This is a look inside my actual week as a full-time crypto YouTuber. This is my life. I've got millions of views, I make a full-time income out of this, and I want to show you how that actually works from the inside. I'm doing this as a live diary because I love to interact with my community and get to know you all and hear what you have to say, which I can't do when I'm just recording videos. The YouTube comments are terrible for building a community. So most of what I do now is live stream, and then I talk to my audience during these crypto sessions.
I've done a lot of videos over the years. I've been a full-time YouTuber since 2011, I've got three channels today, and I've had millions and millions of views. I recently did a video where I put 13 years of YouTube knowledge into one hour, explaining everything I know about YouTube. So this is going to be more of a diary entry of what I actually did during the week, and a lot less about YouTube itself.
A different kind of crypto YouTuber
I've taken notes throughout the entire week, because when you try to record videos it's amazing how fast you forget things. And I'm a different kind of YouTuber than you might generally notice. I have a real life. I'm not up in a studio all week filming and editing. I hate editing, so I mostly don't do it. That's why I love live streaming too, because you don't have to edit, and people know it's not edited when it's live. The way I look at it, if I have to do more than three hours a day across three YouTube channels combined, that's too much. That's not my idea of a lifestyle as a YouTuber.
In my experience, being a crypto YouTuber is probably the easiest way you can make money. If you know anything about crypto, you could literally watch my Jerry Banfield crypto videos, repeat what I say, change some titles and thumbnails around, and you could probably be a full-time crypto YouTuber too. The niche you pick matters enormously. Being a gaming YouTuber is really hard because there are so many of them. In most areas you'll get a lot of views and not make much money. But if you're a business, crypto, or finance YouTuber, there are a lot of opportunities. You might not get as many views, but there's a lot of money.
Why I keep a weekly diary
So what I'm going to do is go through these diary entries from the week, my real life and my thoughts. What's really interesting to me is my ordinary life as a human being. Numbers and stats on YouTube get boring quickly, and I did a whole video about that. So I'm going to do live diary entries like this about once a week. What's nice is I can just take notes as I go, because Saturday, December 14th was already five days ago. I'm interested to reread these too, because I forget stuff in my own life. It's crazy how fast your own life slips away and you forget the day-to-day details. Having a diary or journal is really helpful for that.
Some of you might have been expecting eight different camera angles and all this cut footage. I see people do that, and I'm like, that's too much work. I'm not doing that. If I get fewer views because of it, I'll take it. Some of these guys are putting in 30 hours to record a single video. I'll do it in about an hour and take a few hours of notes during the week, and I can repeat this format every week.
Saturday, December 14th
On Saturday I switched to a live-streaming-only strategy. I'd been thinking about this for months, with the idea sitting in the background. I put out a video Saturday, but since I don't like to edit and since I'm so practiced at live streaming, it makes sense for me to live stream. So I spent hours thinking it through.
I also spent hours simplifying my crypto portfolio, which meant swapping a lot of tokens. As a crypto YouTuber, everybody wants you to shill their token, hold their token, and play with their token. That's not good for me personally, though. Simplicity is good for me. I have a lot to think about. I have three YouTube channels, a wife, kids. I go to yoga. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous five days a week, and I'm sober over 10 years. I go to massage. My mom lives across the street. I don't need any more complexity in my life. I get seven, eight, nine hours of sleep a night. I take great care of myself.
On Saturday I also had a two-hour call in the morning with a member who's deep into the Internet Computer ecosystem, working on how to solve the problem of small-project marketing. Out of that call I came up with an idea, an OpenChat channel, which I set up that same day. I love how fast I can move on things. One of the amazing parts of what I do is that I set stuff up and execute it almost immediately.
The system I built is a channel on OpenChat where a project pays $100 a month, 100 USDC a month, and I consistently market that project, feature it, and talk about it. To me this solves one of the hardest things in crypto. Sure, if you've got a big project you can afford to pay me to do a bunch of videos and I'll deliver a million impressions, like I did for OpenChat, or like when DFINITY paid me $25,000 and I delivered five to ten million impressions for them. But what about all these small projects that only have a hundred bucks? I want to promote them too.
Take a project like this one, Stefan's OG token. Normally I wouldn't bother scrolling down and covering a token like this, but because he pays a hundred a month, I go look at his token, feature it, and talk about it. I'm just an observer, simply stating the facts. Here's this OG token with its own community on OpenChat, an account on X, a website, the place where they launched their coin, and their profile. The creator put hundreds and hundreds of hours into his NFT collection, launched it successfully, raised thousands of dollars on it, built a community, and is hoping to do an SNS. That was the solution I came up with: there are a bunch of projects on ICP that would love to pay a hundred bucks a month to be occasionally featured in a video, without me having to make a big deal of a paid promotion. That call was really productive, and I'm very happy to see, five days later, how I executed on it.
Taking it easy while getting over something
I hadn't been sick for two years, but on Saturday I could feel something coming on. Friday I'd felt good enough to go to my power yoga and record some videos. Saturday I thought, man, I need to take it easy, and I was snotting all over the place, so maybe I really had caught something. I took lots of extra rest. I did add a little bit to my dance music project and created a new dance song, which for me is a lot more fun.
I also took a walk and didn't listen to anything. I think it's really helpful to take walks and get out there. I walked around my neighborhood with the dog, and instead of my usual headphones or a podcast, I went quiet. The great news is that Saturday night I started to feel aggravated again, which for me is a good sign. That's often the first way I know I'm feeling better after a drain on my energy and some symptoms that some of you would call being sick. I start to get aggravated, and it's like, oh good, I have enough energy again. The energy comes back kind of surprisingly, and if you're not ready to focus it, it can feel aggravating.
I felt a bit weird Saturday because my wife and kids were doing a Christmas activity that I chose not to attend, since another family member I prefer not to see was there. I felt some FOMO, but I was much better off not being around that person. I did go to a Christmas party. And on this particular day I traded 130 ICP for my JBBJ token, then swapped it right back, because I decided I don't want to have some token that I'm constantly promoting. I'd just built this new marketing system, so there's going to be plenty of work with that. Having too much is just as much of a problem as having too little. In fact, having too little can be really nice in some ways, and having too much can really suck.
Most of my life isn't YouTube
What you'll notice is that most of my life is not about doing YouTube, which is great. I watched the guy I copied this title format from, and he spends his whole week doing YouTube and client work, mostly alone in his studio, with only a minority of his time going to the gym and hardly any hanging out with friends. My life is the opposite. I'm hanging out with people. That's what's great, to me, about being a crypto YouTuber. I do an hour, a couple of hours a day, and I'm good. I've made enough money. I want to have time to garden.
Cleaning the Gardens and Guarding Real Life
On Sunday, I finally cleaned my gardens out after months of neglect following the hurricane. We had hurricanes here in St. Petersburg, Florida that flooded my house for the first time since it was built 50 years ago, and they flooded all the gardens with salt water, which screwed them up. My gardens had sweet potatoes in them, and we were going to pull those up and replace everything anyway, but after the flood the soil was kind of crappy. So it took me months to finally get around to cleaning those gardens out.
One thing I don't like as a creator is that there are no clear boundaries on my work. In the past that has made it very easy for me to overwork, to do too much, and then let my real life slide. What you don't want to do is let your real life slide. You want to make time for real life and never let it get to a point where you don't have time for it, where all you're doing is YouTube.
I also ordered the new Apple AirPods Pro 2 after learning they have transparency mode to let the outside in. Wow, that's an awesome feature. They have microphones on the outside that take outside noise in and put it into your ear. I used to think everyone wearing these was just being unsafe. I didn't realize most people wearing AirPods have transparency mode on. Now, some people might be noise canceling and living dangerously, out riding bikes and crossing the street with noise canceling on, but you can assume a lot of people are being safe. It left me wondering what else I don't know, because I've been fooling around with cheap $30 Bluetooth earbuds for years. Then I got the new AirPods Pro, and they're so much better.
The Battle of Disclosure and Living Without Fear
While I was doing the garden, I listened to a video about the battle of disclosure with Dr. Steven Greer and Billy Carson on Forbidden Knowledge. To me, we're living in really exciting times. They were talking about whether there's going to be some kind of fake alien invasion, where the fake part is that the actual craft are human-owned and human-made, and it's being made to look like it's aliens for the purpose of getting the world under a one-world order and funding a bunch of people. And I was like, well, I don't know.
For a while we were done with the Cold War, and then people got tricked into the battle on terrorism. Yes, real people died all over the place as part of this, but in my belief the trick is that we don't need to do any of this stuff. If we collectively stop living in fear, we don't have to live this way. We don't have to battle terrorism if we'll just love people, listen to people, and take care of people. And then there's the question of how much of that terrorism is really an inside job, where somebody in the military industrial complex is also funding the terrorism so they can get more funding for the military industrial complex.
So in the battle for disclosure, they're looking at whether a fake alien invasion will be the next thing. The war on terrorism has kind of fizzled, the Cold War's over, World War II's over, and it's like, what is the military industrial complex going to cook up to get themselves more money and to try and trick people again into fear and just do what they're told? We saw what they cooked up in 2020, and that sputtered out because a lot of us realized what BS that was. So I hope that if there is something else attempted, people will see through it and not fall for it. That was a lot of the video on Forbidden Knowledge. I spent a lot of time listening and expanding my mind. I love stuff that expands my mind, which as a YouTuber is really important, so I don't just have the same old crap on my videos.
Parenting, Boundaries, and Helping Laura
I fined my son on Sunday, five dollars, for screaming "shut up," and then he picked up his toys. I ask my son and my daughter, he's six, to do things nicely, but since we don't hit the kids, I've been looking for an effective way to encourage people to do things, to reward their nice behavior and stop the nasty behavior. We've also tried essentially no rewards and no punishment, kind of letting them run free, and that doesn't work, because they get into these bad behaviors like screaming and swearing and being nasty and hitting. You have to set boundaries. It turns out that giving my kids money when they do things I want, like getting in bed on time, and fining them when they do things I don't want, is a really effective control system. Money's a really effective control system, who would have thought.
Laura seemed a bit worn out and aggravated after a morning with the kids, and I'm glad I was able to help her on Sunday. Around noon I encouraged her to take a nap and let me help out. Laura has a hard time asking me for help sometimes, although she's gotten a lot better at it over the years, because she doesn't want to bother me. She wants me to feel like I have time to do what I want. So I've learned to pay attention to her and to insist on helping her when she needs it, and on Sunday she needed it. I often feel really good when I do that, too. I feel really good helping her get a nap, and I feel really good having lunch and doing laundry with the kids while Laura sleeps.
An AA Christmas Party and Meeting Real People
On this Sunday I had a second AA Christmas party to go to, and I ended up leaving an hour after it started. I was cleaning up and screwing around with more of my crypto stuff, too. At this party there were mostly people I know from a couple of groups, and I knew almost everybody there. At the one the day before, I didn't know a lot of the people. I enjoyed some pasta salad and cookies while talking to a few people I know.
The most interesting moment at the party was with a woman in her 80s. She's still so pretty, and I told her I think she's pretty, and she said the same back to me and looked deep into my eyes. I started sweating all over. I'm pretty empathic, and I could feel all the desire that's still there in her. Her husband is in the hospital and might be passing soon, and she's still got so much energy, plus a whole bunch of wisdom behind it, which is really beautiful. It was a lovely, very intense moment. I often feel like I can handle being more intense than a lot of other people, but this woman clearly had the capacity to handle more intensity than me. I was a little intimidated by her.
I talked to another lady too about being less superficial in my life and giving everyone a chance to share their personality and beauty with me, instead of just talking to people I find attractive and worthy of my attention. What I love about my life as a full-time YouTuber is that I'm spending a lot of time working on my life. I'm not just dumping time into YouTube, watching videos and looking at data. To me, this is a great thing to be doing during the week, thinking about this stuff, because then I have this to talk about.
I've had a challenge, especially the last few years, as I've gotten to be healthier and more attractive and I love myself. I've noticed a gravitation toward being more superficial, where if you're not attractive I'm not talking to you. I mean men and women. If you're a guy who's overweight and not well groomed, it's like I'm not going to be friendly to you. And with girls I noticed even stricter standards, like the prettiest girl in the room is the one I should be talking to. That's something new, because I didn't used to have that much self-confidence and I didn't used to be so superficial. I used to be willing to be friends with everybody. So the last few years, how did I get so superficial, where if you're some woman I don't find attractive it's like you don't exist to me, but if you're a woman I find attractive and you're not paying attention to me, I feel thwarted? That's really superficial. I talked with her about that at the party, and she said she's had a similar struggle. I'm reflecting on it, and I'm happy that I can see I'm opening back up to more people and not being so laser-focused superficially.
A Massage and a Family Member's Story
I headed to my massage after this and told my friend about my experience with a family member whose personality and mine just aren't compatible enough with each other. I've talked about this in a lot of my diary entries, and I don't want to go over all of it again, so you can go through some of the previous diary entries I recorded if you'd like to hear more about that. My friend shared several experiences of her own, which to me were so funny. From the stories she shared, there were people who thought she was trying to seduce their husbands, and it was just crazy, the stuff other people came up with, and other people's jealousy. At least from my point of view, it seemed like they just came up with this stuff on their own. Sure, she's pretty, but from there she didn't really do anything. It was just her being pretty, and these other people came up with stories that didn't seem to be there on her end, at least from my understanding. At the same time, this family member told me I was all this stuff that I was just coming up with, and there was no truth to it.
For her there was no truth, and it is kind of the opposite end of it. It is so hard to figure out, especially when people cannot be honest and really share their dark sides. Where are people just making things up on their own, versus where is there some truth there? My friend helps me understand some underlying reasons I might have gotten my feelings hurt with this family member, and I am really happy to just not see them. It is simple. I think they are happier that way too. My friends talk about her talking about moving back home. This is the massage therapist I spend an hour and a half with in person every week or so, and I am not thrilled about her going home and not getting to see her in person, because it is hard to have a relationship on the phone versus in person. At the same time, that seems like it would probably be best for her life.
Hiding in my room to work
So I come home and I am excited to work on my ICP presentation for tomorrow. I now have a presentation with almost 100 people, 100 slides, and I see all these things in the ICP ecosystem that are exciting, but it is so easy to lose track of them. This was a great inspiration for my live streams, to make sure I have got a ton of material. Then the family comes home from the movies a bit aggravated, so instead of hanging out with them and washing the dishes and cleaning up the house like usual, I actually do hide in my room and work and get on my presentation to prepare for doing live streams on Monday. At least I am not going to have to do that, but it leaves me feeling bad. I wish I had not done that.
I tell my wife, look, when you came home you were all aggravated and you hurt my feelings. I am here, I had a massage, I went to a party, I had a great day, and you come in aggravated, throwing criticism out there, and you blow my buzz. She says, I am sorry, I am not feeling right today. Then I admit my part of the deal. I wish that when you came home and did that, I had not just immediately retreated. I wish I had worked through that right away and then spent the time with you all.
Telepathically connected
At the meeting I see a girl I met a few months ago, and she is memorable because at the AA meeting she told me that the first time she heard me share, she thought of me every day after that because she wanted to be as joyful as me in her life. I often wonder who is thinking of me that I do not know directly, but I am indirectly feeling, because I know we are all telepathically connected. A lot of you online are thinking of me, but I am not easily able to think of each of you individually. I think of you all as a collective, and this is why I am committed to live streaming, because then when I am live, you all have the chance to have more of a mutual interaction with me.
So back to this girl. I sit next to her since there are seats on both sides of her, and I like to position myself in a room. I have sat there the last several meetings. Generally when I go sit in a room, I try and find the place where I am going to be appreciated the most, because that is the most exciting place to sit or put my yoga mat. That is a place where I am going to have the warmest reception. I try and feel out where I am going to have the best experience in the room and go there. So I sit next to this girl. I love how playful she is, and I am happy to hold her hand at the end of the meeting for a prayer. That is nice, at the meetings where you hold hands, which is not most of them anymore, but this one it is.
I thank her for saying hi to me last week. She had her back to me and looked like she might leave soon, and I just put out telepathically, hi, say hi to me before you leave, it is Jerry. Right after she finishes talking to someone, she turns around and walks right up to me and says hi, and then goes off and does whatever she was going to do after that. So I know that if people are receptive, you can telepathically communicate with people, and what will happen is they will think of you. If you are in a room with someone and you think their name, you aim your energy at them really loud, and if they are receptive and not totally cut off from their heart and totally in their own head and their own stories, they will think of you, which then will prompt them to interact with you.
People do that to me often enough too. But sometimes they do it to me and I swear they do it to me negatively, like, oh, I do not want him to talk to me. Sometimes I feel that and I go talk to them anyway. Other times I feel, I do not want him to talk to me, but maybe they do want me to notice them and I do not. So I am trying to work on getting the signals right with other people.
Why I have stayed away from medication
During this morning meeting people are sharing about going to their doctor to get medication in early sobriety, and I have personally stayed away from medication because I have seen so many people become just more sick and addicted by taking medication. The problem with medication is that often at first it does provide some immediate relief, but the downside of that is that, for me, it is like drinking alcohol. Same thing. Sure, you feel like crap, you take a drink, your mood immediately changes, but did your life actually get better? No. Do you have all the same issues you had before? Yes. And now you have got an additional issue, which is that you have taken a drink, so now there is that to deal with also. For me there is nothing a drink will make better, and to me, I do not see anything that medication will make better either in most cases. Sure, there may be occasionally for a while or for something, but to me, in most cases, medication is just like alcohol. It will take the edge off, but by taking the edge off, you are then able to tolerate things.
Back when I drank, I was able to tolerate so much crap in my life, and when I got sober it is like, I am not tolerating this crap anymore. I am not watching all these movies online, I am not listening to this music anymore, I am not going to act this way, I am not going to get angry and rage, I am not going to put up with my wife acting this way anymore. That is what is hard about getting sober, but at the same time, you need to do that.
I used to be militantly against medication. I felt, and somebody shared that their sponsor said, that you are not really sober if you are taking medication, and then they drank after that. I used to feel like that too, that if you are on medication you are just substituting alcohol for something else. I have softened up a bit on that because I have seen that yes, sometimes people are able to take medication. I am talking about psychiatric medications, mind-altering, mood-altering medications. A lot of the other meds people take seem to be unnecessary and part of the problem, even to me. At the same time, yes, there are instances. I have been sick before and I have taken antibiotics and I felt better, but I think I would have gotten better without taking the antibiotics, and I think in the long term I just destroyed my gut health for a while and screwed my body up further. In most cases I think I would have been better off in life never having taken any medication, never having gotten any shots. That said, I got all the required shots, some not-required ones, and I am not planning to ever get any more, and I am planning to avoid going to the doctor and getting any medication for the rest of my life if I can help it.
So I have seen both sides of things. I have loosened up a bit after seeing some people suddenly stop their medication and then go crazy, and that is why it is such a trap. You start taking this stuff, but then if you suddenly stop it, you are right back where you were before, just like getting sober. You suddenly stop drinking, and you are just as aggravated as you were before you got sober, and then some. I have also seen people who take medication for a while and it helps them transition, and then they get off of it, and that can work well. So I have got a bit more of an open mind now.
There are other options
Some meetings I do not feel like I really need to share, but in this meeting I do share, and I say, look, there are many alternatives if you are feeling depressed, sad, angry, and confused. There are a lot of things you can do besides take drugs. A lot of people in meetings seem to be pushing taking drugs all the time, pushing because they want to rationalize and feel better about their own behavior, but I say there are other options. I found massage, yoga, hypnotherapy, breath work, and deep conversations, especially where you are confessing all the worst parts about yourself, like a confession with a priest, but you can do that with anybody who is receptive. A strong romantic relationship and reading inspirational books. In my experience these have completely done the job in transforming my mind and body. They made all medications unnecessary for me.
Yes, I suffered a bit more pain, depression, anxiety, and sadness the first few years sober without meds. Absolutely. I could have had an easier, gentler experience with meds, but I do not think I would have gotten where I am today if I had taken that easier, take-the-edge-off mentality. There is a very good chance I would still be on medications, and I would have not made nearly as much progress and learning and growth in my life, and I probably would not be as healthy overall either. I think I would be at much greater risk of relapsing or getting into a drug addiction if I was still taking meds today, which I never did. But if I had gone down that route, and in fact, when I was five years sober I was really frustrated and emotionally unstable, and one of the people I trusted most, who was like a sponsor to me, told me I should go to a psychiatrist and get medicated.
Why I chose not to take the edge off
I said, "F you, I'm not doing that." Like that, to me, was just obviously not the right long-term solution. I had no doubt about the short term. Sure, they'll give me a drug and I'll feel better after I come home. But I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. I'm trying to just take the edge off, I'm trying to make real change and have control of my life, and to me, taking meds is one of the things that seems like it gives you control by taking the edge off, but at what cost?
In my experience, looking at it from the outside, the people who are taking meds are putting up with stuff in their life most of the time that I personally find absolutely unacceptable. A completely dysfunctional marriage, a crappy work environment. You can get away with that by taking meds or drinking, but the moment you stop taking those meds, you're going to be depressed and angry and sad, because from my point of view, your life needs to change. Your life does suck. Maybe not all of it, but you've got some pain point in your life that needs to be handled and not shoved under the surface. So I'm very happy I avoided getting stuck in that trap.
I know this sounds harsh to some people, but I personally don't believe people who are drinking or on drugs are operating at their full capacity as a human being. I have an analogy I heard from one of the spiritual books. Some guy went to India for his spiritual journey, and he brought all these drugs. The spiritual master said, "Give me those," and the master took all of them, the whole stash the guy had planned for this month-long trip. The guy's like, "What am I going to do now? How can you handle all that?" And the master said, "If you're trying to go to Detroit, you don't need to take a bus if you're already there." It's like, if you're already in a place of enlightenment, of spiritual God-realization, you don't need drugs or other stuff to get you there.
So I think it's best, if you can make the journey to get there and stay there, then you don't need the stuff. You don't need alcohol to be happy, to relax. You can get to happy and relaxed on your own, and if you already are happy and relaxed, alcohol and drugs won't make it better, at least not overall.
Nobody came up to talk to me
This was what I was thinking about a lot on Sunday night, and I encouraged people, if they wanted some more options, to come up and talk to me. Not one person came up and talked to me. Most people would rather just keep doing what they're doing. They'd rather keep taking their meds and go home to their crappy marriage and work their crappy job and complain about their life and then go to the doctor for more meds. If they want to do that, I'm here to help them if they'd like to change, but it's not up to me to make people change.
I'm grateful that occasionally somebody reaches out. A lot of you reach out to me online, but in person it's like the opposite. Most people do not reach out to me, do not want what I've got to offer. They don't want real power, which requires full responsibility too. So it's laughingly predictable. Nobody comes up to me, nobody wants to get off their medication, nobody wants to fix their life up. Let's just keep everything the same, and whatever he's talking about, who knows what's going on with him.
So after the meeting I visit my mom, and then I talk to Laura about how I'd like to spend more time with the family and be more understanding, without withdrawing into my work. Then I walk the dog and get an idea, listening to a girl on YouTube talk about her changes. I did the last live stream on this channel about that exact topic, so I copy that.
I love all the detail I remembered on this particular day, because normally, if I did this diary entry the next day, I wouldn't remember that Monday. Wow, is it Thursday? Bro, I thought this thing was going to take like an hour. I guess we better speed this up, because holy crap, how do I write so much? Well, anyway, we've got this much more to go through. I think this is a much better format than doing a bunch of shorter videos, because if you start doing this, if you start listening to me talk about my life, it's easier for you to keep doing that unless it's really obnoxious. So it's better to just give more, and I personally would rather listen to one long format, like my whole week, instead of listening to a bunch of shorter formats. It's just too much clicking.
Monday: serious about my sleep
So on Monday I got a great night of sleep, even though I went to bed at midnight, which is usually late for me. I got up a little after seven, so I got seven hours on one of the shortest nights of sleep I've had, at least in terms of time in bed. Over seven hours of sleep. I'm serious about my sleep.
The kids are off to school and I'm excited to do my first long live stream. So I book a yoga class and I look forward to a power flow. There's a girl I've known there for a while who's been friendly, and we've talked a bit before and after class a bunch of times, although I probably saw her three to six months before I even said hi to her once. At that point, I've got a crush on a girl at yoga, and I was being very standoffish. I'm not gonna lie to you: I'm not gonna be friendly, I'm just gonna go do my yoga, I'll talk with the dudes, and I'm gonna keep my distance otherwise. But she was very happy, and I finally talked to her.
Is it easier to know someone less?
So now I'm thinking during the yoga flow, should I get to know her better, even though I've seen her a bunch of times? I don't know hardly anything about her, except that we both seem to be happily married. I'm definitely happily married, she seems to be, and some other basic details, like what her husband does for work. So I go off on a whole tangent during class thinking about how it's actually easier to know someone less in many situations. It's easier to not know somebody. It's easier to just be friendly and get along and not have an issue with a stranger. Except some of y'all, when you're driving, you've got to get those middle fingers up. You don't even know that person. You don't even know them enough to be that upset about them.
But if you get to know each other better, it can be such a gift and a blessing, and it can also be kind of dangerous. If I talk to this girl, the ideal scenario is being friends, and she helps me grow and learn and expand my idea of life, and I do the same for her. That's the ideal scenario. Now, what happens if we don't like each other, and I'm in the spot where I'm like with this family member I know so well that I don't want to be around them anymore? What if I get to know her better and I'm like, gross, I need to not go to the same yoga class, now I have to change up my schedule? This has happened with people before in AA meetings, it's happened with people before online too. And what happens if we like each other too much, like happened earlier, or in 2023? What happens if I get to know somebody, I get to like them way too much? That's a problem too.
So I'm like, man, if this goes poorly, I could suffer. It's safe to say I'm not going to like them. It's safer to just say hi, say bye, and not have anything else to it. But you all know I'm not the kind of person who's here to live a safe life and just try to survive. That's not how I'm rolling.
So after class I ask her if she'd like to talk a bit more, so we could kind of move beyond the superficial. I didn't say that, but that was communicated. She's like, "Sure, you want to have juice after class on Friday?" There's a juice studio right next door, a juice place. I'm like, "Sure, great." I added it to my calendar, and then it's got "juice with her" in my calendar. I'm like, well, I guess I need to mention this to my wife now. I have lunch with a girl I haven't mentioned, that she doesn't know about, that's popped up in the calendar Friday morning.
I wish more people shared their real life
So I end up talking to a yoga instructor too on the way out, and I tell her I'd love to watch her life story on YouTube, and she thinks about it. I would love for everybody to have a YouTube channel where they just share their life story. To me, there are lots of people whose video like this I would watch, where you go through and tell me your life story. There are so many of you where I would watch that. But a lot of the content people create is so meaningless. Now you've got to put some title on it to get people in the door, but I really want to hear about people's everyday lives and thoughts. I don't want to hear all this preaching all the time, but unfortunately that's what a lot of people watch.
Even on my crypto channel, there's a lot of just talking about how great ICP is. But then I do a video that's real, like this, and how many people are watching it? Like nobody. Anyway, I want more people to do real, raw, authentic life stories and diaries and vlogs. So maybe I just need to find some more vloggers to watch myself. Maybe I've been into the preachy stuff myself.
So I tell Laura that I'm planning to meet a girl from yoga for juice. And yeah, I'm not playing video games anymore. If I had 30 hours awake a day, I might play video games. But with like 16 hours awake a day, there's just not enough time to play video games. I'd rather play tennis. I remember this from the Seth books too. With me, I love getting to know people and being friendly. It feels raw. It's wrong to me to not be constantly trying to get to know people better.
Love is explorative
There's a quote I read from the Seth books that love is naturally explorative, that you want to get to know the people you love. Whether it's a lover, a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance, to me the opposite of love — although yes, love has no true opposite — is like this family member who doesn't seem to want to get to know anything about me or my life, who seems to want to have nothing to do with exploring my life or sharing their life with me. To me, that's the opposite of love. Hate is not truly the opposite of love, because even with hate you're at least paying attention to somebody else. To me it's apathy. It's disinterest, disconnection, being withdrawn. Having no concern — that to me is the opposite of love.
People are so up in arms about things like hate speech. To me, hate speech is not the worst thing in the world. What's worse than hate speech is being ignored. There are people starving all over the planet who are being ignored, who people can't even be bothered to think about or to talk about, and yet people would rather engage in a bunch of hate speech and taking each other down, complaining about somebody else's hate speech and being offended, than realize there are something like a billion people on this planet who don't even have indoor plumbing. We collectively easily have the ability to fix that. To me, that lack of consideration is the true opposite of love.
To me, love is explorative and curious. You want to get to know your loved ones better. And I want to get to know everybody better. Occasionally there are people — there was a guy at a meeting I met recently, and I thought, this guy just needs to get away from me and stop aggravating me. But even that triggered my curiosity. I wondered, why does this guy provoke this kind of reaction? On the surface there didn't seem to be any reason for it. So even there, I wanted to talk to him more to see if I could figure out why I didn't like him.
Sweet potatoes and a bitten lip
So I go home and I'm eating sweet potatoes from the garden, along with some homemade granola Laura made last week. I bite my lip again. I wonder why that happens. I'm chewing and I bite down hard enough to make a canker sore. But I also wonder sometimes why it doesn't turn into a sore. Most of the time it doesn't, and today it doesn't, and several days later I'm really glad it doesn't. It seems that if I eat spicy foods and get acid or spicy food into a canker sore, then it festers. So why do I eat spicy foods anyway, instead of letting the canker sore settle down? And why do my teeth sometimes do this — it doesn't feel random. When I suddenly chomp into the side of my lip, it feels intentional. It doesn't feel random.
Four hours live, and being sensitive about it
So we're still on Monday. I get all set up for my live stream and go live for four hours on Twitch, split onto two different YouTube channels. See how little there is about YouTube in here? My title might say otherwise, but this is my actual life. I'm a full-time crypto YouTuber, yet there's not much YouTube in my life. So I go live for two hours on my crypto channel to talk ICP.
I've stopped doing live streams a lot of times because I'm sensitive. I get my feelings hurt. Or I get really, really armored up and hard and withdrawn, which is not good either. I like to be really open-hearted and patient, passionate and enthusiastic, but then the trolls, the haters, and the negative attention seekers ruin the experience for me. So this time I got more moderators on board and we're shutting all those people up. The crypto stream wrapped up about an hour ago, and I'm now 45 minutes into a diary stream for the experience channel.
I tell Laura this, and she says, well, that sounds a lot like big brother — which is ironic given my emphasis on free speech and decentralization. But that said, it's not like I'm the president or something. If I were the president, maybe I'm too big to even read my YouTube comments, and sure, everybody can have their way there. But there's a fine line between free speech and stopping the near-constant harassment that occurs on YouTube live streams. Right now, there's nobody harassing me on my live stream. There are literally only four people who've been commenting on this 45-minute live stream, which is fine, because this is a passion project for me. This channel, doing these diaries and looking at my life and reflecting and sharing this stuff — this is good for me. I just want to do it.
Now, my crypto channel — that's work. And I don't want to be hollered at from people on the street while I'm working. So there's a delicate balance. When you're smaller, you're not going to have all that harassment, but you start to get an audience, and the first way you'll know you've got an audience is when you constantly get harassed and constantly have people talking junk.
Getting my feelings hurt, and sabotaging what I built
I've spent thousands of hours live streaming with little or no moderation, only to get my feelings hurt every day. And even then, I get addicted to feeling bad. Because of that, I've constantly sabotaged what I was doing, too, and that sucks — because I worked so hard to build something like my Facebook gaming page, and then I got so spun out and aggravated about it that I eventually got so wild on it that I got demonetized. Part of me was relieved that now I don't have to keep showing up and listening to these jerks every day, but the other part of me thinks, why did I spend all that time just to tear something all down? It didn't have to go that way. But if I hadn't been having my feelings hurt every day and being aggravated — and a lot of the times when I've gotten destructive as a creator, it's been right after having my feelings hurt a lot.
I think there's a natural desire, when somebody hurts our feelings a lot and we don't feel it — we stack it up — we'll have thoughts of getting back at them, however we could hurt them the most. I've had that experience with this family member. They've hurt me so much, and recently I finally cried and released all the feelings. But I used to have all these thoughts of how I could get back at them for hurting me, for being rude to me, for ignoring me, for treating me worse than they treat most everybody else. On my live streams, I can easily have content moderators stop all that. But this family member — I just need to stay away from them.
Eating patterns and my own intermittent fasting
Then my son is home from school at about three, so I wrap up my 13 hours of experience YouTube stream, help him find batteries for his train, and cook a vegan pizza. I will not eat again after this — it's about 4 p.m. while I'm writing this. I stop eating most days around 3 or 4 p.m. because that seems to work best for me. My body seems to like a good 14 or 15 hours where I'm not eating, because it takes hours and hours to digest food. If I take about 14 hours where I don't eat, then my body has a good six or seven hours of what you'd call intermittent fasting, where the digestive system is mostly empty — the stomach's empty, even the intestines are slow or not doing hardly anything. My digestive system then has time to rest every day, and it seems the best time to do that is when I'm sleeping, because sleep is a time when ideally as much of the body should rest as possible.
What I've noticed is that the worst thing I've done with my eating is to eat at night. In my experience, that seems to both put on fat and disrupt my sleeping. Most of the people I see who are overweight eat at night, or they eat after 5 p.m. and often have big meals. The people I've seen who are the most overweight tend to have huge meals at night, and they often do not eat properly during the day, which — in my experience — screws their body up in every way you could screw it up. Me, I try to get in about 500 calories as soon as I get up, and then I eat again and again sometimes, but then cut it off at like four or five. So my body has energy all day, and then at night my digestive system can rest and I don't put on fat, which is awesome. This is just what has worked for me.
New AirPods and a walk to the meeting
So I get my new Apple AirPods Pro in the mail a day early, which is awesome, and I'm amazed at how well the noise canceling and transparency features work. I just thought everyone wearing them was unsafe, which I talked about a little bit before. And then I go to my AA meeting. I walk with the new AirPods, and my sponsor sounds like he's in my head while he's talking to me, but he says my audio is much clearer, too. I can easily hear cars better through having both of these in than I could through a single Bluetooth earpiece. It's awesome.
I walk through the shopping center on the way to this meeting, which is a 15-minute walk from my house, and I'm amazed at how I don't see anyone I know. This is my neighborhood — I go to this Publix. Well, I guess I haven't been in this Publix in a little while. There are so many people I've met through AA, through yoga, walking dogs, just in my neighborhood — how do I see so few people I know? It's just crazy. There are maybe a few thousand people right around where I live, and that's enough that I see 400 people I don't know during the week, and I see those same 400 people again and still don't know them. But I love to get to know more people. At the meeting, I see a few of them.
An unexpected face at my home meeting
There is a girl in her twenties I have known since before she got sober. She used to come to meetings all the time, and now she has a couple of years, and I do not see her that much anymore, so I was really surprised to see her at this meeting today. Of course I sit down right next to her. The meeting near my house does not usually even have attractive girls at it, or a woman at all, and there is a guy who sometimes comes who scares the women away and harasses them. There was a guy like that in my home group when I got sober, and we kicked him out, and then he died after he got hit by a car. That was actually my first sponsor, so that is a little Easter egg for me.
The girl I talked about from last night is also there, and I am happy that both of them open up and share during the meeting. New people in AA meetings often do not want to share, but in my experience it is often really important for new people to share. I remember when I was new it felt really important for me to share. Now that I am ten years sober it does not feel as important. My day is not going to be made or broken based on whether I share. I do not want to drink or not drink in a meeting, because that does not happen almost ever now. My days are consistently pretty easy and smooth. But when I was new I had some rough, volatile days, and when you share in a meeting it helps people connect with you, get to know you, and see you. So I love it when people who are new share.
You do get people who are drunk sometimes and blather on, and honestly that helps you remember how awful you actually look when you are drinking. When the mind pitches how great drinking is, that is the antidote right there, remembering how disgusting you really look when you are all messed up on alcohol or some other substance. So I share in the meeting. I often share in meetings, but I try not to share if I think somebody else would share and it would be better if I did not. I used to always share when I was new.
Transforming self-pity after my dad passed
In this meeting I share about how much self-pity I felt when my dad passed, and how I was able to transform myself and change that self-pity, to get out of it, because everybody's parents are going to pass. It is just a normal part of life. Being sober was very difficult in the first few months, and it has never been that hard since then. One of the guys there, the same one who told me I ought to get on meds and go to the psychiatrist, and who helped me make amends with my mom, is at the meeting, and he shares some great stories I have never heard before, which I think is really cool. It is amazing to know somebody so long and find they have all these great stories they have never even told you, even though you have talked to them so much.
To me, love is naturally curious. You want to get to know people's stories and see how they act in different environments. Being withdrawn and not caring about people, that is the opposite of love. Hate is like frustrated love, whereas being withdrawn, you could argue that is also frustrated love, so maybe there really is no opposite. Even being withdrawn you can argue is frustrated love.
How AA ruined me for fake society
AA meetings like this are usually the most interesting part of my day. AA meetings have also ruined fake human society for me. By fake I mean people who are just in their heads, who are good all the time and do not tell you what is really going on, who keep secrets, who are doing things that would disgust you behind your back, who are nice to your face and talk junk about you as soon as you walk away. AA has ruined me for small talk. It has ruined me for the kind of people who just want to keep things surface all the time, be fake charming, keep private lives, keep secrets, and never let people really get close and see them. I used to operate a lot like that. Going to AA really opened me up into living a heart-centered life, and I think that is one of the most important things we can do on this planet. It has to be done. It helps everybody else. The more of us who are living heart-centered lives, that is what we need to truly transform the world.
I personally do not even want to hang out with people who are stuck in their head, where you can feel when you are talking to them that the emotions are disconnected, withdrawn, or suppressed. In my share I also talked about how I hate that personality change people go through when drinking. A lot of people are stuck in their head and having a hard time living a heart-centered life, like I used to be. What I would do is drink alcohol, and that sometimes would bring out more of a heart-centered version of me, get me a bit out of my head. But other times it turned me into a total animal in the worst way, total demon, no heart, absolutely numb.
So some people take that first drink and suddenly they are all friendly and talking constantly, and that is fraudulent. Does it work in the short term? Yes. But what happens when you build a relationship with somebody based on drinking, and then sober you are just totally cold with them? That is horrible. I would have rather just found someone who could be authentic with me, instead of dealing with a person who, when they drink, becomes a totally different personality. Yuck. And that is how I used to be.
The yoga instructor whose mask slipped
I shared something specific. There was a time when I was a yoga instructor, and I generally avoid going to anything where drinking is happening, because I hate being around people who need a beer to loosen up, who then become a different person once they have one. I went to this yoga event thinking and hoping there would not be alcohol. From someone else's point of view, they think they are being fun and really helping get the party started by bringing the alcohol. From my point of view, they just ruined it. Then I am talking to one of the yoga instructors who is normally very cold with me, very surface-level, charming but cold, and they start talking all kinds of stuff, opening up and sharing their life with me, very chatty. I am confused. Why are they acting like this with me now when they are normally so cold? Then I realize they have been drinking. They have had a couple of drinks and now their mask has slipped down and they are opening up. But it is fraudulent, because as soon as I see them sober again they go right back to being cold, like the conversation never happened. And that is exactly what happens. I generally do not go to their yoga class either, because back in the studio they are cold, can't even be bothered to say hi, no reaction when I do say hi.
So that whole conversation I had with you after you had two beers, that was just alcohol. That is gross. If you cannot genuinely have a conversation with somebody without needing it to be filled by alcohol, the thing to do would be to work on that and practice getting better at it sober, not just take a drink and blather all over people and then be embarrassed the next day so you do not want to talk to anybody again. That is nasty. And that is what I used to do. That is the world I used to live in.
Walking home and reconnecting with my brother
After the meeting I get some hugs, feel very happy walking home, catching up with everybody. I call my brother, who has been on a two-week cruise, and I am really glad I have always maintained a close relationship with my brother, except for that time when I did not talk to him for a few months. He kept telling me that I should not give my mom the silent, withdrawn treatment where I was not talking to her, and I got tired of him telling me that. Then, when I called her, I called him too and said I would like to resume our relationship, and I am sorry for not talking to you for that time, and at the same time we need to have some new boundaries. Now my relationship with my mom and with my brother feels the best it has ever been, even since childhood. I enjoy hearing my brother's stories from his cruise.
Why I love doing the dishes
Well, this is about it here. I wash up all the dishes, and I am happy to do the dishes, because this is part of the service work I do for the family. I like how I wash the dishes better than how anyone else does it. I hate having dishes that have oil and food on them when they are supposed to be clean. I hand wash the dishes and then run the ones that can go through the dishwasher on top of washing them by hand, so my dishes are consistently the cleanest, enough to meet my own standards. I also hate the sink getting overfilled, because the dishes piling up is so inefficient. Then you get to the kitchen and someone has taken a dish with sauce on it and put it on top of the clean dishes, and it gets oil all over everything. It is gross, it is wasteful, and the inefficiency bothers me. It is very easy, when you have got a small sink of dishes, to just wash all of them, put them in the dishwasher, and load the dishwasher up.
Harry Potter, my mom, and repairing a hard relationship
Then I wash all of it, so easy. That's my dishes rant. Laura reads Harry Potter 5, where Snape is giving Harry the Occlumency lessons, and I have great memories of listening to this book with my mom 22 years ago, when our relationship was at its worst. I had years as a teenager where I barely talked to my mother. I couldn't stand her, and I was mad at her for losing control of herself, for causing so many arguments, so much fighting, and then being sick all the time. It was like she was either being nasty or she was sick. There were years where it was hard to even get any good times with her. So 22 years ago we repaired that a bit. She got me an internship to go to work with her, and we had some quality time together in the car.
I told the kids I think they're having a really nice childhood, which I guess is still to be determined, because at this point in my own childhood, when I was nine, this stuff hadn't happened with my mom yet. We had a great relationship. So I say good night to the kids and try listening to a Brandon Sanderson book. My friend from college TK loves Brandon Sanderson's books. I tried listening to Mistborn and decided not to go further. Laura says she's surprised I'm even listening to fantasy books after years away from them, which is accurate, but I used to mostly read fiction before I got sober in AA, and a good fantasy book feels just right for me now. TK sends me a guide to Brandon's books, and I notice that Elantris is available for free on my Audible membership, so I dive in. I take my dog Melanie on a longer walk tonight, which is like an hour, and roll through the first two chapters plus the preface and the foreword at double speed.
Then Laura is ready to go to bed early tonight, so I shower and say good night before I go see my mom. My mom has a few stories tonight she's never told me before. To me, love is exploratory. Even though I've known my mother for so long, I want to hear more of my mom's stories that I haven't heard before, and she tells me a few from when she was in the army during our time in Japan, from '86. I'm glad that even though my mom feels pretty sick, she can still have a great conversation with me.
The boundary I set with my mom about her health
Now, I've asked her something. When I didn't talk to her for a few months this year and then I came back to talking to her, I said, one thing we need to change: stop talking to me about your health problems unless you want me to fix them for you. If you're sick, keep that to yourself. I don't need to hear about it. From my point of view, if you don't do anything to make yourself healthier that I think will make you healthier, then don't tell me about how sick you are. Be sick, that's fine, that's up to you. But if you're going to tell me how sick you are, I'm going to tell you what you can do to fix it, and if you don't want to hear it, then don't talk about it.
So my mom has been doing great in the last few months, minimizing talking about her health problems. Before that, all she talked about was her health problems: going to the doctor, health problems, going to the doctor. Do you want any suggestions? No. I have my health problems, I'm going to the doctor and complaining about the doctor, back to the health problems, I'm at the doctor and they're not fixing them. That boundary with my mother is, don't talk about your health problems. It's not that I don't care. I do care a lot. I care so much that I want to help you be well. But if you don't think I can help you be well, and you're not interested in the suggestions I have based on being the healthiest I've ever been myself, if you think only your doctor knows, then you talk about your health problems with your doctor and not me, because I'm not your doctor. If you think the doctor is the only one who can help you, then talk to them about it, not me. So that's going really well with my mother. I've really been in the zone the last few months with my mom.
Empathy and the positive reinforcement loop
I was telling my brother when we went to the airbase with my mom a week ago from the day I was writing this that I felt so much joy with my mom all day. My empathy really works well when I'm with someone who is very happy to be with me, because it creates a positive reinforcement loop. If you're very happy to be with me, and I feel how happy you are to be with me, it creates this loop where we just keep feeling better and better together. Now, that has the opposite effect with somebody who doesn't like being around me, and then I feel that, so then I don't like being around them. This can be with the same person at different times. Some people can tolerate being around somebody else who's miserable and it doesn't affect them that much. It affects me. So I'm very careful about who I hang out with.
Why I love these long diary livestreams
I'm loving typing these diaries out and doing this one long livestream like this. To me, this is a much nicer format, and a much nicer way to engage with the community, than doing a little 10-minute vlog every day. This longer format is really nice. You can just take my entire weekend, I can look back on my whole week, and a year from now, if I want to catch up on this video, I'll do it. This week it'd take me 30 minutes; over a year I'd have to listen to 50 to 100 minutes. When I first did my diary videos, they were kind of superficial, three minutes long. Do you really care which yoga I did? They were too superficial. I want some more depth to my life, instead of telling you how you should live your life. To me, the best way I can teach is to tell you how I'm living my life. If you'd like to be part of these conversations and share your own experience alongside mine, you're welcome to join my community at the Jerry Banfield Family.
So maybe I'll do more of these. Even doing a week, I've only gone through a couple of days here. Depending on how long the diaries get, I don't want them to go too far over an hour, so maybe we'll need to do twice-a-week livestreams with the diaries, instead of doing the "here's what you should do to live your life" thing. Instead it's, "hey, here's how I'm living my life." To me, that's the most authentic. It looks like we've still got maybe a couple more days of material, so I'll do these and wrap this one up.
Lisa says she had the same relationship with her mom, seven years at the end of discovering each other and apologizing, and she passed in peace and Lisa let her go with peace. She was sober 10 years and took sobriety with her. I'm really happy to hear that, Lisa, and that's what I love about doing these livestreams too. If I'm going to do a livestream, it shouldn't be something 10 or 20 minutes, it should be a longer format, and then there's time for you to get on and share your experience with me. It's easier for me to do this one livestream than to do all the individual videos.
December 17th: back on the tennis court with Jeff
December 17th, Tuesday, which is two days ago from now. I'm practicing tennis again today with Jeff. We just hit, starting at 8:30 at the racket club, which is walking distance from my house, and we go until 10:30. Jeff is 30 years older than me, and I intend to still be playing tennis like him in 2054. Today we play a game where you hit three balls back and forth and then after that you play for a point until someone reaches 11. I win both games, and I have more fun than just hitting back and forth like we've done most of the time before. Today I'm enjoying hitting with Jeff more than before. I was frustrated at how bad my shots were the previous times, but today the shots have improved and I really want to play more tennis.
I'm wondering if I offer $20 a set to play me, whether I can get some better opponents in tennis to beat me repeatedly until I improve. Maybe I'll start putting these on X or Twitter too. I wonder if these diaries would work as a post on X, maybe I could try that and then just read them all at once on my livestreams. My current challenge at the racket club where I play tennis is that most people who could beat me most games don't want to play me, and then almost everyone I've played with I can easily beat, or they only play doubles. So maybe there's a teenager, for example, who could beat me, and I can easily whip up on someone who'd appreciate making like $60 in a couple hours of tennis. I'm happy to play men or women of any skill at or above me.
I did some coaching, but that's $80 an hour, and I'd rather pay $20 a set to play real games. Maybe I can do some drills with the coaches too. I want to learn how to play tennis, but so far I don't want to do coaching where somebody is just telling me the whole time how to hold my racket. To me, I should be watching that stuff on YouTube. Anything I can just watch to show me how to hit a ball, I'd rather do something in person. I want to work on hitting, I want to work on actually hitting the ball and getting better at it. Maybe a coach could take me through a series of drills, but I don't want to talk about my form. I want to focus on actually hitting the ball and getting better at hitting the ball. So I'm going to do that. I'm wondering what to do now: if I can just pay somebody, a regular person, to beat me. If I'm going to get better at tennis, I need people who are better than me to stoop down to my level and play with me.
I'm willing to play tennis with some people that I'm better than, people I can beat consistently, but at this point that's almost more like giving back. I'd rather focus on getting better now and then maintain my level of play by playing with people who aren't as good as me in the future. Does that make sense? I've got so much room for improvement. I'm obsessed with how much better I can get at tennis, and I'm not content to just play where I'm at indefinitely.
After I play tennis with Jeff, my A.A. meeting is at 11. I come home about 10:30, I have some hummus and sweet potatoes for lunch, hummus dipped with Triscuits and carrots and vegetables. I'm five minutes late to my meeting, which is actually earlier than I often arrive. I'm fine missing the readings and the pre-meeting rituals. That stuff's really helpful when you're new, but I've heard it thousands of times by now, so I like missing it a lot of the time.
The topic today is your higher power
The topic today is about your higher power. To me, diary entries and talking about this stuff really matter in life. People watch crypto videos and stuff, but a lot of them are just a waste of time. I'm trying to help people who are struggling in one way or another, and I think that's a really important thing to do. That's a subject for another day. But when you get into talking about God, some of this can really change your life.
So I get called on today in the meeting, and here's what I share, at a level of detail I wouldn't normally remember two days later. I say that I've heard a lot about God and higher powers in 10 years sober, which includes over 3,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I've spent an average of an hour or so at, so I've put thousands of hours into A.A. meetings. God has been one of the main subjects people talk about.
The most powerful idea I've ever heard when it comes to God is that I am God. That's who I really am. In A.A. it's often said you're a child of God, and yes, there's truth to that, but my children are going to grow up to be just like me. There's really almost no difference between me and my children. So the God who created us as a higher power, the creator of the universe, whatever you think of as God, that's who you are too. At the deepest level that's who you've always been and who you always will be. Even the idea of God itself is my creation, which I made when I created this reality. This body is not God and should not be worshiped, but neither is any other body a God that should be worshiped. Some may have powers or be able to do things other people can't do, but we're all creating this reality that way. Each of us is the God of our own little reality.
Here by choice and conscious creation
As proof of that, I'll say that I'm here by choice and conscious creation. I'm doing what I'm doing right now because I chose to, just like at this A.A. meeting I said I'm at this meeting because I chose to be here. I'm in this reality because I chose to be here. To me, that is God creation. Everything that exists is my creation. Everything in my studio here that I've ordered as a full-time YouTuber, I bought that. Some would say, well, Jerry, you didn't make that, you didn't put the pieces together. You're right, it came fully assembled. I manifested that fully assembled in the mail via Amazon. There's probably someone who put that together somewhere, and I'm not sure if that's true or not, but unless I observe them, there's just the field of probability that somebody probably put it together somewhere. Right now it is here and it is whole, and I never saw it built. It came straight to me whole.
This whole reality is the same. I didn't see who built this camera. I didn't see anything else happen outside of what's happened right around me, which is solid because I am observing it. But everything else outside of my direction is the same. Observation is just a field of possibility. I could go observe somebody making my keyboard, and I could observe it being shipped directly to me, but in a sense I'd be creating that also. So to me the only idea that is indisputable is that I am God.
What about the bad things?
Now, you might argue, well, you're not God, don't things happen to you? You got sick, is that God? Would you choose to be sick? And I'd say I'm choosing to have the exact experience I'm having, and the idea that God only wants good experiences is ridiculous. Would you want to read Harry Potter with no Lord Voldemort? Would Harry Potter have anything interesting happen if there was no Lord Voldemort? Lord Voldemort is essential to Harry Potter. The suffering and all of that makes the story. Otherwise it's just a boring story of some kid going to magic school. That's why tragedies catch our attention while ordinary joy doesn't. People get all upset when anything bad happens, like a shooting, but people are uninterested in all the places where there's not shootings, where everybody's operating and getting along together and being happy. That's not newsworthy. Once you understand that I am God, everything in reality makes sense.
Ironically, for me, I remember being born. I remember picking my parents. I remember other lifetimes. The only common thread through all of that is that I am not anything in particular. All that's real is that I am, whether I'm in this form or your form or the form of Jesus or the form of some appearing God or the form of some appearing servant. No matter what happens, I am always. I was, I am, and I will be.
The practical value: personal responsibility
That all sounds pretty esoteric, but what I share in the A.A. meeting to wrap it up is that the value of this in practical terms is personal responsibility. That's the opposite of how most alcoholics, and a lot of people, live. When you are God, there's no more being a victim. Everything happened to you because you created it. To me, that's why most of the world tries to convince you you're not God and that you should put your head down and do what some other God, or a dictator, or a religious leader, or some woke opinion or virtue signal tells you to do. Everybody, all the time, is trying to tell you what to do because you're not God. What's dangerous to the entire setup of our reality is that you know you are God and you have the ability to change all of reality if you'd like.
Now, some of you might argue, well, Jerry, I can't control what happens on this planet. Perhaps you can control whether you observe it or not, though. I've seen some people all fired up that there's going to be a nuclear war and it's all going to end. I'm like, probably not, but if there is, I could get picked up by a spaceship beforehand and taken to some other nice peaceful planet, and for me there would be no nuclear war. Or if I get instantly annihilated and I go create a different body in a different location, what difference does it make? Do you see how powerful this idea is? While it feels like sometimes I don't have all power, that's part of what makes it interesting, and you always have the chance to make a change right this second.
We suffer because we won't ask for help
Sometimes all of us just choose to endure suffering a long time before we choose to use prayer, intention setting, or remembering who we really are to make a change now, in a moment. A couple of days before this I was up for hours at night breathing through these tiny little spots in my nose because my nose was stuffed up, and I refused to mouth breathe except for emergencies. So I'm sitting there for an hour or two in the middle of the night taking these 30-second-in, 30-second-out breaths that felt like they were going through a tiny thread through my nose. It was a surprisingly long time before I said, please open my nose so I can go to sleep. I just sat there and breathed for like an hour before I set the intention of the prayer. I'm like, I would love to go to sleep right now, I would love to just create some sleep. I sat there and suffered for an hour, and then almost right after I set the intention that I'll do anything to go back to sleep, I lay down, my nose opens up, and I fall back asleep.
There are so many situations like that in life where we just suffer literally because we won't ask for help. I see it in meetings all the time. Every meeting I go to, there are a few people there whose suffering I could end in various areas of their life. All they'd have to do is come up and ask. They won't ask. All they have to do is come and say, Jerry, I'm struggling in my marriage right now, what would you recommend? If you're one of those people who's been sitting in your own suffering for a long time, that's the whole reason I keep my community open. You can come join the Jerry Banfield Family, ask me directly, and I'll tell you what I'd do. Most people, though, are subjecting themselves to this because, on some level, they like to be miserable, or there are other things going on.
Take the lady who talked to me about her health. I helped her annihilate so much suffering in her life. If she'd kept going to the doctor and kept doing the treatments, and the treatments kept making her sick, she'd still be suffering. In my experience there are things I could tell you that could annihilate thousands of hours of suffering in your life, and most people are not interested in hearing those things.
I'm interested in hearing anything related to annihilating all of the debt I have in my life. Tell me about that. It looks like just doing what I'm doing right now will get me there, but sometimes I'm closed-minded. I've been very closed-minded with my finances, like I'm just going to do this myself. But I'm very interested, and I'm going to see who I can ask to eliminate the rest of my financial suffering. On my way home from the meeting, I choose to do another crypto stream, even though I thought I'd take the day off.
But I want to go back into it today. I love all the attention and connecting with people directly on YouTube and Twitch, and I'm excited to do these instead of a video. I'm planning to do crypto for an hour on Tuesday and then switch to music, but I end up going for two hours on crypto until the kids come home. So then I'm thinking I'll do the music tomorrow. I'm also thinking I need a one hour limit on the crypto streams. These diary streams could go a bit longer, but maybe I need to do two of them a week instead of one two-hour one. We'll see. Maybe when it gets to a certain word length in the diaries. There is a point where long format gets to be so long that it's inefficient. So we're almost done with this.
The family relationship my kids ask about
Today, when my kids come home, they're asking about my relationship difficulties with the family member, since we haven't talked about it yet. I tell them I'd love to have a great relationship with this family member, but I refuse to be around them until they can have a heart-centered, authentic connection with me. I'm not going to be hurt by their rudeness, inauthenticity and disconnected state of being anymore. For example, this family member says they don't have a problem with me to my face, but their actions indicate the exact opposite, and they have no explanation. They literally say they don't know why they never engage me in conversation, why they walk off when I start talking to them, why they ignore me rather than say hi when entering my presence, and why they never express any curiosity about my life. They deny that my empathic readings of them have any accuracy despite every indication to the contrary, and they make it clear they have no interest in sharing their private life or anything meaningful with me in conversation. These are things they've said directly to me, either directly or as the meaning of what they said indirectly.
Now, maybe they'll have a spiritual awakening or change of heart one day. Until then, I'd rather not be around them for any reason. I try to explain to the kids that this is an issue with me and not with them. My daughter says the family member does not treat her like that, and my daughter is very happy with their relationship. She says this family member always asks how she's doing and always engages her in conversation. I say I'm happy they have a good relationship, but at the same time, this stark difference is the reason I won't be around them. That's insane, how this family member treats my daughter versus how they treat me, and then they say to my face that there's no problem with me.
I ask the kids if they understand my situation and if they can please be polite about these personality differences without trying to hurt anyone's feelings. They say they can do that. Previously they did cause some hurt feelings when I directly vented to them and they repeated it in front of the entire family.
The meme coin, and reading my own diary back
After having that conversation with the kids, I'm again wondering what to do with the meme coin JBBJ. I was thinking about that yesterday a bunch too. What's crazy is, and this is so good for me to see this diary entry, that two days ago I said the final answer is that I'm not interested in putting anything into it again, because I have no control over it. It's a community coin, and I'll complicate my life if I invest into it. But then yesterday, so this diary entry was two days ago, I spent at least an hour thinking about it and exploring whether I really do have control over it. This is why it's great to read my own diary entries back.
So then I take Jack to his hip hop dance class. He enjoys listening to my instrumental dance music on the way to his hip hop, and Madeline goes to my mom's house while Laura goes to the gym. It's my turn for bedtime tonight. I eat a nice homegrown salad with homemade dressing for lunch and a few Hershey's kisses with cookies and cream, and I wrap my eating up before four, after Jack's class. I'm in a weird mood. I'm kind of calm but irritable at the same time. Weird combo, which reminds me of Nikolai in Zombies, weird and smelly, weird combo. We hang out. I go over to my mom's house with the kids afterwards and turn down chocolate and Luigi's ice; I'll have some tomorrow, which reminds me I need to grab some more chocolate from my mom's house because I'm out.
I put the kids to bed and I bribe them with $5 each to get in bed by 8:20. It's much easier than nagging them or trying to threaten them and stuff. I'm like, just $5, get your butts in bed by 8:20, and I'll fine you if you're not in bed by 8:20. So we'll use both carrot and stick approach. Then I read my open chat messages. I love how the AirPods go between the iPad and iPhone, because I use my iPad while the kids are falling asleep and I sit in there with them. Laura had a nice Pilates class, and I listened to some comedy while walking the dog along with the DAI manifesto. Being in on ICP this early is amazing.
Watching a streamer, and making music that doesn't sound like everything else
I watch a streamer I haven't seen in a while after downloading Twitch on my phone again and signing back up for the ad-free Turbo. I hate watching ads and I'll pay whatever it takes to avoid them. This girl's name is Helena Meyer; the pronunciation, I think, is different from how it looks. She's happy to see me again. I watch her new video, called The Huntsman, and it's pretty wild. It started with a disclaimer about graphic images, which I thought was silly until I watched the video, and then I'm like, geez. A really well done video, though. She has everything that, on the surface, would look like a major pop sensation. When you watch her video, it's a pro-level video, pro-level music. The only issue is it sounds like everything else too. I like to make music that doesn't sound like everything else.
Tennis, and the difference between knowing and doing
All right, final pages of the diary, which we'll wrap up, and then I'll have a little eat before I go to my massage. So yesterday I do a power yoga, then tennis. I lose 6-1, 6-1 against the best player I've played so far, and I'm grateful. This guy plays me every week and he whoops my butt every week. I'm swearing and getting angry, which I think is a good sign. I think there's always something I should be doing in my life that is so difficult that it pushes me to the limit where I still can't do it. I start swearing and getting upset and angry and frustrated, and to me, that's a sign I'm hitting a barrier. I get upset, like hitting shots out of bounds. If I try and hit the ball too hard, it goes out of bounds, and then I try and dink it to aim it, and then it hits the net. I'm like, Jesus. Then I think it's unreasonable that the ball should go out so often, because sometimes I hit these beautiful shots. I've ripped these hundred-mile-an-hour shots that hit the back corner and go in, or I dink these little shots that drop right at the net, or the guy's on the right side of the court and I'll smack it to the left side and he can't get it in time. I'm like, why can't I do that every time?
Well, I guess first, professional tennis players have played so many hours and they still hit shots into the net and hit shots out of the court. This is something everybody deals with. But also, knowing is doing. A lot of times we think that if you can intellectually explain something, that that's knowing, but to me, knowing is to be able to do. For example, there are a lot of people who could tell you how to play football in the NFL, but there are very few people right now who are capable of physically getting out there and playing football in the NFL. Same thing with getting sober. There are all kinds of people who talk about how to get sober, but compare the amount of people who talk about getting sober versus the amount of people who can execute it and have healthy, happy sobriety. There are tons of people who can talk about it, very few comparatively who can actually stay sober and really enjoy it like me for more than a decade and have an amazing life. So there's a big difference.
There are a lot of people who talk about YouTube, but how many people have done it? There are only a couple thousand channels that are bigger than my original channel, and there are only a few channels bigger than my crypto channel right now. I'm close; maybe in a year or so, I'll get another silver YouTube plaque, and maybe I'll get a gold one day. So there's a big difference in life between people who can tell you how to do something versus people who can actually do it themselves. That's just the thing with tennis. That's something that I'm learning to do. I can watch videos about how to do it on YouTube, but what I really need is practice doing it. That's why I think I'm really good at YouTube now. Some people might not agree, based on my viewership at the moment, but there aren't a lot of people who could do an hour-long crypto stream and an hour-and-a-half-long vlog stream like this back to back and have them come out even reasonably watchable. I've done thousands and thousands of hours and made like 10,000 videos in the last 13 years. I know how to do this, and this is me doing it. What's great is a video like this could be getting watched 30, 40 years from now. I would love to be able to look back on this week 30, 40 years from now and be like, wow, this is what I was doing. Remember when I used to be able to play tennis against the competitive, hard-hitting people.
Questioning a doctor's treatment
So to wrap this, I mentioned this a little bit earlier. I got a text from a lady yesterday who shared her health challenges, and then I came up to her after the meeting. In my experience, I felt strongly enough about it that I suggested she stop the treatment her doctor gave her, and I want to be clear that this is my personal belief and my own read of the situation, not medical advice. Now, some people would argue with that and say, well, you're not a doctor, you've never went to medical school, you have no business telling someone that their doctor is causing them to be sick and giving them a dangerous, unnecessary treatment. What I've come to believe is that all of us have the right to come up and question what somebody's doing with their doctor, the same as you could question what somebody's doing with their priest or their lawyer or their banker.
We all have the right to question
We all have the right to question what other people are doing. The idea that medical stuff is your health and your doctor's, that it's some kind of god that nobody else should ever question, is disgusting to me. All of us have the right to question things. So I told her, in my experience, if you want to be healthy like me, you should stop that treatment immediately, because from what I had just heard, the solution to the problem had become the problem. And then I told her she should read the book Mind Over Medicine. I gave her thirty-two other books to read too. Read these books, I said, and you'll get healthy like me. And if you do interact with your doctor, you need to have clear boundaries and guidelines for your doctor. I suggested she go see a different doctor as well. A doctor who's giving you a treatment that causes a negative physical reaction for hours is, to me, not a doctor I would keep going to see.
So she sends me a message today that says the health issue, which seemed serious at the time, appears to have cleared up. And she is very thankful. She got immediate relief by not going to get that treatment from the doctor anymore. And now the original health issue that caused her to go to the doctor in the first place seems to be cleared up too. I told her I'm glad she was open enough to share the specifics. So many people at these meetings will get up there and say, "Yeah, I'm having this health issue, and it's so difficult in my life, and I'm suffering, so just pray for me." And I think, all you did was blather your self-pity all over the meeting. If you want to go to the doctor, you can go to the doctor.
What my grand sponsor taught me about honesty
She would have said something specific, the way my grand sponsor did. He gets up in a meeting and he shares, and he says, "I'm dying of prostate cancer, and the pain is horrible. And I think it's related to what my dad did to me when I was seven years old. I've been on a journey with that. I go out into the ocean and I just cry and scream, and then I feel a little bit better afterwards." When my grand sponsor shares that at a meeting, now I've got a much better idea of what his experience has been. And at that time, I was able to help him. I came up to him after that meeting and I said, "Ty, I need to do a fifth step with you right now." I realized, based on what he shared, that I could tell him anything about my life. And I poured my heart out to him. I said, "Ty, why do I think about all this crap all the time? Why do I think about paying for girls all the time, even though I'm married and I haven't done that in a long time? Why do I think about it all the time? I've seen all these things, Ty. This is what happened. It happened in my childhood, Ty." And I poured my heart out to him, because he poured his heart out to me and he wasn't in the garden trying to keep some secret. He said exactly what was going on, and he left me feeling safe to share exactly what was going on with me. And then he shared much, much more than he did in the open meeting. I was like, wow, what he shared in the open meeting was the tip of the iceberg.
And I'm so glad this lady shared directly in a meeting, because unlike most people, when I walked up to her afterward and asked her, I said, "I'm extremely healthy, right? I used to have lots of sickness. Are you open to hearing my thoughts on your situation?" And she said yes. And now look at where she's at. She immediately got to stop that awful treatment, and now the original health issue appears to have cleared up, and it was done in a way that was joyful. It actually helped her life get better, instead of going through all that misery and suffering and making the medical system money.
Helping a friend, and knowing you'll be okay no matter what
Then I talked to Laura about how I can help a different friend with her challenges, with her husband. I initially came at it with a bit more of a confrontational approach, like telling my friend to stop telling her husband this and to stop being afraid of that. And Laura explained that what helped her was knowing she'll be okay no matter what. Laura helped me see how I can help my friend in a way that she'll be more receptive to. I said, well, I'm going to help my friend, because that seems to be what she's having trouble with. She doesn't seem to know that she'll be okay no matter what happens with her husband. But Laura knows. And this is important when you have a husband who's an alcoholic, who used to struggle with self-harm thoughts, and who still struggled with addictive behaviors as recently as this year, being addicted to playing Marvel Snap and dumping thousands of dollars into it, and quitting it and restarting it several times earlier this year. It's important for Laura to know that she'll be okay no matter what.
So I had a really nice conversation about that with Laura yesterday. And then we went to Madeline's winter concert at school yesterday, which was great. I met another parent there with the same name as my wife. I enjoyed seeing everybody there, and I enjoyed playing tennis yesterday. I felt a little tired afterward. It was such a good workout. But then at night, I felt this burst of energy again, which came up as aggravation first. I went to the AA meeting last night and listened to a speaker meeting. The guy at the speaker meeting was a no-BS speaker. He talked about his brother dying, as a result of a fight he got into, as part of him being out running around and drinking, and his brother died. He talked about another friend dying in the parking lot of a bar. He shared about all of that. And it's like, thank you for really telling your story, for not telling some censored, muted version of it.
Telling your story without watering it down
I've had people react badly to that. A guy threw a fit and lied to me and was all upset, telling me that I couldn't share my sex history in my speaker meeting because it might put women off. But the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks in detail about sex, which was one of the first remarkable things I noticed about it. I thought, wow, this isn't a subject that's just glossed over. This guy had a meltdown because he was afraid I was going to honestly tell my story. I took it as a sign from the universe to try to focus on different aspects of my story. But even so, I wonder if I've watered myself down. I used to be very rough. I'd trigger people, and people would come up frustrated to me after meetings. Maybe I've gotten a little more watered down, but then again, I'm not as rough as I used to be either. And there are other new people who are rough today. So I guess maybe that's just how it is.
Wow, this diary really got long-winded, but it's nice. If you enjoyed this experience, it's easier to listen to two hours of it at once than to listen to seven different pieces, and it's much easier for me to just do the whole thing at once. So I'm really grateful for how this came out today. I feel like I've accurately covered it, even though this is only five days in my life. Someone might say, bro, give us the short version. No, this is great. This is the whole thing, and if you want more of it, you can follow along with my Life playlist, where I keep sharing days like this one.
I only have a few minutes to eat before it's time to go to my massage, so I'm going to wrap this up now. I really appreciate you being here with me through all of it. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you in the next one.