This is my journal entry from March 14, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I wake up at a little after 6 a.m. today, and I decided I might as well get my morning started and go the 7-15 flow at my yoga studio. After all, I haven't done yoga in over a week, and I'm starting to feel a little stiff. I head over to the class there, and I'm shocked at how stiff my pigeon pose is after just a week of not doing yoga. Plus a few days of delivering letters and lots of tennis in the last week. I come home and I'm just, even though I often feel better after yoga class, I'm still just mired in sadness, feeling like there's nothing to be excited about today. Even though I talked to my ex-wife and the kids are going to come over soon, I'm in despair about my business. I'm like, I just am not seeing the business model and what I'm going to do to make money and how it all goes together. I gave out so many letters. Nobody's called. My ex-wife and the kids get here, and I'm grateful for their hugs and attention. My ex-wife sets up with the kids help my aero garden in the living room, and they tell me about their plans for the day. I give them lots of hugs, tell them I'm feeling sad, and they head out soon. Now I'm left at home wondering what the hell I'm going to do for the rest of the day. A tennis partner texts me and says she'll be ready to play some tennis in a little while, and I am very grateful for that. I actually was in bed when my ex-wife called to bring the kids over. I ended up laying down for an hour, feeling so tired and overwhelmed, which is unusual for me, but my mind just feels like nothing's working.
After my ex-wife and the kids leave, I'm preparing to go play tennis with my tennis partner. She's ready at 1.45, so I go to meet her at Crescent Lake. We hit back and forth. There's somebody else on the court next to us. We hit and play a set for about an hour. She actually asked me some questions about myself, like, are you doing anything fun this weekend? And I tell her, I'm just going to a couple recovery meetings. What about you? She says she's taking her dog to the dog park. I walk her back to her car because it's the same direction as my house. I'm thinking, you know, do I want to ask her to do anything? And I just feel so defeated with women. I'm like, I'm not even trying to make anything happen with any woman until this whole dating service matchmaking, all those dates are done. Until all those dates are done, I'm making no effort at all with women. I'm not going to ask anyone to do anything or to go anywhere or to meet up. Nothing friendly. None of it. I'm so utterly defeated and tired of, you know, being constantly rejected and then feeling like shit when I go places and these girls who used to be excited about me, you know, are now distant and I'm hurt and it's so stupid. So forget it. If a woman wants me, she can pursue me and I'll just take these dates because I've already got 11 more guaranteed dates coming. So that's enough, right? I remember from the best of my online dating efforts, I'd often be happy to get a date or a couple dates with different women a month. So this matchmaking service takes care of it.
I talked to my sponsor and he shares his experience in that area. And I put together an entertainment center in the corner of my house, which looks nice. And then I have my recovery meeting later that I'm going to go to. I'm trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself. And I'm running some of my ideas by ChatGPT again. And I'm still feeling so down and lonely. I'm just consumed with the idea of buying a PlayStation 5 again. My fourth one. I'm like, man, you know, I'm tired of coming home to this house alone at night. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing exciting. And then I go out with girls and I get so excited that, you know, then I blow it because I'm overly excited. I need some excitement in my life again. I could really play video games properly, live in here by myself with, you know, long stretches of time where I could play like six hours of zombies at once. But then where would I get the time to do that? I barely have time to do my work and, you know, do all the other stuff I want to. And I'm thinking, maybe I'll just get a PlayStation until I have a girlfriend. Then I can have a reason why I'm not interested in dating women. But then I start to think, well, that didn't work out too well with my ex-wife. Because when I moved in with my ex-wife, I tried to cut the video games when I moved in with my ex-wife. And I wrote a book about video game addiction, and that didn't work either. I told my ex-wife and the kids about this this morning. But I'm thinking I could just go to Best Buy and grab a PlayStation and it'd be fine. And my life would be okay.
As I eat dinner and head over to the recovery meeting, feeling like I haven't even hardly done anything useful. Yes, I put this entertainment center together, saw my ex-wife and the kids, played tennis, went to yoga and cleaned my house. So I guess I didn't just like fucking beat off all day or something. But I still I didn't even hardly do anything on my business because I couldn't even figure what to do. I did start thinking a little breakthrough came that what I want to do is give out full length booklets to people. And maybe I could have events or that would get people to want to work with me privately. I thought, OK, instead of putting an envelope with something promotional, I want to give people a real book that's like twelve thousand words, a short little booklet front and back. And I print out a test copy on the printer and throw 10 of my old letters in an envelope. And it all fits in there and it's nice and it has depth and weight to it. I'm like, okay, this is what I want to be giving out. Not some shallow promotional letter, but something really serious that introduces people to my writing.
I head to the recovery meeting and I see my friend there. Her dad's there and her sponsee's there. And she gives me the attention and validation that I crave from women especially. But also, you know, I appreciate the time with men. And these days I mostly hang out and talk with men. We go through the meeting and the beginners share, which inspires me to share too. I don't want to share. But I talk about how miserable and lonely I am. How even this week going to recovery meetings, it doesn't feel like I've often even hit that critical threshold of feeling better. I talk about how my mind's coming up with these dire predictions about my money if I can't figure it out in the next few months, and how heavy that financial fear sits on me. And then I feel guilty and sad, and then I think about my kids, and then I fear trip, and I get myself all excited. I was listening to the recovery literature, and man, I was identifying with that hard. And noting how it says, you know, one thing is we're addicted to excitement. And I'm like, yes, I am. I want some excitement. My life's so fucking boring right now. I can't stand it. But I'm so proud that I'm not engaging in any coping mechanisms or distractions. And I'm out there with real people. I'm doing real things. And yet, then I think maybe I should buy a PlayStation 5 so I could add a little excitement and, you know, predictable contained fear. Back into my life, play some Warzone, drop some fear and adrenaline, excitement. It's like, oh, then it feels good. Then I can relax for the rest of my life. But I'm not buying a PS5 today.
After the meeting, I talk with people for 30 minutes afterwards who are really supportive, including my friend that's there and her dad. Dude, this woman has me laughing after the meeting because this friend's dad, I think, is in his 50s, sits there. And this other woman that looks like she's in her 50s who was talking about like being divorced and stuff during the meeting. She says that this friend's dad is just beautiful while we're going to do when we're about to do the prayer. That's as hard as I've laughed all day. I'm like, it's so honest and beautiful and just vulnerable and raw and childlike. But it's also like so inappropriate. Like, can you imagine? Me looking over at some woman that's, you know, like in her 30s, I'm like, gosh, she's so beautiful. You know, imagine like one of these women brought her daughter to the meeting and I'm over there like, oh, man, you know, your daughter is so beautiful. Like it just feels like it'd be totally inappropriate for me to say something like that. And yet, you know, wouldn't somebody, I don't know, I guess a woman from my yoga class was not very happy to be on the receiving end of that at yoga, but wouldn't somebody be happy to hear that they're beautiful? What's funny, the dad didn't even hear the comment himself.
Then there's a guy who talks to me. There's three guys actually that come up and talk to me after the meeting also, really appreciating my share, trying to help me. The only problem is I feel like they're trying to fix me. and they're overly concerned with me it's like yes i'm having a bit of a struggle but all right guys like my my life and my shit is definitely together relative to yours like you know like somebody who's got you know a thousand dollars in the bank trying to tell a millionaire about you know why they should be grateful for the money they have or how they can be more grateful for their money. And yes, it's absolutely appropriate and it makes sense, but it also leaves me feeling like, oh, I went from feeling lonely and not being noticed to now I'm being seen and people are trying to help me a little too much. There's not much of a middle ground, but I do feel I get one guy's phone number. I have nice talks. I get to know three different guys a little bit better. They share their experience with me. I give the woman I'm there a hug and tell her I love her, which the first time I'm always doing that, as I noted throughout my books, the first time I did that like eight months ago, she said, thanks. And it was so funny. But it was nice because I just feel like I want to give her that validation. And, you know, that's just how I feel. And it's nice to express it. And she says she loves me back and that feels good. But then I'm still depressed going home thinking, you know, is that too much? She has a boyfriend. But she's known me long enough. I don't think it'd be taken the wrong way. Although I probably would date this woman if she was single.
But I get home and suddenly, after I go for a walk around Crescent Lake, I wash my dishes and suddenly inspiration strikes. One thing that got me down this morning, I had an idea that I'd do more of an aggressive book title called something like, you know, the Let's Talk Sex, money, health, and all that stuff right on the front cover of a little booklet. And ChatGBT just shits on that idea. And then I realized, yeah, I can't, you know, door drop something that says, let's talk about sex on it. And then somebody's kids end up picking that up and reading it. And I'm like, shit, that's not going to work. So I was all excited for a brief moment this morning. ChatGBT crushed my dreams with its perfectly reasonable feedback. And tonight, I've got a new inspiration. Tonight, somehow, after a day of struggle, this guy that I exchange phone numbers with sends me a voice memo because I told him I used to be a YouTuber. And then I start thinking while I'm washing the dishes after listening to his voice memo, he said something about being creatively stifled. And I'm like, yeah, that's what I feel like. I feel like I'm creatively stifled, like I'm not really getting my full creativity out there. So I first think about making a new, my 17th YouTube channel and making it just local, just, you know, not trying to do the world or anything, then trying to promote it with Google ads and get people in person stuff. And ChatGPT initially agrees that, yeah, you'd probably get a bigger reach that way and more discoverability, but I give it more context. And I'm like, well, I started a channel in July, 2025 to be a local podcast. I made two episodes, felt like shit and deleted it within a week. And it's like, well, it's clear that's not going to work for you. So you got to commit to the books going forward.
And then suddenly everything comes together in my mind as I'm taking a walk around Crescent Lake. I'm like, holy shit, I've been putting too much pressure on these booklets and these giveaways. What I need to be thinking of is that I just want to get my writing into the hands of people who will read it. What I do really well is just dictating and cranking out quantity of writing off the top of my head. But I've been pressuring myself to drop my writing, like to give it to people in person or to drop it on doorsteps. I've been doing the opposite of what I do best. I've been trying so hard to write more perfectly and editing. I've spent so many hours editing all these letters that I mostly haven't even dropped or I've only done limited amounts of them that I've actually given other people. I've basically put a ton of time and energy over the last three months into writing letters that hardly anyone has read and are not available in a book. But this morning, this evening, I somehow get the insight. I'm like, holy shit, I see what I need to do. What I need to do is just keep creating the books like I've been creating them, especially these little short books. But then what I can do is some of the short books, I can turn those into a booklet and drop those. For example, I have an idea for a book about weight loss. Maybe it'll be called Unfat Yourself. And then that's a book I could give out in person to fat people. And then I could write a book on loneliness and drop that on people's doorsteps to people who might be lonely. I could write my Friday Yoga Crush book comes back. It's like I could just write a short one-hour version of that. And then when a yoga class lets out somewhere like my yoga studio, where there's tons of people there, I could just be standing on the sidewalk passing out 10 or 20 of those after class. Like, hey, I wrote a book about, you know, a little yoga crush romance fiction book. Here's a free, here it is. And I could pass out like maybe 10, 20, 30 of those after some of the most popular classes at my yoga studio.
And I finally, it all comes together. I'm like, holy shit. What I'm really trying to do is just get people to read my writing. And I need to keep my writing as authentic and real and straightforward as possible. And I need to do that by just continuing to write and publish these books on Amazon and on audiobook and Kindle print. I need to keep doing what I've been doing with the books, but then print out booklet versions and give those out for additional reach. And then the more books I keep writing, the more booklets, the booklets that I give out, the print little cheaply printed off a laser printer booklets I give out will introduce people to my writing. And then from there, when they go to my website, they'll have a bunch more books they can buy. And from there, they can schedule a private session with me, or maybe I can have events. That starts to sound like the perfect business system. I get the booklets in people's hands locally, but for the, let's say I give somebody one booklet and they really like it. Well, all the other booklets, because I was thinking, all right, if I give out a book on loneliness, for example, you know, I want people to be able to have access to the other booklets they didn't receive. Like, well, they need to be actual books on my website. Picture dropping a booklet about loneliness on somebody's doorstep. And then they go to my website and then they find my book on weight loss. Then they get into my daily autobiography books. And then they read some of my fiction books. Like I could door drop one booklet to someone, give them a huge amount of value, and then they might read five or 10 more books from there and or book a private session.
I'm like, holy shit, I've got it. What I've done wrong or what I've learned is don't just try and give out promotional letters that get people to spend money directly. Give someone real value. Give someone my real long format writing. And then from there, they'll. Some people receiving my real long format writing will want more writing from me. They'll come buy more books and some of them will want private sessions. And once I have enough private sessions and readers, then I'll be able to host some events if I want to. I go to bed with some hope, which feels so nice because this has been a week of trying so hard and struggling and feeling hopeless about my business. But now it feels like I've got everything lined up again.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.