This is my journal entry from August 24, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Author in St. Petersburg — my real, unedited days, published in order.
This morning began with preparations for my daughter’s birthday party. Instead of waking up with joy, I noticed irritation stirring in me, more than usual. I realized what I needed was vigorous exercise, and I suspected my ex-wife might need it too. She hadn’t worked out in a few days, and with a big, potentially stressful day of hosting ahead, she was carrying that irritable edge as well. I encouraged her as gently as I could to go for a run. At first, she looked angry, which is typical for her when exercising early in the morning. Yet she came back grateful, noticeably lighter. I didn’t take her initial reaction personally. Often in life we resist exactly what we need most.
Seeing her go reminded me that I needed to run too. I’m grateful I did. I clocked a nine-minute, ten-second mile, even though I hadn’t run in four months. That result excites me because I intend to be able to run a mile at a similar pace for the rest of my life. If I stay consistent, there’s no reason I can’t.
Then came the question of where to hold the party: at the tennis club pool, as planned, or at home. The forecast warned of a 50–60% chance of rain right during party time, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. I said we should just go for it. If we had to bail out midway and move home, so be it. Why let fear of storms cancel something we’d already paid for? By 11:20, the weather was holding nicely.
Another decision was food. Instead of ordering pizza, I suggested we buy frozen ones from the store and bake them. My ex-wife found a buy-one-get-one deal and came home with four pizzas for $16. As I write this, I’m waiting for the pepperoni to cool before bringing them to the pool.
Last night I pushed I Was Famous on the Internet past 100,000 words. Today I used ChatGPT to cut redundancy and trim away repeated stories. That brought it down to about 60,000 words, and I feel relieved. So many of those words came from long, rambling transcripts of one- and two-hour live streams. Yet those same transcripts held gems—great stories worth keeping. Most of those remain. What’s gone is the irrelevant chatter and endless circles of the same idea.
The process feels like a Fourth Step in Alcoholics Anonymous: a searching and fearless moral inventory. Only this time, it’s deeper than any Fourth Step I’ve ever done. My book lays bare the patterns of my business. Looking back over a decade of videos, I see the instability and unsustainability baked into everything I was doing. After Udemy banned me, I spent years grasping for footing—bouncing between gaming, live streaming, and whatever platform seemed promising at the time. My business was built on shaky ground.
I no longer judge myself as simply unstable. I can see the truth more clearly now: consistency is very hard when your environment is constantly shifting and when you lack any local support. That contrast stands out because in the rest of my life I’ve been remarkably consistent. For eleven years I’ve gone to at least five AA meetings a week, no matter what. I’ve shown up through marriage struggles, parenting stress, and even periods where I had no time to exercise. My ex-wife and I have stayed consistently close for fourteen years. I’ve kept my health in good condition for a decade. I’ve rarely taken more than a month off from creating content. The only area plagued by inconsistency has been my business.
Now, though, I feel like I finally have a foundation that can last: writing books and practicing massage. Both are timeless. No matter how the world changes in the next thirty to fifty years, people will still want stories and healing touch. In fact, demand may grow. That excites me.
I sent a voice memo to a friend who’s six months into his YouTube journey. Last I checked, he had just over a thousand subscribers. He’s grinding out three clips a day now, pouring money into editors and equipment, and not making a cent. I told him plainly: I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and it’s not sustainable. Even if you blow up, the grind doesn’t end—it just traps you indefinitely. The whole foundation is shaky.
I once saw a video titled Content Creation is the New 9 to 5, and it’s true. Except it’s worse—more unstable than any 9 to 5 could ever be. At least with a job, your paycheck is usually steady. With content creation, you can lose everything overnight and often get nothing in the beginning, middle, and/or end.
Books feel different. Books are evergreen. Once a book is published and set up properly, it lives forever. There’s no pressure to grind out something “timely.” I only want to write timeless books. Going through my archive of thousands of videos, I see how little of it lasts. Only a fraction—maybe 500 to 1,000 videos out of about 10,000—carry any evergreen quality, mostly when they tell real stories from my life. That realization fuels my excitement to keep converting transcripts into books. I Was Famous on the Internet could be read decades from now, and it would still matter. These diary entries will endure too, capturing my lived experience at a particular point in time. If someone reads one book and enjoys it, they might want to keep following along through the rest of them. That’s the kind of foundation I want—timeless, not disposable.
Last night, another idea struck me: price my massages at the very top of the market. I thought about offering a two-hour “coaching massage” package for $456.78. It’s a fun number, and it would make mine the highest-priced massage in town. Ninety minutes of massage combined with a conversation feels worth it. That way I could literally do one massage a day and make a great income. For those I want to serve who can’t afford that, I could offer discount codes. Therapists I want to exchange with wouldn’t pay at all. Clients with money could pay full price. I love the flexibility of that model: keep the value high, but offer exceptions when it makes sense.
That’s enough for now. Today I feel grateful—grateful for my health, my book’s progress, the chance to celebrate my daughter’s birthday, and the clarity of a long-term plan that finally feels sustainable.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.