I'm a YouTuber, and it's day 5,011, February 16th, 2025, here with Jerry Banfield. I spent a lot of the day with my family today, and it was really nice. All I did for work so far was film a couple of crypto videos, one about something going to zero and then an ICP hype video. I posted that if people want to pay me for a video, it's $500, which is well worth it. It usually takes me less than an hour, so it's good for them and good for me. I do my best to make sure it's good for the audience too.
Board games and teaching the kids to play fair
I just played the Harry Potter Monopoly game with the kids three times today. I love board games. I'm so glad my daughter's nine and my son's six. They're old enough now. I did tell my son beforehand, "This is a board game. This is to have fun. We're not going to throw a fit and whine and cry when stuff doesn't go our way." That ruins the fun of it for me. Play the game, accept your loss. That helped out a lot, because some of the other times they played board games they've cried and fussed and thrown pieces. I told them we're not doing that. So we played and had fun. My son won one game, then my daughter won another game, then my son won the last game. Laura put a spot in for the first game, but I ended up playing for her, and Madeline lost. Then Madeline played for her and lost again on her spot. My son got the houses and the house crests on, and we had fun. It was nice.
Cleaning up and paying the kids to work
I also cleaned up a lot of stuff around the house. It felt good to clean up a lot of little details, like cleaning out and refilling the dog water bowls. I paid my kids $5 each to clean the algae out of the three-gallon dog water bowl, because I can't really get my hand in there very well. But they have little hands, so they got up in there and did great. They each earned some money working today. I also used the water pump to drain the two new rain barrels, which was fun. My daughter must have earned about 40 bucks today. They went and spent some at Target. One thing they got was that Harry Potter Monopoly game. My son got a new soccer ball, and they were kicking it around with that.
When people keep canceling
They were going to go do something with Laura's family, but then the same person who always cancels, probably 50-plus percent of the time, made plans and canceled again. This event was for this person, and they cancel again. My thought is, if you cancel about half the time, I'm just not going to make plans with you anymore. Laura's very understanding, though. The kids were hurt over it. I think if you cancel, you should be transparent about the reason. What are you doing? Are you having a fight today? Are you in the middle of your alcoholism or addiction? What's going on? Why are you canceling?
It reminds me of my friend who canceled. I guess it's been just a week now. My friend canceled and then didn't get to say goodbye to me, after a year, after probably close to 100 hours together in the last year, which is a lot of time to spend with somebody. He just cancels, moves away, nothing. Well, everybody's going to leave you one way or another. To some degree, all the people in this life are just faces that pass. It's kind of morbid, but at the same time there's truth to it. They're just temporary forms that come and go. What's eternal is me, the part of me that keeps creating stuff for all of eternity. I just create and destroy and create. I let it fall apart and create again. That's what I do. That's who I am. In my belief, I'm the creator. I create stuff so that I may know myself. But none of these bodies I create, none of these bridges I build, none of these are me.
Thinking about longer music streams
I didn't make any music today or yesterday, which has me thinking I'd like to do longer music streams and really make a lot during a few longer streams each day instead of doing an hour-long music stream every day. Once you've already got the people there, it's really nice to just stay live for longer. If you want to be a professional streamer on most platforms like Twitch, it's like you stream four to eight hours, maybe even 12. Often the hardest time to even get people into the stream is the first 30 minutes or so. Once you get in the flow, it's cool. I watched Funky Flow do his 50-hour rap Guinness World Record live stream. I watched his highlight video on YouTube. Once you really get in the zone on something like making music or freestyling, it can be a lot easier. For me, just warming up is the hardest part. Sometimes it takes five or ten freestyles to even warm up good. Once again I'm thinking, do I want to do freestyles, or dance music, or background music? I don't know yet.
Why I'm done covering crypto projects for free
I was in a bad mood about the crypto videos again. The thing is, though, the crypto videos pay the bills, and it seems like they do some real good, because I'm saying what most people aren't saying. I'm saying projects are terrible that most people are hyping up, and that's useful. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger's book, Be Useful. To me, being useful is where it's at.
Now, sometimes I think, well, I could make a lot more money if I would just sell out. So starting with ICP, I'm going to limit covering projects that don't pay me from now on. If I'm going to talk nice about a project, I think you should have paid me. If you don't pay me, I'm going to go dump on some other project, which is much more useful in my opinion. If you want somebody to talk nice about you in these cryptos, there are so many people willing to do that, so you should pay for it. You've got to know your own worth in life. I keep giving out all my valuable marketing to all these projects for free, and then they don't want to pay for it, because I'm giving it out for free. So I'm going to stop giving it out for free. What I'm going to give out for free is criticism. You want me to do something for free? I'm going to criticize how crappy your project is, and I'll try to pick the biggest projects to do that with, the ones that have the most traffic. If you want me to talk nice, then you can pay something. That's how the world goes.
Now, obviously, the best things in life aren't all about money. A lot of the best things in life you don't pay for directly. But raising kids, you definitely pay for that.
Time with your loved ones is what's valuable
I watched a little bit of one of DMX's last videos. I didn't watch the whole thing. He was talking about how what's really valuable in life is time with your loved ones. I'm glad today I took the time with mine. In previous years, today's the day where I probably would have made sure I took an hour to several hours livestreaming or making more videos or putting more time into content creation. But what's really important is time with your loved ones. I've got crypto videos filmed, three a day, all the way through tomorrow night, so I'm good. I wanted to make sure I got that time with my loved ones and had the windows open. It was nice to get some cool, fresh air through the house. I feel like the house is cleaner.
We're going to get the baseboards and the ceiling fixed for $6,000. We looked at some different houses around the neighborhood and looked back at our old house we lived in. It's fun to just play around thinking, what if we lived in a brand-new million-dollar house right across the street? What would that be like? It would be a lot of cleaning and a lot more expenses. We could make that work if we really wanted to. But I'm so happy and cozy in this house. I asked the kids if they wanted to buy the house across the street that's got more bedrooms and more bathrooms, and they said no, they like this house. I love this house. I don't want to move, even if it is just across the street. I'm happy where I'm at. That's a magical thing in life, to be happy with where you're at.
I feel like one of the hardest things I've had with my YouTube content is just to be happy where I'm at. I'm averaging 10-plus thousand views a day on my crypto channel. A few people watch this one. A few more people watch my music videos. For me, this is a good enough day on YouTube, and it's a great day for my family. I think I'll have spent maybe seven hours with the family today. I woke up at 7:30, and let's call it 4:30 now, so that's about nine hours awake, and maybe seven of them with the family. That's more than usual for me. If you want to see more of how I think about earning, spending, and building a life around what matters, I put a lot of it into my Money playlist.
Then I'm going to go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting later and try to help some people not piss their lives away to drinking. So many traps in this life, one after another. But there are opportunities to have fun and joy as well. So I'm grateful you actually read this. See you tomorrow.