This is my journal entry from December 28, 2025 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I was supposed to have tennis this morning, but my tennis coach canceled, so I go to my yoga studio for a Power Flow class. I get there and find a nice spot to put my mat. A girl moves over next to me to make space for a couple. I didn't realize it was a 75-minute hot class, but great. I get a thorough sweat going. And I'm grateful I did a nice workout on my own yesterday at the gym that's left me sore, especially the lunges. I wrap up class, and there's a couple of girls I know there from AA, thinking, all right, let's go get some more phone numbers. I walk out to the lobby, and the girl who sat next to me, or really put her mat next to me, is close, so I start talking to her based off of seeing that she wore glasses during some of the yoga class. I begin by asking, how are you wearing glasses during yoga? That's crazy, especially a hot class where it's sweaty. She explains she can't see very well without the glasses, and she put them on occasionally when she needed to see a pose that was being demonstrated. I keep talking to her for a few minutes. She's gorgeous, and she's giving me signs she's interested, so I ask for her phone number. She gives it to me, and I send her one of my books.
I'm lingering around giving a couple of other people my books, too, and wondering if I want to try and get the other girl's number at AA. This girl is the same one I talked about around a month ago at the AA dinner. I wrote about her in my last book. And the one problem with her is that she's a bit big, although today I'm thinking she's not that big. I should probably get her phone number and go out with her. But I'm not really feeling it. Something doesn't feel comfortable or right. It felt pretty easy to get the first girl's phone number. And at the same time, though, like, I don't know, man. There's a perfect opportunity as I linger and hang around where she's walking to her car by herself. But I'm like, I'm not feeling it. I don't feel like this is right. The girl's nice, but I just, I don't see this being my person. You know, I don't feel that thing with her.
And I go back home. I sit on the couch when I get home and I swipe like crazy on Hinge and Bumble and not much on Tinder, but some. On Hinge, I'm writing all kinds of toxic comments on girls' profiles. I'm framing it under giving them constructive feedback. I spent some time swiping this morning too. I feel just like addicted to this. And I have a date today at 12:30 at a vegan restaurant with a girl from Bumble. So I swipe through every girl on Bumble that wants kids in a 33-mile radius. And then I get to work on Hinge. Hinge takes so long though. There's so many girls on Hinge that want kids, so many more than on Bumble. But leaving a comment takes so much time and I'm so annoyed. Like regular nice comments just don't do anything; girls always just ignore them. So I'm writing toxic comments.
Then I finally wrap up and shower and go out to meet the girl. She arrives five minutes late and the restaurant is closed until one. So I find a restaurant that's a block down. We walk down there and eat at it. We both get a sandwich. I pay for her lunch. The food's okay. The previous vegan restaurant that was there was better. I enjoyed the meals there better; this one is like a crappier version of that one. There's a girl I know from AA that's working there, the one that I actually sent a text message to a few days ago to ask if she wanted to go for a walk and she didn't respond. She doesn't seem to notice me. She's very busy and in the zone at work, and I'm out sitting with a girl outside. This girl immigrated to the USA a few years ago, and she has one teenage son. She says she would be happy to have more kids with the right man, but she doesn't ever want to be a single mom again. She ended up being a single mom when her son was little, after she and his dad got divorced, so she's been a single mom for over a decade now, and she doesn't want to do that again. She's very sweet, and she's not fat, but I'm just not that attracted to her, and we have almost nothing in common. It's a little hard to communicate with her sometimes because English is her second language, and the way I talk is hard for people to understand sometimes because it's so blunt and direct. We have our lunch and take a little walk up and down the block. And I give her a hug and I send her one of my books to read, I Was Famous on the Internet. And I get back in my car and head home.
And then I schedule a time to see the kids at about 3:30. And I sit down and I just feel like I'm addictively on the dating apps again. Like, this isn't good. But I just want to go through. There's so many girls that are active on Hinge today, I guess because it's Sunday. And I took off the drinking filter. So I'm seeing so many of these girls that drink in my feed, and it's so disgusting. Like, don't they see what they're doing? So I have to help them. Like this one girl, the first impression on her profile, she has a picture of herself, and then it says the keys to my heart, which is a Hinge prompt, and after that it has cheese and bourbon. Like, do you think this is going to attract the kind of man that you think will be a good father, that the keys to your heart are cheese and bourbon? So I make sure to send her a message on that and let her know how I think you really attract the kind of man you want with cheese and bourbon as your first impression. And I send a bunch of other messages like this. I try sending some nice messages too, but the nice messages literally have gotten almost zero response off of hundreds and hundreds of times.
The kids end up coming home a bit later and I start to feel like, shit, I had work I wanted to do on my books today. I had hours of time that I could have done very valuable work on my books. I haven't gotten a single response from the 350 letters I sent to my neighbors yet, and I have all these books I want to write, but I haven't gotten one response. The kids come over, and I put down the dating apps to take them to a nearby park. My son's got his scooter, and my daughter brought Melanie, the dog, so we walk down to the park, and my daughter goes and gets on the swings and plays on the playset, which is so nice because she's 10 years old and she's so big now, and she used to play on this playset when she was just a year old, and often up until maybe five or six years old. My son ends up throwing the ball with me, and then he climbs over the fence and runs around and plays for less than five minutes, and he comes back with two scrapes on his knee from falling off the fence climbing one time and then falling down another time.
In the meantime, I get a new match on Hinge, and this girl is pissed. It's the bourbon and cheese girl. She is mad at me for calling her out, and she starts laying into me with her message, saying that I look 60 years old and I must not be healthy at all, and some more stuff that I don't even read. I send a quick message back telling her she obviously needs to meet me in person, and she says she'll pass, at which point I unmatch her. I start to get pretty mad. I'm like, this is so stupid. What have I done with my day? What did I do with my weekend? I spent like eight or nine hours this weekend out on dates and on dating apps, the dates directly coming from the dating apps. And I know exactly what I need to do. While the kids go play by the water, I realize I need to delete these dating apps. And I need to not just delete them off my phone, I need to delete my entire profile. And it's really nice because within the last week, I just dropped $50 on Tinder and $160 on Bumble. But you know what? If for $200 I can take a lesson that never, ever, ever again with the dating apps, it'll be worth it. Especially after I wrote a book called It's Not You, It's the Dating Apps.
These dating apps are horrible. It's not that they can't work, they can. But for most, a lot of people, a dating app is not going to allow you to find what you need. And it's actually just going to make a shitty environment like this, where being a nice, reasonable man, which would work very well in person, does not work on dating apps. You have to either be this superficial asshole with professional pictures, or super tall, or flaunting your money as a man, or you need to be an asshole to even get women's attention, or just some dude that'll go with anything. There's all kinds of options on dating apps, but I want a beautiful woman. And the kind of beautiful women on dating apps are often pretty disappointing, or the apps attract some real extremes and instability, which I've described in previous entries, not that any of it happened to me. But there are occasional hot girls that come on dating apps, and they're so swarmed with guys. It's like, I don't want to contribute to this anymore. I've got to stop this. And therefore, I delete the apps. If you're done with the dating apps and rebuilding your life the real way too, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family and grow alongside the rest of us.
I walk the kids home to my ex-wife's place. I make them some popcorn. I say goodnight. And that's when I go home, I sit on my couch and I delete every app off my phone and I delete every profile and cancel every subscription before I do it. And now I'm starting to spiral downward a bit heading to the AA meeting. I go to the AA meeting, my home group, and I actually get there a bit early. I can barely get a seat because it's so crowded. I sit down and a sponsee gets a seat right next to me, which is awesome. And I start to spiral downward as the anniversary celebrants are sharing their stories. I'm like, what the hell am I doing with dating? Like I've spent as much time dating in the last week as I have working. Now working, I've got some results. I've cranked out books. I've written all kinds of letters. Like I made an effort. Now it didn't work, but at least the letters so far haven't worked, but it has worked to get books done and to publish books. All this effort I made with dating has led me to going out with two girls that I had no chemistry with, no connection with. They're interesting, but it was so awkward with both of them because we had nothing in common. There'd been no tension that had been built up. And it just felt like a total waste of my time and their time.
And then I think about all the work I've done in person. Like, I've gotten a phone number, as I've told you, almost every day this week. Like, I got a hot girl's phone number at yoga this morning. But again, this is a girl I barely knew that I did one yoga class next to. She doesn't usually come to my yoga studio. But now what am I going to do with this girl I met one time? There's not been enough tension built up with her where if I say, hey, do you want to go out and get tea or something. She doesn't hardly know me. Or I could try and meet her in another yoga class again. But it's kind of a chore just to even build tension. But I'm starting to feel kind of hopeless. What the hell, man? What am I doing? I need to focus. I need to focus on my work.
The dating, I can handle on my own; it's not urgent. My money situation is more urgent. I need to get my work straight. I need to get books published. I need to get books in people's hands. I have several months where I don't have to make any money at all. I took an $11,000 cash advance on my credit card and transferred it to a 0% card. So I'll have about $20,000 in cash with $2,700 a month in rent. So I've got at least three or four months, plus I have a 0% interest credit card, an additional one, that has like $8,000 more limit on it. So I've got a few months of runway right now where I can make literally no money and I'm fine, plus if the ICP price would not go to zero, I'd have another few thousand there. But if I keep messing around and spending all this time dating, I need that time for work. I need that time to figure out how to make money. And I need to put my work and attention and creativity into my books, because it takes a month for me to get author copies of my books to even start handing them out.
So even if I finish a book today, it takes a month to get a copy of that book in the mail and be ready to hand it out. And it can take a month or two for people to even read the book and for anything to start happening. I have enough time now if I write two, three books over the next month, then over the next several months I could have handed out hundreds and hundreds of books and sold books and have time for something to happen. But the more I keep messing around dating, what really pisses me off this weekend is like I could have written a whole book damn near, or finished a book. I could have done so much on my books this weekend, but I went out with a couple of girls and no chemistry.
As the meeting wraps up, I feel like I really need to do step three, like turn my dating over to God. Like I've reached my limits. I'm trying so hard and absolutely nothing is happening. I text the girl I saw while she was at work today, and she responds back immediately. But then I send her a message saying, hey, you know, let's do something this week. She says maybe, she's got some work to do with her sponsor. I'm like, you know, we could have tea before or after work or something, no big deal. But I'm like, even there, that's something I probably should have let even more tension build with, because this girl likes me. But now it's like I'm diffusing the tension or something with asking her out too early or whatever.
So I wrap up the meeting and I start talking to people about this. And I end up having a conversation with a guy I knew several years ago when he got sober, who mostly goes to church now instead of AA. And we all grill him on, you know, when have you done your 10th step, how often do you talk to your sponsor, how often are you coming to meetings? Like, you know, he's out there helping people, but he's living a bit dangerously with slacking on the AA meetings and just thinking that church and his woman at home are going to totally cover that aspect of it. And then he's able to help me. I asked him about meeting his wife. So he has a new wife and baby, which is amazing, given when I met this guy he was so utterly defeated and his life was going so shitty. And he has what I'm looking to have in lots of ways. And he told me that he had a girl that he knew from church. They were in the same church, but they didn't even know it, but they were both doing the same kind of volunteer work together for like a year, and they'd see each other. And basically the tension with her built for like seven or eight, at least seven or eight months, where they saw each other once a week and they barely talked or said hi, and they worked together in the same volunteer group, the same mission. And then, what he said happened is that a couple of months before he made any kind of move, she said she was praying with her mother to God that he would notice her and ask her out. And after a couple of months of this, finally they made eye contact one day, and he understood that it was time to ask her out, and he went and did so. And then from there, you know, they've ended up getting married and having a baby, and he said she's a beautiful girl that's several years younger than him, and things are going really well with that. If you want to grow through this kind of patient, honest living with people who understand it, come build it with us in the Jerry Banfield Family.
And I'm like, that's what I want. And I know that's what I want. I don't want my story, as I've said several times, to be that I met some girl online. I already met my ex-wife online. My first wife, my ex-wife, I already met her online. I already have that story. I want a story just like his. That I was somewhere like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting or yoga class or wherever, and I built tension with somebody over time, and then we had a friendship and shared interests, and then from there I already know she's attractive, I already know we have chemistry, and when we go out on a first date, it'll be hot. It'll be passionate. It'll be exciting. Not something that's cold and like, you know, what the hell are both of us doing out here, and leaves both of us feeling worse afterwards. So I was super grateful for this guy for sharing that. I'm like, that's exactly what I needed to hear today. Thank you. That's exactly what I'm looking for.
And I know all I have to do is just focus on living my life, writing my books, and being out there, and I will keep running into people. And as a general rule, I don't want to get somebody's phone number that I don't know. Like that girl at yoga, I just met her once, I don't even have enough data. Well, I guess I'm technically recording this the next morning, so the girl I met earlier today, I don't even know her well enough to have her phone number. What am I going to do with it? Ask her to go have tea or something? She barely knows me. How does she know she even wants to commit an hour to hanging out with me? It'd be as awkward as an online date, except at least I know she's hot. Maybe I will ask her to tea or to meet up at another yoga class or something, but I know what I want. I want to meet somebody naturally and organically. And generally, if somebody is really aligned with me, I'm going to keep running into them because we're going to have shared interests. And the first time, like a friend talked about in her story, the first time I meet someone is unlikely to just immediately fall in love. It's going to likely take time. It often takes time to fall in love and build tension with somebody. If you're learning to be patient and let your own life unfold like this, I'd be glad to talk it through with you on a private Zoom call.
And after this conversation, I'm planning on going home, but the guys say they want to go to a pizza place. And I decide, the one guy convinces me to go, and I end up going, even though I told the rest of them I wasn't going to go. So I get there, and I'm so glad. I'm like, this is what's nice about being divorced, that I can go out to pizza at 9 o'clock with the guys, and nobody's waiting for me. I can come home as late as I want. So we have a great conversation. I generally don't eat this late, and I generally don't eat pizza, but I get a vegetarian pizza, the smallest size. We get the pizza, you know, a little before 10. I eat half of the like nine-inch pizza and take the rest home. And I have great conversations. Me and the guys are laughing and cutting up and talking so much shit. And then we go out in the parking lot afterwards for another hour and a half. The girls from AA have a big table there near us as well. And we just talk so much shit and laugh so much. I'm like bent over belly laughing several times. And I'm like, thank you. This is what I really needed. If anything, I need more time with the boys and less time going out with girls that I don't know. And maybe even less time with girls generally. Like it's so easy to hang out with the boys because I'm not trying to date them. You know what I'm saying? Although we have a bunch of talks about gay guys and stuff, and it was so funny.
Finally it was down to four of us. Our table had been five. One guy leaves when we leave the restaurant, and then the rest of us talk for like an hour and a half. I finally break the group of four up because it's 11:25. I need to get my ass to bed. I come home, put my pizza in the fridge, and I'm feeling really grateful. I already showered earlier, and I'm like, this is just what I needed and I'm good. I can be patient. If it takes several months, a year, several years, if I can meet a girl that's hot and wants to have more kids with me and lives a sober lifestyle, I'm willing to wait for it. And I don't need to ever again waste my time swiping on apps or going out with girls I have no chemistry with. I'd rather just be hanging out with the boys and having fun. And I don't need to constantly be chasing girls either, because that can be a hell of a distraction. And I don't need a distraction. I want to be getting on my work. So I'm really excited that tomorrow I'm going to hammer my books out and go forward without dating apps and obsessive dating. I'm going to go forward and let the beautiful woman of my dreams, my second wife, come to me.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.