hours together playing and talking. It felt like a really solid stretch of male bonding time. The book I am reading right now, No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover, emphasizes how important it is for men to maintain strong friendships with other men. The idea is that those relationships help create balance so that a man is not overly dependent on women for emotional connection or validation. Sitting there with a friend after the match made me grateful for the friendship we have built over the past year.
After leaving the park, I drove home and finished the rest of my bean soup. It turned out to be a huge meal, but I was starving because I had not eaten anything since the morning. Between the workout, the session with the life coach, and the tennis match, my stomach was ready for it. I demolished that bowl of bean soup like a champion.
Later I headed to the 444 Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. After the meeting ended, I called Intergroup to have the meeting removed from the schedule. I had emailed earlier, but nothing had happened, so I decided to call directly. The guy I spoke with said he would delete it right away. He mentioned that sometimes it takes time to build up a home group and get enough members to sustain a meeting. I explained that we had already given it a few months and had not managed to establish a consistent group. None of the original home group members or the newer attendees were able to keep running the meeting regularly, so there was no point leaving it on the schedule if nobody would be there.
Even though the meeting is ending, the one we had tonight was meaningful. A couple of the guys who have been attending consistently since the beginning showed up again. Two women also came who I had never seen before. One of them was visiting from out of town to support a family member going through a hard time. She spoke about how emotionally intense that experience had been. She seemed like someone with a lot of experience and presence, and she carried herself with a calm, grounded demeanor. Her voice was beautiful, and her energy felt steady and reassuring.
The other woman appeared much more nervous. She admitted she felt shaky and sad. At first she was very quiet, almost shy. As the rest of us shared our stories, though, she slowly began opening up. By the end of the meeting she was laughing along with everyone else and seemed more relaxed. She was pretty, and it was nice to watch her settle into the group as the conversation unfolded.
After the meeting ended, I felt compelled to take a chance and talk to the shy woman who had been opening up toward the end. I had to do it. I walked outside with her, and despite the fact that I can be smooth in situations like this sometimes, I suddenly felt awkward. I told her I did not know when I might see her again and that I would love to see her sometime soon. Her first reaction was a little dismissive, like she was not sure how to respond. I asked if she might want to meet up sometime and talk more. At first she said no. Then she changed her mind.
She pulled out her phone, realizing where the conversation was going even though I had not directly asked for her number. She entered my number and immediately sent me a text message so we would have each other’s contact. After that we stood outside talking for a while. During those few minutes several people kept walking in and out of the meeting space, interrupting the conversation repeatedly. Each time someone came through, the conversation paused and then started up again. She did not really stop to talk with anyone else. Instead she lingered there with me, waiting for the interruptions to pass so we could keep talking.
Eventually she mentioned that she was cold. She was wearing more layers than I was, yet she still seemed chilled. Before she left, I asked if she wanted a hug. She said yes, and when we hugged she held on tightly. The way she held me felt like someone who had been craving physical connection. She mentioned she was going through a hard stretch in her life, which added context to everything I was feeling in that moment.
As I watched her ride away on her bike, I found myself questioning the whole situation. What exactly am I doing here? I need to listen to more of the No More Mr. Nice Guy book. She is cute, but the situation clearly has the dynamic of me wanting to save someone. She is not really in a place that matches where I am in life right now. It feels more like the classic pattern of a man imagining himself as the one who comes along and fixes everything. I could see the pattern clearly enough to recognize it.
After leaving the meeting, I drove back to my house. Earlier in the day the life coach had noticed a folder on my computer with my book Friday Yoga Crush in it. She got really excited about the concept when she saw the title. I played the first thirty seconds of the audio recording for her and she loved it. That stuck in my mind because earlier today I had actually been thinking about abandoning that project and focusing only on writing new sobriety books.
But when she said she would love to hear the book once it was finished, it brought the excitement back for me. So when I got home I sat down and recorded another forty five minutes of Friday Yoga Crush. After that I texted my ex-wife to ask when a good time would be to see the kids. While waiting to hear back, I listened to more of the audiobook version of No More Mr. Nice Guy.
Later in the evening I went over to my ex-wife’s house around 7:20 after eating a small salad for dinner so I could see the kids. The evening got me thinking about honesty and how we treat each other. I understand why schools try to prevent kids from being nasty to each other. At the same time, part of me feels like people sometimes need to hear unpleasant things.
I have a personal trainer who told me a story that stuck with me. He’s in incredible shape now, a huge ripped guy. He said the moment that finally motivated him to change his life was when kids called him out to his face about his weight. That humiliation pushed him to get in shape.
Part of what I found myself thinking about tonight is how blunt honesty used to function differently in people’s lives. I imagine walking up to some of these women who are clearly overweight and saying something people today would consider incredibly rude. Something like, be honest with yourself about your health. Get your diet together. Learn how to eat and exercise. Stop spending so much time on your phone scrolling, watching TV, and pouring all your energy into work while your health collapses. Get moving, eat a whole-food plant-based diet, and exercise.
Most people today would immediately say that kind of statement is cruel. And yes, on the surface it absolutely sounds awful. At the same time, I wonder what happens when people walk around in a social environment where everyone pretends not to notice what is obvious. People might smile and be polite, but inside their heads they are thinking the exact same harsh things. Meanwhile the person receiving all that polite silence lives inside a bubble believing nobody sees the problem.
I have met plenty of women with wonderful personalities who were friendly and even a little flirty with me. But if someone is significantly overweight, attraction tends to fade for me. Someone I met recently was cute and carrying a little extra weight, and that was fine. But when someone is carrying a great deal of extra weight, for me the physical attraction simply is not there, however nice their personality.
I know exactly how harsh that sounds when I say it out loud. At the same time, part of me believes that some level of rigorous honesty is necessary in life. There is nothing wrong with carrying a little extra weight. Some people genuinely do have larger frames. Maybe one out of fifty or one out of a hundred people naturally carry more body mass and it makes sense for their genetics. Historically, fat was even considered attractive when food was scarce and the only people who could afford to be fat were the wealthy. I understand that context.
But today the reality is different. Health and physical appearance matter in the world whether people want to admit it or not. Pretending otherwise does not change the truth.
At the same time, I am not singling out women here. There are plenty of men who deserve the same kind of brutal honesty, just often in a different category. My criticism toward men is less about their bodies and more about what they are doing with their lives.
I picture myself kicking in the door of some guy’s house and finding him sitting there smoking weed, drinking, playing Call of Duty, and wasting his entire life playing video games. And immediately I hear the voice in my own head saying, yeah, like you did. Exactly like you did, Jerry. Just like that.
In that moment I imagine saying the same thing to that guy that I wish someone had said to me back then. You’re wasting your life. You’re living off your parents, your wife, or the government, doing nothing, barely feeling alive, with no passion and no direction. Stop poisoning your body. Get out of the house and do something useful for someone else. Go date someone and try to make them happy, whether that’s a woman or a man. Build a real relationship with commitment instead of chasing hookups. Create something. Write books. Play music. Produce something meaningful. Do something real with your life.
So when people want to say that criticism like this is directed only toward women, that is not the case. I have just as much criticism for men. The focus is simply different. With women the problem I see most often is physical health. With men the problem is often what they are doing with their lives.
A lot of women today are actually doing extremely well professionally. They are working hard, building careers, and pushing themselves forward. Sometimes the priorities drift where the career flourishes while physical health deteriorates. Men tend to show the opposite pattern. Their careers might be failing entirely, or they work themselves into the ground in ways that destroy the rest of their lives.
I think about someone who works himself into the ground, sixty or seventy hours a week, and never stops. If I walked into his life, I might say something just as blunt. Look at what you’re doing with your life. All you do is work. Then you go out afterward and drink, and you numb yourself just to cope with your own stress. You are barely present for your family. People ask your spouse if they even have a partner because you are never around. They go to events alone while you are still at work. Stop working so much. Stop numbing yourself. Show up for your family. And maybe find a hobby that has nothing to do with drinking.
The deeper problem I see is that modern culture often co signs everyone’s behavior. The default reaction is to reassure people that everything they are doing is fine. Everyone tells each other, you’re good, you’re great, keep going exactly as you are. But sometimes the truth is that people need to hear something very different.
At the same time, I am not saying we should go around being nasty to each other constantly. That is not the point. But something that came up today really stirred this up in me. Today we treat any kind of harshness between kids as something completely unacceptable. God forbid a girl says something negative about another girl.
Part of me understands why schools want to shut that down. At the same time, another part of me thinks people should be able to handle hearing negative things about themselves. If someone says something harsh about you, one of two things is true. Either it is wrong and you can ignore it, or there is some truth in it and you should examine it.
Twelve years ago, if someone had said something like that to me, they would have been right. I was sitting in my house drinking a huge amount of liquor, playing video games all day, ignoring my ex-wife, blowing up my career, barely being useful to anyone, ripping people off at work, and destroying my body. If people had walked into my house back then or seen me on the street and bluntly told me to get my act together and do something with my life, honestly it probably would have helped.
Because the truth is, I did not fully realize how bad things had gotten until I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous. AA forced me to look at my life honestly. It was like holding up a mirror. Look at what you are doing. You are sitting here drinking constantly. You do not give a shit about your family. Every time you drink you become an idiot. You tell people you are going to get sober and then you drink again. You promise clients you are going to do a great job for them, and then you bail because you are too busy chasing more sales instead of actually doing the work for the people who trusted you. When I first came into AA, I had to take a real inventory of my life. And the conclusion was simple. This is not going well. At the same time, I also realized I had the ability to change it.
A lot of people thrive off negative motivation. Someone walks up to you and bluntly tells you that you’re out of shape, or that you’re wasting your life living with your parents, playing video games all day, whining about the world while scrolling TikTok. When someone says something like that to your face, the first reaction is usually anger. You want to punch them.
But if you were actually proud of that life, it would not offend you. If you loved living in your parents’ house and genuinely believed that was the best possible life for you, it would not bother you when someone said it. If you were significantly overweight and someone pointed it out, and you truly loved your body exactly as it was, you would not get angry. You would say, yes, this is me and I am proud of it. The reason people get angry is because part of them knows there is truth in what is being said.
Over the years I have been criticized far more than the average person because of being a creator online. I have received tens of thousands of comments ripping me apart from every possible angle. Many times it hurt. But it also made me stronger. I learned to look at the criticism and ask two questions. Where are they right? And where are they just projecting their own problems onto me?
Now when someone talks shit about me, I can handle it. Someone might say, “Look at you. You deleted your career. You live off your wife. You failed everything.” The first few times I heard those things it definitely stung. But it also pushed me to get my life together. I have heard so much criticism over the years that most of it does not shake me anymore. In a strange way it made me stronger because I have already faced the truth that many people spend their whole lives avoiding.
And yet today I actually feel grateful for the criticism. Earlier this year people were attacking me online saying things like that I just live off my ex-wife. Last night I even told my ex-wife something similar myself. I told her that taking that money from her savings made me feel like a loser in some ways. But at the same time I also told her something else. I said I am going to make sure I never need to take another dollar from you again. I am going to get my life together. I am going to build a business system I love that actually helps people, produces something valuable, and creates income I can be proud of earning.
As I was thinking through all of this tonight, I started sketching out a clearer idea for how I want to structure my book writing services. Right now I’m thinking about charging somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000 per month to help people write their books. The key idea is to structure it as a monthly membership. Someone signs up for a month and can use my help as much as they need during that time. The expectation is simple: get your shit done. Finish your book.
In the best-case scenario, someone signs up for a month, works intensely with me, and gets their book done within that time. Then they don’t need another month. But if someone signs up for $1,000 a month and then spends the whole month screwing around without actually working on their book, they’ll have to pay another $1,000 the next month. In that sense the pricing structure naturally pushes people to take the process seriously. If you procrastinate, you’re essentially punishing yourself financially. If you show up and work hard, you get the result quickly.
So the current vision is to offer memberships ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 per month depending on the level of support someone wants. Structuring it that way means I will know exactly how much money is coming in each month, which makes the entire system much easier to manage. It also gives me a straightforward path to covering all my expenses.
Part of my motivation with this business is also personal. One day I would love to help my ex-wife refill her savings. Whether that happens directly with money I give her or simply by making sure I’m financially strong enough to cover more expenses for the kids, the goal is to take responsibility for my own financial stability.
Looking back, I’m grateful that people have told me the truth about myself over the years, even when I didn’t want to hear it. Some of the women I’ve talked to recently have said things that initially bothered me, but when I thought about it later, there was truth in what they said. For example, a yoga instructor made a comment about my book a month ago that stuck with me. I had entertained the idea of putting my phone number in a book in a way that might attract women to contact me so I could potentially pick someone up that way.
When I think about it now, that’s not what my books are for. My books should exist to provide value to readers, promote my work, and support my business. They shouldn’t leave women wondering whether I’m trying to date them through the book. If I’m interested in someone, the right thing to do is simply say it directly. “Hey, I like you. Do you want to go out with me?” Clear and straightforward. No confusion.
And realistically, I should know someone at least a little bit before asking them out. If I don’t know someone, how could I possibly know whether I actually want to date them? I don’t want to be asking random women I barely know to go on dates. Once things become sexual, it can become complicated to untangle the situation if it turns out we aren’t actually a good match.
As the evening wound down, I finished listening to the rest of No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. After that I walked over to the table and pulled out almost all of my books. I left aside some of the extra copies of I Was Famous on the Internet and The Kind Divorce because I have a lot of those, but I gathered more than one hundred books and spread them out across the table. Seeing them all laid out together was incredible. I have twelve different books in front of me, and nine of them were written just this year. Looking at that stack felt amazing.
Afterward I started printing the letter I want to place inside each book. Every one of those books needs to contain a short letter promoting my book writing services. That way whenever I give a book to someone, there is always the possibility that the book leads to a client who pays between $1,000 and $5,000 per month to work with me. Most of the time the book will simply give someone value and introduce them to my other books and ideas. But occasionally one of those books could turn into a client relationship. That’s an incredible business system when I think about it. Standing there looking at that table full of books gave me a moment to take inventory of where I am right now and feel proud. I thought to myself, damn, look at all these books.
At the same time I was listening to No More Mr. Nice Guy, one part of the book really stood out to me. Dr. Robert Glover talks about how if a man wants to improve his relationships with women, the root of many problems is actually his sex life. When I heard that, it resonated immediately. I could see how much of my own struggle in my marriage came from feeling like I desperately needed sex from my ex-wife while also feeling like I couldn’t provide that satisfaction for myself. That dynamic created pressure, neediness, and tension that inevitably affected the relationship.
One of the insights he shares is that a man should be able to have a satisfying sex life by himself without relying on fantasy or outside stimulation like pornography. The idea is that you should be able to be fully present with your own body and experience sexual energy without chasing a fantasy or a specific outcome. When I heard that, it felt immediately true. On some level I have known that intuitively for a long time, but hearing it stated clearly hit home.
I opened a new file on my computer called “Sex Notes” and started writing down what stood out to me. The first point I wrote was: fully present masturbation with no fantasy and no goal. That concept alone would require developing completely different habits. Most of my life, masturbation has been centered around chasing orgasm with some kind of fantasy driving it. That has been the pattern for years. Yet there have been moments where I was simply present with my body and actually enjoying the experience without pushing toward an endpoint. Thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense that if I want to be able to be fully present with a woman’s body, playful and relaxed and enjoying the moment, I need to be able to do that with my own body first.
The second point he mentioned was intentionally taking a period of time with no sex and focusing on filling your own needs. That description feels exactly like the phase I am in right now. Instead of framing it as a period where I’m struggling or unable to get laid, I can see it as an intentional period with no sex while I focus on developing my own emotional and physical independence. That way, when I eventually meet a woman who is truly compatible with me, someone I enjoy being around as a friend and partner in life, the sex becomes a bonus instead of something I feel like I need from her.
Another point he made was to treat sex as an adventure each time, approaching it without expectations about how it will go or what should happen. Hearing that made me smile because it sounds like the opposite of what often happened in my marriage, where sex could start to feel pressured or routine. Thinking about it as an open-ended adventure sounds a lot more enjoyable.
I also wrote down the idea of releasing shame, guilt, and dependence around sex. The core idea is that I don’t need a woman in order to have a healthy sexual life, and there is nothing wrong with having strong sexual energy. As I was reflecting on these ideas, I noticed that I was actually feeling more sexual energy in my body. I was getting more erections and feeling more alive in that part of myself. It surprised me a little because after all the work I have done on myself, I still have some of these old patterns hanging around.
The last note I wrote down was to avoid behaviors designed to minimize conflict just to preserve the possibility of sex. That one hit especially close to home. It includes things like pursuing women who are clearly not a good match simply because they are available, or trying to “save” someone with the hidden motivation of eventually sleeping with them. The girl I met at AA earlier today could easily fall into that category. Another example is avoiding confrontation in a relationship because you are afraid that a disagreement might lead to less sex. That happened many times in my marriage. I would walk on eggshells, avoiding saying things that might start an argument, trying to keep the peace in hopes that it would help the sex life. In reality, that behavior just made me weaker and more people-pleasing. Listening to that part of the book felt incredibly valuable. I kept thinking to myself how good the book is and how grateful I am to be hearing these ideas right now.
By the end of the evening, I finished polishing the letter I wanted to include in my books. I printed thirty copies of it, front and back, so I can start putting them into the books I give away. The plan is simple: every book I hand out carries that letter, which explains my book writing services. Over time I know that some of those books will turn into clients.
It felt like a productive and satisfying day. By the time I got into bed it was still before eleven, which meant I could easily get at least eight hours of sleep. Earlier my mom had asked if I wanted to come over, and I had called her, but she wasn’t available at the time. She texted me later around 9:45 asking if I still wanted to come by. By then it was too late. I told her we would see each other tomorrow. I went to sleep feeling grateful for the day and everything that is starting to come together.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.