This is my journal entry from August 31, 2025, part of my daily autobiography The Kind Divorce — my real, unedited days, published in order.
The theme I’m leaning toward for this book so far is my journey into massage school. A hundred days of diary entries would cover the first few months well, and that alone would make a beautiful book. At the same time, I caught myself last night at an AA meeting telling a fellow member that I didn’t want to do diary books anymore. The moment I heard myself say it, I knew it wasn’t true. What I really don’t want is to burn all my time on diary books. For the first time in my life, I want to keep a steady practice of journaling, stick with it consistently, and publish it—but without letting it dominate all my creative hours.
I’m also working on my sobriety book, and I’ve been wrestling with how to approach I Was Famous on the Internet. I already have about fifty thousand words there from old video transcripts I pushed through ChatGPT. Yet I’m not sure if diary-like transcripts, full of tangents and loosely connected thoughts, make for a strong book. The software often summarized, trimmed, and even truncated those words, leaving me uncertain whether the manuscript would hold together as a readable whole. It might be better to sit down and dictate a complete story myself, telling the whole arc clearly, even if it takes eight or ten hours to get through. That feels like a more promising path than fighting to edit old scraps into something coherent. I’ll sit with that idea longer before deciding, but what I know for certain is that I want to keep producing diary books steadily—maybe three or four a year instead of one every month. A monthly schedule is too much just for diaries because I have so many other books I want to publish.
Yesterday’s diary entry revolved around a girl I met recently—pretty, friendly, and enough to send my mind into an obsessive spiral. I let my shame drag me down, which is where I went wrong. I realized afterward that if my mind is going to wander toward someone like that, the healthier approach is to let it be playful. Have fun with the thoughts instead of feeling guilty about them. I’m very happily married, and my marriage with my ex-wife is the center of my life. It is also entirely within my rights to think whatever I want. My actions are what matter, and in the eleven years I’ve been sober I’ve lived honorably. The moments I consider least honorable were not affairs or betrayals—they were my old videos, the ones where I said anything just to get clicks. Through all of it I’ve remained faithful to my ex-wife. That realization gave me peace: if my mind is going to wander, I can at least stop beating myself up for it.
That led me into another idea. I want to create a book in the spirit of the Seth books—a collection of esoteric ideas, explorations, and teachings stitched together from my dictations. Driving back and forth to Sarasota for massage school will give me perfect windows to dictate handsfree into my airpods. I could potentially create entire books during those drives, even one in a single week, and build up a backlog to polish and publish later.
On a lighter note, I cooked one of my favorite childhood meals today: beef stroganoff. My dad used to make it when I was young. I tried a plant-based version this time, going to Whole Foods with my son to get what we needed. It came out much better than the last vegan attempt. I overfilled my belly twice, but I didn’t mind. Later I went to yoga, where it felt like everybody was there. Seeing a friend excited me, since I’ll be getting a massage from her on Thursday and want to talk about her experience at the massage school. After yoga, I spent an hour talking with a friend, which was nourishing in its own right. One thing he said stuck with me: “I’m sixty-eight years old. I don’t need anybody to lead me.” That resonated. To me, elders are meant to lead us, and the best ones do it by example.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.