July 21st, 2026. I'm Jerry Banfield, and here's a day in the life of whatever I am — a content creator, a full-time YouTuber. I appreciate all the support on my video yesterday named "I Cried Out for My Queen and I Met Her." I felt so vulnerable making it, and I still feel embarrassed about posting something that emotional. But I got a really nice message from Scouse Will in the Skool community, and I thought, okay, it is nice to be willing to be that vulnerable.
At the same time, it's been tough. I cried so much yesterday. I listened to some gospel music that the woman I'm dating sent me, and I cried for about 30 minutes. I listened to a church service in the morning from Dr. Pulley and cried from that too — all before I even made the video. Then I saw my friend Lindsay for a massage, and we had such a great conversation. I was sad that the woman I'm dating didn't want to see me. We'd had so much fun, and I kept thinking, why don't we just hang out for an hour or something? But it should be fun for her too, not pressured. And all my doubts and lack-of-faith thoughts really attacked me yesterday, and I didn't respond as effectively as I'd like. That's got me thinking about what I can do with my business as well, because I've been feeling like putting these videos up is something useful, for sure — but is it the most useful thing I can do?
Crying Out in the Middle of the Night
I was up in the middle of the night with all my dark thoughts attacking me — about how wrong I must be, how I don't mean what I say, how I've been all wrong about this. Afraid of all that and desperate for relief, I cried out to God. I yelled and prayed and cried during the night. And honestly, I think that's an honest way of experiencing life. I think it's weird that we treat a muted emotional state of not feeling anything as normal. I don't think that's normal. Look at kids: they have big, loud feelings, and they also have amazing lives and love to give. They have fun and they enjoy themselves. I get a little angry when I imagine my friends saying, "Well, you have some extreme feelings." No — I have feelings. It's a miracle that 42 years since I was born, I still have feelings, that I haven't shut my heart off completely like most everybody else has, that I don't walk around guarded all the time. Oh, it's difficult. And yet it's also difficult to go through life with a shut heart, not feeling love either — feeling like a zombie that's just trying to survive.
Speaking of zombies, last night I played some Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 zombies on the Buried level. I was so lonely last night, and I realized I took — I was going to say wrong — I took ineffective actions to not be lonely. What I should have done was call my friend from AA, or visit my mom, or call my aunt. And yes, I'm "shoulding" all over myself here. The point is, I could have reached out for some connection with somebody else since the woman I'm dating didn't want to see me. Instead, I tried livestreaming and playing some Call of Duty, which has worked lots of times in the past — but it didn't work last night. I felt worse afterwards. I went to bed feeling miserable and lonely, questioning everything and trying not to withdraw my feelings and give up. I remember being up in the middle of the night thinking, I'm not filming a vlog tomorrow. I don't want to film a vlog. I don't want to talk about my life. I don't want to be seen like this.
Why Small Kindnesses Don't Reach Everyone
But then something occurred to me. There's a guy who passed away recently by his own decision. I knew him, and — I say this carefully, as my own honest reaction — it made sense to me. Many of the women who knew him seemed so surprised and so sad. But to me, having met him once and done a podcast together (not on any of my channels — on the DTSP one), it seemed logical. That was my first reaction when my friend told me he was gone: that makes sense. The guy I met seemed like he was missing depth of love in his life, especially in a relationship.
I got to thinking, because the woman I'm dating is doing this project to reach out and share a lot of love. But it's sharing love kind of like my videos do — trying to share love through a screen with you. And in my own life, someone sharing love through a screen with me, or a stranger smiling at me walking down the street, doesn't do anything for me. When I'm in distress, when I'm questioning everything, I'm not thinking of somebody who smiled at me. I'm not thinking of little acts of kindness. Little acts of kindness don't hit an emotional depth with me that registers as significant. In my experience, that's part of why the most dangerous time for men is after the loss of a relationship. I don't think that's as dangerous a time for women, generally speaking — and this is a generalization that doesn't apply to everybody. Everybody's different and unique.
My World Has Always Been Small
I look at life kind of like Neo in The Matrix, where I focus on a relatively small group of people I have very deep connections with. That makes sense growing up as a military brat with my mom in the Army. The world I counted on, the world that was real, was my mom, my dad, and my brother — because everybody else constantly changed. You couldn't depend on anyone else, because I'd move every few years. All my friends, gone. The places I knew, gone. Everything gone except my mom, my dad, and my brother. And I still kind of think that way. My world is really small, and if you're not in my inner world — the few people I really care about and think about all the time — it's like you don't exist to me emotionally.
I'm thinking maybe I need to change that, because it makes extreme thinking very easy. When my dad passed away, it was brutal, because my dad was one of a handful of really important people to me, and when he passed, it left this huge hole in my life. I filled that space with men in AA, and they mattered to me just as much as my dad. Then they passed away, and I grieved all over again.
Maybe My Business Needs to Change
And I started to think about my business. Right now I'm all in on a business that's purely online. You can talk with me on Zoom — but when I'm on the other end of that equation, there are lots of people I'd be interested to have a Zoom call with, and yet there's no one online I'm going to drop a thousand-plus dollars to do anything with. From the last 24 hours, I can see I need to adjust my business. My friend Angela, who I did dating coaching with — it was easy to drop $1,200 there because I got hours with her in person, and nobody on Zoom is going to replicate that. I see I need to get with people in person, because there are a lot of people I need to get with, in person, who will matter to me.
I had an awesome Zoom call yesterday with one of you who's in the Jerry Banfield Family on Skool. I've had so many Zoom calls with you all, and I remember many of you. But in the middle of the night, when I'm crying out to anybody who'll listen — God, Jesus, my dad, Ty, who was one of my father figures from AA — I'm not thinking of anyone besides the people in my inner core. I realized I depended too much on the woman I'm dating yesterday, and I didn't lean enough on everybody else — my mom, and the man who's kind of like my current father figure. I didn't lean enough on everybody else, and I suffered for it, and then my faith was questioned.
I got up and read the Bible this morning — Psalm 139, which the woman I'm dating suggested I start with, and the next few after it — and it really spoke to me. I felt like I was being attacked mentally, almost like forces or frequencies outside of me that want to sabotage me, that want me to do something stupid, like push away this woman I've opened my heart up to so much. That's what they were saying: withdraw from her, she doesn't really care about you, you know that. I felt like I was being attacked by all of it, and I prayed and cried out for help.
Then I had a realization: maybe your business needs to change. Would your business help somebody else like you, with the business you have now? Going forward, what do people actually need? Content is practically infinite now, and AI is vastly superior in most ways to most content. As good as AI is right now, the need for content is dropping, because I don't need to go watch a bunch of people talk about YouTube when I can just have a conversation with ChatGPT that reflects back to me — and it's better than watching somebody's video. Again, though, I've learned my videos are valuable. I know they have value, and I know not everybody sees the world the same way I do. Some of you see the world as a collection of love, where every little kindness and act from a stranger makes a significant difference — and I know for you, my work matters, and it's worth doing. But I think I need to cut back on doing stuff online. I'll continue making videos consistently, but cranking out six videos a day and trying to make all of my income online — I don't think that's the best offering I have. I think my best offering is in person, because that's also what's scarce right now. I'm fortunate to even be here now, because I had at least three or four — probably a handful — of people who were really there for me when I was getting divorced. People stepped up, like my sister stepped up.
When My Sister Stepped Up
At my greatest point of need, when I cried out in the most acute pain I'd felt in a long time, my sister reached out right away and said, come spend Thanksgiving with me. She stepped up, and I was there for a week. Staying with my sister, my whole life just felt full. I was there with her and her kids, and then I saw aunts, uncles, my other sister — my whole life felt whole.
I also realized I should not be living alone. There are advantages to living alone, for sure, but I thrive on connection, and I really want to live with someone — ideally with my woman, because I don't like living by myself. Now, there are trade-offs: if you're living with someone else, it's a little hard to holler out in the middle of the night in agony. But if someone else is there, I don't know that I'd feel that bad in the first place. Especially when the woman I'm with is my emotional anchor — it helps me not go as far out. And I realized my business needs to be about delivering that kind of emotional depth for people. It'll be good for me, and it'll be good for them.
Legacy Preservation: An Idea for Depth
So then I'm thinking, what can I do? I need to focus on connecting with people locally who want to do deep work with me. I'm not sure exactly how to go about that right now, but I've got some ideas — like legacy preservation. Who would pay me $5,000 to spend a few hours with them every day for a month? That's how I'm thinking. Who has $5,000 and would be happy to spend it to have a couple of hours with me every day? Maybe somebody in their 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s who has a life story they want to tell — a story that could turn into a book, a YouTube channel, a podcast, an audiobook. Or somebody who's just been through a big transition in their life, like a man who just got divorced and is lonely and needs somebody around every day who understands. Maybe not always in person — maybe we'd meet up in person once in a while, talk once or twice a week face to face, and then he'd have somebody he could talk to on the phone every day.
Those are exactly the connections that got me through my divorce. If I hadn't had those connections, that would have been an extremely risky situation for me. If I hadn't had that handful of people in my life that I could talk to for hours every week — and I can fill in what happens when somebody gets divorced, their whole life was based on their marriage, they're living by themselves, they have one or two people at most, and they have money they could pay for somebody to be there. That's the challenge: depth is so special. A lot of people pay for therapy and counseling just because they want somebody to listen to them, because they want to feel like they have depth — and even that is a difficult environment for it. Part of the reason I pay for massage is to have that deeper connection with someone.
I want to figure this out, and I think I'm going to try using what I know with technology — running some ads online on Google locally, having people schedule a call, and then just trying different approaches. If my approach is legacy preservation, we talk about creating something to preserve your legacy, or to preserve a story you have that you want to keep for the future. You could be 20 years old and want to preserve the story of your first 20 years.
Online for the Masses, Depth Delivered Locally
I've been feeling this for years: that I need a local component to my business. I've been struggling to figure out what that looks like, but I know the why behind it. The why is that I'm a person who thrives on depth, and I need to offer more depth to people — and I just can't offer that much depth online. In the past, I got confused thinking I had to pick one or the other, that I should do only online or only local. But I think the ideal approach is both: have stuff online for everybody, content that can help the masses anywhere in the world, while my best monetization happens locally — and the stuff I have online supports the local conversion. Imagine I run an ad locally, and someone comes and watches some of these recent vlogs, and they think, yes, this is a guy I'll pay $10,000 to, and we'll spend a couple of months together talking about my life and preserving my legacy. Picture a grandparent saying, yeah, I'll pay this guy $10,000. I'm going to pour my heart out to him. I'm going to tell him my whole life story. And I'm going to have a book to give my kids and grandkids, a YouTube channel with videos of me telling these stories, and a podcast. That's something that is not easy to create. That's something priceless, something that can make a huge difference in someone's life.
Depth Can Be Exponential
That's my lesson, my big theme from the last 24 hours: depth can be exponential. I noticed my approach to my work has been shallow. I look at analytics, I look at how many views I'm getting — but views are shallow, because no amount of numbers on a screen will produce the feeling of spending a few hours with the woman I'm dating. And no amount of money I make is going to produce the feeling of having a friend who's there, a family member who's there, when I need help. No amount of money fixes that. The only thing money can do is pay to have somebody immediately on demand who could fill that space — and there is real value in that.
I texted the woman I'm dating this morning, and it took some getting right — organizing my mind, clearing out the crap. I hope she can see me today, and I hope I'll be all right if she can't. Either way, I'm going to apply what I learned. Especially if she can't see me, I'll make sure I go to a meeting, that I see my mom, that I call my friend, that I call my aunt — that I reach out. If any of this resonates with you and you want to talk with me about it, schedule a one-on-one call with me — a real conversation with depth is exactly what I'm here for. And if you want more of my journey through dating, love, and connection, you'll find it in my Dating playlist.
Because for me, technology can be a vehicle for human connection. It can be a way to help people. But it's no substitute for real human connection.