It's July 26th, 2026. God, what a day in utter agony. But I learned — I learned. And one of the lessons is that from now on, I'm not putting my vlogs out the day of. From now on, vlogs are going to be scheduled well in advance, just in case I need to censor them — so if I'm in an emotional state, I can calm down before I film. I appreciate people's consideration, but at the same time, it's like — okay, just because I'm crying doesn't mean my whole life is falling apart. It means I'm having some human feelings. And I did a lot of crying today, and a lot of hurting, a lot of suffering. So let me tell you how all that went down.
I'm mainly making this for myself. I want to go back and watch my vlogs from a year or two or three years ago so I can remember the stuff I already learned, because it seems I'm forgetting some things and learning the same crap over and over. So these are mainly for me, and to record real, authentic human experience.
Feeling Neglected by the Queen
Since my last vlog, which was yesterday morning before we went over to the family party, everything was looking pretty good — although I was feeling a bit neglected by the woman I'm dating. I don't know if that's even relevant anymore after the last 24 hours. But we're going to come up with a name for her, and I don't know what we're going to call her. The queen. We'll call her the queen, all right? Because that goes with the previous vlog series. The queen.
So I had been feeling a bit neglected by her. For example, yesterday she took 10 hours to reply to my message — although she is on a trip with her family, and she said she would not be looking at her phone all the time. So that's fair. I was wanting a little attention. We'll get to that in a minute. Everything was fine in the morning, except she took her usual several hours to reply, and I reached out for attention — which, as usual, look at what I do.
Sisters, Starbucks, and a Graduation Party
We went to my sister's house and had a really nice time hanging out with my sister and her daughter and the cats. Then we went to Starbucks and dropped $57 — and that includes a pretty hefty tip. I had some oatmeal at Starbucks. That was good; I don't usually have oatmeal. Damn, we're getting into the mundane details of this, aren't we? Well, I was telling my sister about the queen — we'll have to come up with nicknames for all these women — and she seemed really enthused.
Then I went over to my other sister's for a graduation party for her son. The kids were a little bored and were fighting at first. I was stuffing my face with a bag of chips and some Jimmy John's veggie sandwiches. They had bowling pins set up with footballs, and that was fun — I was knocking those bowling pins down with footballs. It was pretty sweet.
And yet this grief was hitting me: Laura, their mom, my ex-wife, not there this year. And not only that, she's got her boyfriend all weekend, which she doesn't usually get to do, because usually she has the kids on the weekends and I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But she's having fun with her boyfriend all weekend while I'm up here with the kids by myself, and this sense of grief was just setting in. I'm like, man, if I had a new woman up here, it'd be better — but I don't. And I talked to the kids about that in the car. I told them: two years ago, when I came up here for the same sister's oldest son's graduation, I knew I needed to divorce your mom, but I wasn't ready to do it. I had some great conversations with the kids — maybe that's why they were acting up a little emotionally when we got there. But we ended up playing badminton, my sister got there, and we had some nice conversations.
Then I had dinner scheduled with the sister I came with — dinner with her son and her ex-husband. My other sister looked a little hurt when I said I was going to have dinner with them, and I realized, crap. Yeah, he probably should have been here at this graduation party, and he's skipping it, and then he's having dinner with me. It's a bad look for everybody. I'm like, ah, crap — sorry I got in the middle of that. But I went out to dinner and had a Caesar salad at Mavericks with an appropriate amount of croutons. There were a ton of croutons in there. I'm like, thank you — this is how a Caesar salad should be from now on. That's how many croutons you put in a Caesar salad. I ate the whole plate. And I was telling him about the queen, all the while she hadn't messaged me all day, which is recent — she's hanging out with her family all weekend.
Spinning Out at Night
Then I get home to my aunt's house and I talk to my friend from AA for over an hour. I'm starting to feel a bit emotionally unstable, and talking to him helps me for a little bit. But then I settle into the house and shower, and I'm getting ready and getting the kids ready for bed, and I start to totally spin out emotionally. Maybe I shouldn't have indulged myself privately right beforehand. Or maybe it was the family party and I'm picking up emotions. Or maybe it was the grief. Or maybe it was the queen taking 10 hours to respond to my two-minute voice memo — she had asked me a question, I sent a response, and 10 hours later she sends this reply that sounds really tired. And in it, she happens to mention that she had time to edit videos earlier. I'm like, that's nice. You had time to edit videos earlier, but you didn't have time to look at my messages. You have time to edit videos for people who mostly don't care about your videos — and even if they do, they don't care that much.
So I went to bed utterly pathetic. I was praying to Jesus — please. I'd been reading the Bible, the stuff she sent, and it says pray for what you need. I'm like, you need a message from her. And then I got the message, and I didn't even feel good. I'm like, this is so stupid. Because it sounded like she was putting in the effort, but kind of resentfully putting in the effort — like she didn't want to send me a message, but she felt like she had to. I'm like, this is so dumb. And I was up off and on all night, just miserable, having trouble sleeping, thinking I need to just not message her at all tomorrow. I should just not message her at all tomorrow. But then I'm feeling bad because I said I'd always reach out to her. And I'm like, God, I've got to stop saying I'm going to do stuff. I should be much more hesitant to say or promise I'm going to do anything. I said I'd be patient with her, too. How's that going? It's going great, isn't it?
Oh, I'm just having a real, raw, honest human experience. I'm sharing the stuff most people would keep to themselves, and I want a world where more people share the truth instead of lying and hiding. You know how to hide, how to lie. You need people like me.
The 6:30 A.M. Mistake
So I woke up at 6:30 in the morning and made my first bad decision of the day, which was to send her a message saying that I'm feeling sad and hurt after hearing her last voice memo, and I'd like to FaceTime with her later — when would she be available? Predictably, she didn't respond great to that. She's like, I'm sorry you're feeling that way. I don't know what I said, but I'm just trying to enjoy my time up here with my family. And there's this total sense that I'm just bothering her and she doesn't want to hear from me. Which is frustrating, because I canceled dates to date this woman exclusively — I was the silly boy who did that. I should have kept going out with the other women. Definitely should have kept going out with the other women. Well, I learned that the hard way. Canceled my matchmaker, told everybody, oh, I met this amazing woman. Yeah, she doesn't seem to think I'm that amazing at this point. But who wants to know the truth of somebody and can handle it? She did tell me when she met me that she wanted somebody she could be authentic with. Well, aren't I doing that, even if it's ugly? But maybe she does still like me. What do I know?
I messaged her at 6:30; she responded about 11. And I started to really spiral. My aunt's looking at me saying, you don't look stable right now. I'm like, all right, we're going to just have to put on a smiley face for you. No more truth for you. I'm not showing you my honest emotions with my face anymore. I'm doing great — yeah, this is me doing great. And I have to hide my thoughts, because we don't need you thinking I'm unstable because I'm trying to have some feelings.
So we get up and have a lazy morning with my aunts here and the kids here, and I'm just spiraling. I felt so stupid for sending that message. I'm like, you should have kept your mouth shut. It would have been better to send nothing at all than to send some message about how you're hurt and how you're sad. And when I woke up at like eight or nine in the morning and looked at it, her message wasn't that bad. I'm like, man, never send a hurt message at 6:30 in the morning. Come on. I swear I've done that before. Not doing that again — and I have to watch these vlogs to make sure I don't forget. I did snuggle with my son this morning, though, which was really nice.
So then she messages me, and she's predictably not that thrilled with what I sent. So I send her a voice memo with more stuff not to be thrilled about, saying: look, I just miss you. I'd like to see you. I'd like some attention. I'm very thoughtful and I'm very emotional and loving, but the downside of that is I like and need attention. I'm like a puppy — I'm great if you're ready to pay attention to me all the time, but if you want to go away, I'm going to chew the house up. There we go. So I sent her that, and you can guess — it took five hours for a reply to that. And then she's like, look, you're pressuring me. And I asked her, are you still interested? Like, should I —
I don't know if I said, should I move on? But I'm like, I could use a little validation. She gave me no validation. And basically: you're pressuring me, leave me alone. Maybe a little nicer — she wrote it a little nicer. But basically, in man language: you're pressuring me, leave me alone. So I sent her a message like, okay, got it. I will. I'm sorry for disturbing your family time. I am going to give you space and drop expectations. She's like, I don't see why you expect me to communicate with you so much. And to me — if I'm dating just one woman, I do like to communicate every day. I do. There you go.
By that point I was just in utter agony, trying to cry, miserable, having every dumb thought you wouldn't want to have. I'm feeling frustrated, too, because my kids are right there and I feel like I can't feel their love, and they're trying. They're loving. "I love you, Dad." My daughter and my son both snuggling me up, smiling, just trying to cheer me up. And well, it did work eventually. I sat with the kids and talked with them.
Pizza, Mini Golf, Go-Karts, and Laser Tag
Then I took the kids out. I'm like, I'll do whatever you guys want. I feel utterly depressed and absolutely miserable, but I'll do whatever you want. I don't care, I'll get out. So they're like, let's go get pizza. I'm like, okay — took them to get pizza. Then we came back home and I felt bad some more. Then we went out to go mini golfing, and the kids were wrecking me at mini golf. My daughter and son both hit a hole in one. I didn't. And they ran way up ahead — I was like two holes behind when I finally got to the end, and my daughter had finished four or five holes ahead.
Then we did the go-karts, and the first moment of significant joy I had was doing the go-karts. I got a nice, fast go-kart, and my son had to ride with me. At first I was being a little conservative, but then I let it out. I eventually held the pedal down the entire time around the course and slid around every corner and slid around the other cars like Mario Kart. It felt so good. There were like two or three good laps where I just went straight around fast, sliding around every turn and crushing my son into the door. They didn't even make me wear a seatbelt. And my driving was just amazing. My daughter's like, well, you were a police officer before. I'm like, yeah, I've driven a lot. It's pretty easy to slide that go-kart around the course once I got comfortable with it.
Then we did the batting cages, which was fun. I hit the 45-mile-an-hour baseballs, and it took a little while to warm up. Boy, did it take a little while to warm up. But once I started, I started getting some nice hits, getting some balls out into the outfield, and that felt good. My son and daughter both did the soft-pitch softballs, and we all had a good time there.
Then we went back to my aunt's house again, and then we went out to Zap Zone. My daughter tells my son, if you want me to go to Zap Zone, I'm going to twist your nipples — for a full minute. And I'm like, this is interesting right now. So we went to Zap Zone and played laser tag. I was in first place — I was camping, same as I play Call of Duty. I was camping up on the second floor, just shooting all kinds of people from above who couldn't even see me, then popping back and forth to cover my area. If I got shot, I just stayed there, camping. I'm like, I'm not moving. You lose points when you get shot, and I was up in first, and my son shot me right at the end of the match and I slipped to second. I'm like, crap. But I felt a little better after Zap Zone. We played some arcade games.
Sobbing in the Kitchen and My Sister's Perspective
I came home, but I was still so depressed. This time I got down on my knees and sobbed in the kitchen while I was cooking noodles. That was great. And then my sister came over — the one whose house I visited yesterday, whose son and ex-husband I had dinner with. And she cheered me up, because I know I don't have to put on a happy face for my sister. My sister can hear the full truth. And she's like — this is an older sister, like a decade older — you've learned a lot from this. You've learned some valuable lessons.
I'm like, yeah, I've learned that I need to be dating like three to ten women at the same time, not significantly emotionally invested in any of them. Then they can all take it slow, and one of them can decide that I'm their favorite. I should not ever be dating one woman at a time again. I should have so many women that I can barely keep their names straight. Because if I'm dating one woman, I get emotionally attached — I just do. I want to talk with her every day, and I want to think about and plan our life together. And it just seems a lot of women don't want to jump right into that, which is reasonable. Some women certainly do — and maybe, if one does, maybe that wouldn't be a good idea. The queen certainly had part of her that did want to jump right into that.
But then I was thinking: she canceled a date on Tuesday last minute, even though she was saying how hurt she was when somebody else did that to her the day before she met me. She did it to me. Then she didn't make time to call me the next day when she said she would. Then when she called me the day after that, she was super distracted — literally saying she nearly got hit by a car while jogging, and literally talking to me while jogging. And meanwhile, everybody else is getting higher-quality attention from her. She has calls scheduled with people she's sitting down with on Zoom. And — no, I don't want to say anything more negative about her. I would still like to date her. But at this point, I see I need to completely emotionally withdraw. I'm pulling back as far as I can. If she's interested in continuing with me, then I'll be here, but with basically no expectations. I'm going to assume she's totally done, and if she surprises me, that's fine. But I'm going to expect at this point that she's finished. She's run away from me — like she said she ran away from all the other guys who liked her in her whole life. And that's sad. It's so sad. The two of us have such insane compatibility. But I guess we're not that compatible when it comes to this: she thinks it's okay to provide hardly any attention when she's dating me, and I like attention. And she thinks it's okay to edit her videos instead of listening to a two-minute voice memo from me. That's not okay to me.
And my sister reminded me: remember, you guys did this together. Don't blame yourself for everything. She did her part to have you feeling this way, and you did your part. That's true. I need to stop having my part.
The Woman at Yoga and the Lesson About Investing
And something I'm really grateful to see now is the way I attracted this woman. There was a woman in yoga the other day — the last yoga class I went to. She seemed desperate to talk to me, which is not a feeling I usually get. To be clear, I don't usually think women really want to talk to me at yoga. But this woman was beautiful. She put her mat down right next to me, even though there were a lot of other spots. And then she just sat there for like three to five minutes after class, literally sitting in the same position as me, hands out behind her. And I could just feel it: I wish this guy would talk to me. Almost everybody else in the whole classroom had gotten up and was walking out. And because I'm dating the queen, I'm like, no — I'm not talking to this woman and then potentially having a good connection, getting her number, and then feeling disloyal. But if I had it to do over again, I would not offer to be exclusive. I would not offer to be a boyfriend until there was a significant reason.
It's funny — the queen said she really wanted unconditional love, but she's not prepared to receive it. And maybe my love's not totally unconditional if I want attention. But I really spun out into feeling like such an idiot. I'm like, I can't believe how many people I told about this woman. I feel like a moron for everything I've said about her at this point. And I know she might watch some of my videos, too. And it's like — why don't you pay attention to me instead of watching my videos? Literally, one night when she was avoiding me, she was up watching my videos. And it's like, why didn't you just see me that day instead of watching my video at one in the morning?
I would very much like to have an amazing life together. I don't want to be sitting here pouring all this out because everything else is more important than talking to me. And it's fine — I can play that game, too. Going forward, I'm going to minimize investing emotionally in women until they've demonstrated an investment in me. That seems reasonable — it's what almost everybody said I should do, because it seems the woman needs to invest. I can certainly give a taste of what I have to offer with my love and my energy. But I just went all in recklessly — recklessly — with the queen.
And today I was in agony, and most of it wasn't about her. Most of it was how dumb I felt. I put out these videos saying, I don't know what to do with this woman, I don't know how this woman has changed my life. And she certainly has. I'm getting my new Bible in the mail, which I'll be reading whether or not she wants to keep talking to me. And I would love to keep talking to her, but I'm hurt. I'm hurt by her pulling away and avoiding me and making so much time for other people. She's all about trying to spread all this joy to strangers, but from my point of view, the love she gives to me, the attention she gives me, is really valuable to me — more valuable than a thousand strangers giving me a little bit of attention. A thousand strangers' love does not equal her same amount of attention.
And this is something that she struggles to understand. Maybe this is more how men think — or maybe it's because I grew up with my mom in the military and we moved all over. But I generally put most of my emotions in five or ten people, and maybe I should start to diversify more. If you're not those five or ten people, I just don't hardly feel anything about you. You can do whatever you want to. I get my feelings hurt a little bit reading YouTube comments, which I'm not going to do anymore. But it can be challenging for me to receive love from strangers. Some stranger doing something nice for me — I honestly don't feel much of anything. It's like, thanks for letting me in, in traffic. My heart might feel a little bit of joy, but it's not one of those things that really motivates you to live. To me, it's like: which people in my life motivate me to want to live no matter what? Attention from those people is priceless, and everybody else doesn't matter by comparison. So there are kind of five or ten core people, and then maybe for me there are like 20 to 50 people who are a little on the outer edge.
And it looks like what I did is I moved the queen right into my inner circle, and she — I'm lucky if I'm even in her 50 or 100. That was a mistake on my part. Or maybe it was a mistake on her part to not move me into her circle. It's nice to realize you don't do things and live life by yourself. Everybody else's actions are impacting what happens.
Scheduling Vlogs in Advance
As I record this vlog, I'm glad I've learned: from now on, we don't put these vlogs out the day of. I'm glad this vlog will be out several days later, so if I need to edit something — because maybe she does enthusiastically respond in the next few days and I want to refilm this or edit parts out — I can just tell the AI to cut stuff. My feelings were hurt with her over that, too, because I'm like, look, I can edit all your videos with AI. Do you think she wants me to? Has she even given me one video to try doing that with? No. It's like, well, I guess we're not building that great of a team together if you won't let me help you with a simple task.
And yeah, it's amazing how much suffering I felt because of feeling like an idiot. I'm like, I shouldn't have told all these people on YouTube about this woman. I shouldn't have told anybody in my life about this woman. I need to just date a bunch of women at once and diversify. And now I'm actually getting good at putting my energy out in a way — especially at workout classes — where I can get a phone number and get a date. So that's my plan going forward, unless this woman warms up, which I don't see why I would assume she will at this point. My expectation is that she is permanently cooled off, and I'll be surprised if that changes. That would be a sign that she really is the queen, too.
How Much of Our Pain Is About Being Wrong?
But it's amazing how much of my pain today was wrapped up in being right — or rather, being wrong. And I wonder, in our lives, how much of our pain is wrapped up in being wrong rather than whatever else we're saying it's about? It's like, okay, if I don't want to be wrong — I realize what I've been doing with being a content creator for so long: I live my life sensational. And this is why I'm also pulling back from content creation. I'm tired of living my life sensational, where I always have something to do a video about because I'm creating drama in my life. Part of this whole thing with this woman was almost certainly to create content, because I made some interesting content out of this thing with her, didn't I? But what if I didn't have a motivation to try to make clickbait videos out of my actual real-life stories?
I'm interested to see how this vlog ages a year, five, ten years from now. If I want to keep up with my competition, I've got to go back and watch my old videos. And I'm really wondering — this has made it certain for me, too: I'm tired of living my life online. I'm tired of trying to please algorithms. I'm tired of knowing exactly what I could do to get a ton of views and money, and then not being willing to do it because it's gross. Sorry, this is getting repetitive by now.
I'm glad my sister came by before she left — we had a great time, and I've been restored to sanity. I'm sad that I feel like this little not-even-relationship is already over after two weeks. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this entry is wrong, and the other videos in my Dating playlist are right. We'll see. So, there you go.