On December 17, 2024, I woke up and kind of didn't know what to do with myself. I'm Jerry Banfield, full-time YouTuber, crypto person, whatever, and this is my daily diary. The wife and kids are down the street hanging out with Laura's family. I just recorded a short crypto video about crypto and AI. And it's funny how, according to all my own research, I'm already so rich. All I need to do is just hang around and wait. Wait, but what am I supposed to do on a daily basis? Is there, what would I do if I actually had all my bills paid off? Would I just show up and keep doing crypto videos anyway? This is what I'm thinking about this morning.
I was thinking, should I do a live stream? Should I just do a regular video? The live streams are such a big time and energy commitment. Videos are so easy, and it seems y'all like videos better. The title I did before was fine on this other video, and I tried to make a better one yesterday. So a lot of times I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels on YouTube. After uploading over 5,000 videos to YouTube — most of them are deleted today because I deleted the channels or deleted the videos — it's like, well, is there other stuff I want to do in my life that's more important? Or that gives me more joy?
Watering the garden with my shirt off
This morning I watered the garden with my shirt off and got some sun. It feels good. It feels like getting sun really helps me have energy and feel good. And that's easy to do in Florida. It was a little cold, but I still wanted to get the sun, so I was just cold. I watered my garden in the front yard, in the backyard. I have a bunch of trees.
I'm picturing somebody going, God, how is his life so boring? Well, I'm a full-time YouTuber. What do I do? I stay home. I go to yoga and I go to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I get a massage like once a week or so. I have two kids, they go to school. It's pretty straightforward. There's not that much drama or hyper excitement in my life, for better or worse. And I'm glad — compared to some YouTubers, I have a very thriving real life.
I'm thinking today, maybe I'll do the patio in my backyard, because I feel it's really rewarding to do stuff. Like I fixed the fence after the hurricane myself, and it was very rewarding to do a project like that. Because with things like these YouTube videos, I feel like I'm just talking into the void. I'm glad people on OpenChat come through and say that my videos were helpful. A guy messaged me. He said, oh, I cried after watching your video, that was really good. And I said, thank you. I don't really know if these are doing any good or not. At least these diary videos, I know it's good for me to analyze. If you ever want that kind of direct line, that's exactly why I keep the Jerry Banfield Family open — so the conversation isn't just me talking into the void.
There's definitely a balance, where one end is total narcissism and all you do is think about yourself all day, and then there's the opposite end, where you just kind of go around and never consider your actions at all. I'm probably on the narcissism end — I analyze what I'm doing and how it's useful for people.
I really don't want to go to Home Depot right now
I really don't want to go to Home Depot right now. This is when it's the most busy, but I swear, the main time I'm ready to go to Home Depot is always like noon, when everybody else goes too. But maybe I'll do it. I need to get some gravel to make a patio in my backyard, then put sand down, then put bricks down on top of it, then fill in between the bricks to make a patio.
I don't want to pay somebody else to do it. I could just pay somebody a few thousand dollars to do it, but I'm healthy, I'm active. I can dig dirt up and dump bags of gravel down and then smooth it out, pound it down, lay the stones on top of it. And yes, it might not come up as nice looking as if a professional does it. But I'll have the satisfaction of being like, I did that. Yeah, that's me. Yep, I did that.
Why I made a trap song to review a garbage coin
I had a lot of fun last night making this song. People want me to review these cryptos, and I love how creative I am. People asked me to review this dumpster fire coin called Hyperliquid. I don't want to put that on my main crypto channel, because my main crypto channel is at 43,000 subs and most videos get thousands of views. They go out to tens of thousands of people. I don't want to promote some garbage coin, even if it is with a negative review. I don't even want to talk about it.
So I'm like, where do I have a channel where the algorithm is just dead and I can afford to go for search traffic and just put out whatever? I realized I could just make a little trap song about how much this crypto sucks, and that'll serve as a review. Most of my songs don't have that much organic traffic — there's no search traffic. One of the hardest things in music is that you have to have a lot of organic traffic, and music seems to get search traffic because people don't really know how to describe music well enough. Unless it's some ultra niche thing that only musicians look for, like you want some exact chord or progression, or a certain type of music in a certain key with this, this, and that, most people don't even know how to look for music intelligently.
I make music and I still struggle to. I'm like, I want some instrumental dance music. And I search for it, and it's got words in it. I'm like, I want no words, dance music. And I search for it, and it's got words in it. I'm like, ugh, I just want dance music with no stupid lyrics in it. And then it sounds boring and AI generated. So then I'm like, okay, I want dance music that sounds more like Deadmau5. That's more fun, that's not so dull. So then I'm like, screw it, I'll just make some myself.
So I had fun making that. It took a while last night, though. I used ChatGPT to generate like 30 verses, picked out the ones I liked the best. It took me five, ten minutes just to give ChatGPT the prompt — in which case I could have recorded a stinking review video in that amount of time. But then I don't want to just record a review, I have my music channel. So that's what it's been like on YouTube. This whole way I think about channels and titles is the kind of thing I keep digging into in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Sleeping in, Laura bars, and throwing out the baklava
This morning I took the morning to actually sleep in a little bit, which was nice. I got out of bed and had a couple of Laura bars first thing in the morning. And what else did I have? I had a couple of pieces of baklava my mom gave me, but they weren't that good, so I threw the whole box out.
Since I've read books about people escaping North Korea and stuff, I'm like, if this was North Korea, we all would have been like, ah, I don't know, we would have eaten that baklava box — that would have been our food for the whole week. But instead I'm just going to throw that out, because I have so much.
I could do nothing and still be wealthy off ICP
I also listened to some ICP videos last night, and sometimes things are so easy. I think I could literally just do nothing and I'm going to be extremely wealthy off of ICP. But I'd like to help a few other people see that, before it's too late. I helped a lot of people find Bitcoin before it was too late, but most of the people I helped find Bitcoin screwed it up in one way or another. So it's like, is there even a point in trying to help people?
I had a friend who was dating this guy, and she said, I think he might be gay. And I said, no, don't say that to him, you're just starting to date, that'll screw it up. So now she's divorced from him, and she describes his behavior to me, and I'm like, yeah, he's definitely gay. You should have just said what you thought you wanted to say. And if he didn't like you, or he was mad because you were right but he was in the closet or something, then you wouldn't have had this whole marriage for years. Well, great job. I'm glad you took my advice — and then it resulted in you getting married and moving away and having this whole long ordeal with a guy you maybe could have avoided by just telling him you thought he was gay, which now I think he is.
So I'm by myself, you know — I'm in a monogamous relationship with a woman, so it doesn't really matter what the rest of my sexuality is, but I'm by myself. And I've tried a whole lot of different stuff. I mean, disclosure and extraterrestrials — I was thinking, there's some beings on other planets, they have like cat heads with humanish bodies. Yeah, I'd give that a shot. So this vlog was so random today. It's awesome. I realized, why am I trying to narrate the day before? It's crazy how you forget stuff so fast.
It's crazy how fast you forget
I did a vlog less than 24 hours ago, and I've already forgotten stuff about yesterday. It's crazy how fast you forget stuff. I'm like, why am I doing the date like this? This should just be a vlog for today, and I can talk about yesterday or the whole rest of eternity if I feel like it. Why is it rigid? I'm amazed how rigid I get sometimes. The last video I put up was called "Flexible Versus Rigid Thinking," and that thing bombed. I mean, it bombed as much as you can bomb on a tiny little YouTube channel.
It's funny having different channels. I have a channel with hundreds of thousands of subs that gets like a hundred views a video, then I have one with 43,000 subs that gets thousands of views per video, and then this one with a few hundred subs gets anywhere from 10 to 100 or so views per video. It's funny what bombing looks like on different channels. On my crypto channel, if you get under a thousand views, that was like the worst video I made all year — which a few of my music videos turned out to be the worst videos I made all year on that channel. I should have just put those on my music channel, where they would have been better than usual.
I love my life
Being a YouTuber, I'm really grateful I get to do this today. I love my life. I love that there's a little, just enough drama to make it interesting, there's lots of stability, there's so much wealth and abundance. I have 900-something liquid ICP, almost 4,000 stacked. I'm going to be so rich. I am so rich now. I didn't realize with Bitcoin how rich I was when I was sitting there with like 40 of them in my wallet, and I sold them in cash to this guy for like $200 each in 2014. I didn't realize how wealthy I was. But I know how wealthy I am today. If you want to follow that side of my thinking, I keep it all going in my ICP Crypto playlist.
To me, when you feel wealthy, you bring wealth. When you feel healthy, you bring health. When you feel loving, you bring love. When you feel hateful, you bring more hate. In my experience, it's like God gives you everything you ask for, except whatever you're focusing on is what you're asking for.
Would a wealthy person pray for money?
I've come to believe this more after reading a little more of this Conversations with God book last night. It's so good, because it says things like: you think your prayers aren't answered, but I'm answering your prayers all the time. When you pray to me and say, I'm so broke, God, please make me rich, what I'm hearing is that you are suffering and you've chosen to suffer. You've chosen to make yourself broke. You've chosen to feel like your identity is, I am broke — and that even your prayer asking for money is just an affirmation of how broke you are. Because would a wealthy person pray for money?
Yeah, that really gets me good, doesn't it? I don't go praying, God, please give me a million dollars. Although I did set an intention. I imagine millions of dollars coming in. I set up things to make money, and to help people, and to collaborate with people. But I expect money to come in. I don't need to pray to God, because I'm already wealthy. Even though I do have debt — many of the wealthiest people in the world are just people who know how to have debt. I'm wealthy. I don't pray to God and say, oh, please, God, give me more money. It's like, I've got plenty today. I can go wherever I want, do whatever I want.
Which is funny, because all I seem to want to do is stand here in my studio and talk about myself, and then water my garden and hang out with my family. Which I guess is fine, isn't it? It's fine. I don't know if I'll go to an AA meeting, I'll see. Maybe I'll go to the men's meeting today. This is the kind of faith I keep circling back to — I've written before about how my mind went to fear, but I chose faith.
Leading by example instead of just teaching
I've wondered a lot about what to do with my titles. On this channel, with teaching and preaching — I talked about this a bit in a video yesterday — there are so many videos out there that tell you what to do. But how many videos lead by example? Hey, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm thinking about. I want more videos like that. So I'm aiming for my videos to be like that. Hey, this is what I'm doing, I'm living what I'm teaching.
Because there are so many of us who know stuff. First of all, a lot of the stuff we think we know is not producing the results we think it should.
Health is more about community than diet
In my experience, so many of you eating these keto and carnivore diets — that's not going to work out very well for you in the long term. If your goal is to live a long, healthy life, I don't think that's going to work most of the time. I mean, maybe you can, but I might be wrong about that. There are a lot of other things in play besides just your diet.
There's too much emphasis on diet sometimes, and too little emphasis on community and connection. Community and connection, being loved and being with people. Think of people in the '60s and '70s who would have, say, a big Italian family, where they'd all go to work together and be in a store hollering and having fun and working together and talking junk, and then they'd come home and have the whole neighborhood over for dinner. A lot of those people smoked and drank and ate a bunch of meat, and they still lived longer, healthier lives than a lot of people today who don't smoke, who don't drink like me and eat a whole plant diet.
Because being isolated is so negative for your health that a lot of being healthy comes naturally when you're in a group of people, when you're in a whole community — not just a family with four people, but a community of hundreds of people. For me, my communities are yoga, Alcoholics Anonymous, the place I go for my massage. Then I've got my mom across the street, my wife's family down the street. I've got hundreds of people in my life, and I'm planning to get to know more people better. This is the same thread I pulled on when I wrote about calorie tracking versus plant-based eating — the numbers miss most of what actually keeps you well. If community is the real medicine, that's also why I built a real community rather than just another course.
How quickly you forget people
I want to take time, like I went out with this girl from yoga for juice yesterday afterwards. It took like 30 minutes to talk to each other, and it's really nice. Now I know her more, and all the times I see her afterwards, now I know her better. Although it's amazing how quickly you forget people too. There are people I've talked with, had long conversations with, and then you don't see them for a few years and you start to barely remember them. I had a massage therapist I worked with a whole bunch over the last few years, and she's moved away, and I'm already forgetting stuff about her and her life experiences.
Obviously there's a lot of material, but I forget what I did yesterday. It seems like after you go to sleep and wake up, I forget 90% of what I did yesterday after a single night of sleep. And then I try to talk about stuff from years ago, and at this point I'm just making it up. You think your past is so solid? I go back to years ago, and I'm literally just making stuff up.
Talking about the past is a creative endeavor
I don't know what happened on September 5th, 2009. I have no idea. I was a police officer back then. I might've worked, I might not have. I think I had the day off. I don't know, what did I do that day? If I had the day off, I probably drank, but I might not have. I can only guess at the smallest details.
So when they say things like "this too shall pass," and "now is all you really have" — I don't know. You're going to forget almost everything very quickly. And even going back and talking about the past is essentially recreating the past. Talking about the past is a creative endeavor. You don't know what the past really included. It's gone.
All right. I've hypnotized myself with my own voice for 17 minutes. This was a day in the life of a full-time YouTuber, and if that's your thing, I've shared more of it like a day in my life as a full-time YouTuber and single dad in St. Pete. I'll see y'all tomorrow.