This is my journal entry from January 13, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I wake up with the kids today and damn, I slept a lot last night, man. I went to bed with them before 10 and I get up at 7. If you do some math, that's 9 hours of sleep. And it was great. It was so nice to be there with them and to have that time together so that I could feel like I was being a real dad, you know, putting the kids to bed, getting up with the kids. And I have another overnight with them, which I'm very excited about for this evening. I get them up and get them ready. And my ex-wife's coming over to pick them up first thing in the morning, which is nice so they can see her since they're staying overnight with me again. Then my ex-wife arrives promptly at 730. We say hi. They tell about our day yesterday and she drives off with them a little before 7 50.
Now I've got the morning to myself and I'm so grateful that now is my chance to start setting things up in my house. So I go on a little whirlwind in my house, moving furniture, getting my office set up, plugging everything in so I can record on my computer again, and get my ex-wife's document scanned so that she can have the quit claim deed. I get that scanned on the computer, and part of me is thinking like this is one of the stupidest things I've ever done financially, signing this document that takes me off this house where I have all this net worth. But it's like, you know, this is considerate. I gave my ex-wife the house, she gave me some money, and that should be enough for me. I don't want her to sell the house. I feel very good about everything. I'm happy to send that over to her.
And I'm so happy I've got my studio set up again. Now I can start recording properly the audio directly on my PC instead of recording as voice memos. And we're ready to go. I've got my mat here and I just love it. Like even though this house is 1400 square feet, all the rooms are being used now. The office is in the second bedroom. The kids and I had a great night of sleep in the main bedroom. I got a dining room table out in the front bonus room and dad's furniture on display. And then I have the living room for events.
I am continuing to listen to the book I mentioned yesterday called How Could She? And at the same time, I'm working on my events. I really want to get the events and the thank you letter and the marketing for all that done. So I'm strategizing with ChatGPT and figuring out the best formula, still getting a bit of feedback from my letter. And I wrap all that up and head to training with my personal trainer, which is at noon at my gym. I get the boxing gloves on and he teaches me. Today, I learned how to do a number four, which is an uppercut. So one, you got the left, the left little jab. Two is the right cross. And then he has me doing three, like a side kind of punch. And then four is an uppercut. He has me do five pushups if I mess up. You know, he'll give me like one two three four, one two, one two, and he shows me how to roll and slip. When I mess one of those up he gives me five push-ups, although by the end of it I'm messing up so many he cuts me a little slack. It's fun though, fun to learn something new. Also definitely don't want to do boxing because it just doesn't seem like what my body is optimized for at this point, but I enjoy the process of learning it.
I get home and get ready to go pick the kids up from school. It's awesome that I'm only 10 minutes from their school now instead of 15. Like little things can make a big difference when they're repeated over time every day. I enjoy getting to leave a bit later. And I arrive there. I'm ready to pick the kids up. But my daughter has safety patrol, so we have to wait even longer. I have a nice conversation with several of the parents there. My son's happy to see me. And we ride home.
Now we've got a whole bunch of stuff to do this afternoon and it's like, how the hell am I gonna cram all this stuff in? Like this is intense when I have the kids for an overnight. This is a lot to do, and I'm glad my ex-wife's getting some free time. My mother texts me that she's able to come down for a walk with her dog, and my ex-wife is gonna come down after her yoga class and see us as well. So it's party at Crescent Lake. The kids don't want to do homework right when we get home. They want to go straight to the park. So we do. They go straight to the playground and play there for a while, then come back home. My daughter still got some emotions missing her mom, which is totally reasonable.
And then my mother gets here first. We meet my mother to start walking around with her. Then when we've walked like a third of the way around Crescent Lake, my ex-wife gets here as well. So it's nice. Great taking a walk with my ex-wife and with my mother around Crescent Lake. I am really enjoying the boundaries of seeing my mother out like this instead of going to her house. At the same time, she definitely seems stifled about what she wants to talk about, which is good because she's less in a position to bitch about things and more in a position to listen to me, which is great. So we take a walk around Crescent Lake. It's cold because I just wore shorts and short sleeves. The wind's blowing over the lake and my mother's pointing out all the ducks. The dogs are going crazy all over the place. And I'm like, this is exactly why I moved here. This is great. This is just what I'm looking for right here. Then my ex-wife and my mother head out at about the same time. My ex-wife hangs out a little bit longer and I talk with her.
Then the kids are ready to get to work on their homework and we get that done. I fire up some of my old computers. They get that done and then they're ready to go to the store. So we leave and get to the store. I'm figuring it's a nice thing to do. I got stuff to buy anyway. And who knows, maybe I'll run into a single mom there or something. Of course, hardly any of the women there are friendly or even look at me or smile at all. But, you know, that's more about them than about me because I'm putting out the good vibes. We get there and my daughter looks at this stuffed animal. And I tell the kids that they can both have $100 of credit with me to spend on whatever they want to, which is great because, you know, I already had them set at $100. They bought $200 worth of stuff. They helped me deliver some books. I said, look, if you kids are helpful, I'm not just going to pay you hourly anymore. You help me. I'll help you. I'll just give you money so that you can have the stuff you want and you can choose what to spend it on.
My daughter gets stuck looking at this stuffed animal for quite a while. We end up being at the store over an hour. My daughter probably spends 15 minutes of it looking at this stuffed animal. And she's like, Dad, I want it. I'm like, I hear that you want it. Same time you remember your history with stuffed animals and buying ones that you almost instantly don't like or care about anymore as soon as you buy them. And I'm like, how about this? Why don't you just try? You can always get it if you want it later. Why don't you just try leaving it there for a little while and you can come back if you really want it. We can buy it later in the day or you can buy it another time. We get mousetrap, one game we buy after looking at a bunch of others, and my son gets a soccer ball and we get a couple of little footballs to throw around for the park too. My daughter, just a few minutes after letting go of the stuffed animal, decides she doesn't really want it anymore, which is really cool to watch her work through that process. When my ex-wife goes through that process with her, it's a different energy and it kind of ends up being a battle. Whereas I successfully met my daughter where she was. I'm like, hey, I understand it. You can buy it if you want to. I invite you to just think about it and see if you really want it. And that space worked perfectly for her. It's amazing. I love the dad time where I get to purely control the energy with the kids. And then I love that when my ex-wife has the kids, she can do that too. And I'm not around.
I told the kids like, you know, what's really nice is you two are getting to see us as individuals. Lots of times you see your parents, you know, until one dies or they get divorced. But when you live in the same house with your parents, most people think that that's the positive and that's how everything should be. And that's the only good way to do it. But I'm really excited for, yes, my daughter had 10 years with my ex-wife and I in the same house being a team and my son had seven. But now they get to see us more as individuals and see our individual characteristics more. And I said to my daughter, isn't this nice? Like now that your mom and I are divorced, you can get to know each of your parents as a person instead of more seeing us just together. And you can see how I am versus how your mom is. And you can separate some of the things that my ex-wife was essentially pushing, that a lot of my ex-wife's personality at home blotted out mine in terms of things with the kids. Because I deferred to my ex-wife on almost everything. And I definitely threw my ex-wife's vibe off in different areas as well.
A place I got to be me is the kids want noodles. I'm like, I'm not just buying you regular wheat noodles. No, but if you can find noodles that are healthy, I'll go for that. So the sweet kids are like, I point these bean noodles out. They're made from lentil beans. Some are and others are from chickpeas. And the kids are like, sure, we'll try those. So I buy three boxes of bean noodles. The kids grab some vitamins off the shelf and we load up and end up spending like a hundred bucks at the store with their vitamins and mousetrap being two thirds of it. My daughter looked at the books also and we didn't find any, and I wanted a plunger, but we didn't get one. So I'm going to head to another place for that.
We get home. And it's like 8.30, the kids still are hungry. Now, if my ex-wife was in this environment, she'd be often stressed out, irritable, and trying to coerce them into bed, which, you know, each of us has our ups and downs. My ex-wife has merit to making them get in bed, you know, as early as they can stand so that they get a great night of sleep. Sometimes they wake up a little slow with me because they got to bed a bit later, but I'm not going to treat these kids like they're, you know, like I did in corrections when I worked there, or like pushing and forcing and complaining and whining to try and get them in bed. I'm like, I'm going to treat them like adults. Like, look, you know what you got to do. I'm here to help you. You get in bed when you're tired. And it's funny at my house, they get in bed when they're ready, which is later than with my ex-wife, but they are very adamant when they're ready and they're tired. They get in bed and there's no forcing. It's effortless, which is great. I don't have to tell them to brush their teeth or anything. They do all the shit they need to do, which credit for my ex-wife for training them how to do all of it. And then when bedtime's earlier at her house, it makes it easy at my house.
At the same time, it's nice like this. They also make their own lunches. Like sometimes it's really cool to see what they can do when I need help with it, because there's so much stuff to do with making them like popcorn and meals. I end up boiling noodles, which I always joke I feel like my ex-wife's always boiling noodles for them. While I boil these bean noodles, my daughter doesn't like them as much, but what's nice is when it's in my environment, it's like, this is what you've got to eat. You pick this out, this is what you got to eat. If you want something else, you can dig in the fridge for fruit or cucumber or something. But all you got is whole plant foods here. There's no bullshit. So you can choose from no bullshit, and whatever you want out of that. I do compromise though, because they're like, dad, can we please have some cheese. At the store I'm like no cheese. No. Like the cheese Nazi. But the kids, neither of them are even close to fat. If anything my son is so lean. He could use a little bit more fat probably. So I'm like, alright, I'll grab y'all some organic cheese tomorrow, and you can have that on your noodles.
The kids actually wash out their lunch boxes in the sink too. This sink is nice and low so they can both get to it. So proud of them. So proud of all the stuff they do. I love seeing how they act with just me as the primary parent. It feels so good. At the same time, there are moments of horror where I'm like, what the fuck happened to my life? Like this at one point felt like worst case scenario. Like, why am I putting the kids to bed without my ex-wife here? Why aren't both parents there for bedtime almost every night? Like this sucks. But I have some of those moments, but most of them are like, this is awesome. And I'm very grateful for this. Just want to acknowledge there are those other ones, though, where I feel disoriented as to what the hell happened to my life.
We all get in bed a little bit after nine. I'm looking at a clock like, God damn, I'm about to be in bed 10 hours, because they say, Dad, we want you to go to bed with us. We like that better. So I take a shower while they're washing their lunchboxes, eating their noodles, finishing up their homework and everything. And this to me, like this is an opportunity to meditate. And I love how flexible my mind is. This is what I do that works with the kids. Like there's give and take. Like dad has his rules, but they say they want me to go to bed with them. So I'm flexible and I'm like, fine, I'll just go to bed with you. Even though I could easily stay up two more hours and still get plenty of sleep. I know that it's really good for me to get extra rest too. It helps my body have time to regenerate and take care of itself. And it's a perfect chance for me to meditate. So I do. I go to bed with kids at nine and I'm so grateful for another beautiful day with them.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.