This is my journal entry from January 26, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
Fear's gripping me as I wake up this morning. What the fuck am I gonna do? Nothing seems to be working, and I'm desperate to figure something out. Assuming I get this $15,000 cash advance from a credit card, that's gonna give me around six months to have something working out before we have to borrow even more or scrape even deeper. I'm feeling really toxic this morning about how fucking stupid people are with living their lives. And yes, I understand. Some people are like, well, you're just dumb if you don't understand. I understand. People are lonely. They're addicted. They're scrolling. They're getting garbage information. They're taking all these pills, smoking weed, drinking alcohol, doing plant medicine. I know what y'all are doing, all right? I'm tired of it. What I don't understand is why don't you want to do better? Why aren't you open to doing better? Why don't you make eye contact with somebody? Why don't you smile? Why do you just fucking give up? Why don't you keep trying? Why, when you see somebody that has a better life than you, don't you want it? Why don't you want out of your shitty little prison you live in?
So I dictate a toxic, hour-long, what I'm thinking is going to be a letter. But then I realized, God damn it, that's not going to work to give that out. I asked ChatGPT about it. It's like, yeah, that's not going to work for you. But I already know because I've had like 500 letters handed out and I got one response yet. Then I start thinking maybe I just need a more positive letter. I feed all my letters into ChatGPT. It recommends like a three or four page letter that offers like practical tools. I'm like, all right, maybe we can work with that. Then I go to the AA meeting, see my sponsor there, hang out, share, come back home, start feeling a little more hopeful. I'm like, all right, fine. I'll write a reasonable fucking letter that doesn't destroy everybody's life. So I cranked that letter out, but I still am unsure. It's like, okay, this is fine, but is the response rate ever going to be higher regardless of what I put on it? I'm thinking if I put Jerry Banfield, author in St. Petersburg on the front of it, that'll work better for branding. At least people wouldn't just discard the letter immediately. But it still comes down to I can only deliver so many of these. I only have so much time. And if I say I'm an author, why the fuck am I not giving out a book? Shit. I should be giving out a book if I'm a fucking author, not a letter. It just doesn't match. Chat GPT says books are too expensive to just drop on people's doorsteps. I'm like, that's true. It'd still be badass though if I dropped off like 10,000 books on people's doorsteps. But if you haven't consented to receiving a book, it could be annoying because you don't want to throw it away, but you didn't agree to receive it either. So I'm just feeling pretty frustrated and confused. Like, what the fuck am I going to do?
I work on this letter until it's time to go to the gym. And I'm experimenting. Today, I'm testing out wearing my nice clothes that I just bought from a clothing store. We're going to just wear those to the gym and work out on them. So I go to my gym in my dress shoes and my $200 outfit with my dress pants and dry fit shirt. I walk in. Naturally, people are very interested in my dress. I do my little workout and it just feels a little awkward. I definitely am getting more attention than usual. People are looking at me like, the fuck's this dude up in here? One guy asks, are you a doctor or a lawyer? I'm like, no, but I'm dressed like I work with my mind, aren't I? I'm not dressed like I'm some fucking gym bro. I walk out and I talk to an acquaintance on the way out and it's like, shit, yeah, I probably don't want to do this. I was thinking of testing it in a hot yoga class, but it's too much. I text my friend and she says she can give me a business coach I can talk to, so I'm going to talk to her at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
I get home just in time to receive the kids. My ex-wife likes my new clothes and thinks they look great on me. And probably resents a little bit that I wouldn't wear shit like this while we were together. I start hanging out with the kids, but they immediately want to go play with the kids across the street. So they go play across the street for over an hour with these kids. And I do all the chores. I wash dishes. I prepare food for them. And when they come back, it's time for my son to do his homework. My son's screwing around so much and causing so much chaos. I'm like, just write. You have 10 sentences to write. Just write the damn sentences. I finally tell him, sit in that chair, and I don't want you to get up until you write the sentences. Like, it doesn't take that long to write 10 sentences, but it's agonizing that you're sitting here trying to do your homework while my daughter's doing her homework, and it's just like, just fucking finish the homework, and then we can move on with our day. Finally, my son finishes his homework, and I get some snuggles as he does his reading in the book that I ordered when I was at my barber's shop the other day. And my son says he likes it, which is great.
We get dressed and we head out to basketball. We get there and I get a message back from a woman I'd been talking to. A five minute voice memo, but it sounds like it's only recorded the low volume. It sounds kind of like that. I could almost understand it, but I'm like, fuck it, I can't understand this shit. It sounds kind of like some demon or something recorded it, which is funny. I'm like, is this my phone or is it her message? I end up checking it on the computer later, and my phone and headphones and speaker, it's her message. Her message is fucked up. Something about it didn't record right. So I text her back. I'm like, great job. I sent you a message six days ago. And you sent me a five minute voice memo now. Great. That's what a great person you are. I said, well, I'm sure your life's that overwhelming. Great job. Then I sent her a message back saying, hey, I couldn't understand anything the way you recorded your voice memo. Something's messed up. I also helped a friend fix her book cover today.
Then I get home with the kids and they don't need to shower tonight. So we get ready for bed and they climb into bed. I say goodnight to them. And I'm just so depressed tonight. I'm just so sad. I did at least get the basketball and dribble it around and have a little bit of fun with my son while my daughter played. My daughter was blocking girls' shots and making baskets herself. Nice to see her get better at basketball. My son, I tried to see if my son could steal the ball from me. And I dribbled all over the place. And he did finally get it a few times, but sometimes there are like five plus minutes where he couldn't get the ball once, which was fun. We get home and I'm just so sad. I told my daughter, I'm like, I'm afraid of losing this house because I can't pay for it. And I'm so resentful that it's this fucking hard to just try and do something that's useful for other people. I'm just getting so much resentment at the state of the world with, it's like people are zombies. My daughter tells me you either need to get a job somewhere or work online with a job. And if you don't do that, that's all there is. I'm like, no, that's not all there is. Working a job in person or getting a job online is not all there is. But yet that's what most people think. That's what most people think is all there is, is work for some other fucking prick that has all the money and dishes out a tiny percentage of it to you. When you generate much more profit for them. No, fuck that. I'm not participating in that. And my mind doesn't have any good ideas. And I'm like, come on, give me some better ideas. I'm tired of these shitty ideas. Tired of shitty ideas. Come on, you can do better than that.
My kids give me lots of snuggles and draw cards for me. And I get in bed, say goodnight to him, have a good cry, use a t-shirt to wipe up all the tears. Then I get in the shower and I am thinking, you know what I need to do is give these books out in person. Because the problem with the door drops is there's way too much waste, which means I can't drop books off. But it's dumb to drop letters off saying I'm an author. And yet what I need, I need the books to be in people's hands, but I need the books to actually have a clear call to action in them to call me for speaking or coaching or getting help writing a book. That way I don't have to write some shit inside the book. The book itself will just print what they call the action in it. Then when I give the fucking book out, I don't have to sign my name and I just give the book out straight as it's printed. I started to feel a bit better. I'm like, all right, all right, that'll work. And I get out of the shower.
And sit down with ChatGPT and I'm like, okay, you know, tell me about this. And it thinks giving books out is a better idea than doing the letters because of the percentage of waste. And it agrees. I'm like, why the fuck did you help me write this goddamn letter if you then think giving books out is a better idea? Shit. But we go through it a little bit that, yeah, the percentage of book sales unlikely to make giving out a letter is going to be low. And the amount of people who call me for speaking and coaching and stuff is probably going to be low, too. Anybody can put a fucking letter out on their computer and just give that out. But it takes a lot more work. What most people don't do, whether they could do it or not, is another thing. But what most people don't do is write a whole book. And what I see is I want to have my books and then have people meet me in person because that's what you've almost never done in your life. It's rare unless you went to a book signing, which, you know, some people have done. But what's really rare out of all the books you've read is to actually meet an author in person and almost no authors ever met you in person and giving you their book for free. That's a memorable experience worth talking about. That's what I need to get done.
So by the end of the evening and a little after 10, I'm starting to feel hopeful. I'm like, okay, I've got a plan going forward. And the main thing I want to do dictating this today is not forget it. I'm tired of forgetting it. I'm tired of making all these plans and then turn around. All right. So this the last thing I had with chat GPT, it says this sentence, you should repeat when in doubt. My job is to get books into the right hands and keep writing. The rest is not my assignment. And yes. So I also love when if I could give out books to thousands of people, I might end up meeting my next wife that way. Like that way, I don't have to put any effort into dating. I can just totally relax about the dating.
A part of what inspired this for me, I was talking to a guy at AA while I was listening, really, in this case. And he was telling me about scalping tickets downtown. And he used to do this back when he drank and he realized he didn't want to do it when he was sober. But he used to get all these tickets and then scalp them. And we're like, well, how do you sell them? He said he'd walk up to people and just be like, tickets. And then you go up to somebody else, tickets. And I'm like, shit, I should be doing that with my book. Like, here's a book. Do you read? Do you read? Do you read? Just go around and give my books out as much as possible. And that way, the book is the lead. The book is the thing that then gets people in the door. And I did get one response to the letters, but it was a woman who saw that somebody posted my letter on Nextdoor, and she suggested I start a YouTube channel. And I'm like, that's, you know, thank you for that suggestion. But I've started 15 fucking YouTube channels. I'm never starting another YouTube channel. I'll tell you that. The last channel was the fastest I've ever deleted a channel I've started as well. My first channel I started in 2011 and deleted in 2025. My last channel I started on Monday in 2025 and I deleted it on Friday. So if I did start another YouTube channel, I'd probably delete it the same day.
Chat GPT says out of 500 letters, you got one response. If you give away 10 in-person books, you're going to lead to real conversations, energy and possibility, especially if I set up, you know, for my phone number. And I really like that the books set up, you know, a consensual exchange. That way the books also, when I'm giving out book letters on door drops, I am just limited to my local area. But if I go to, say, the St. Pete Pier or Crescent Lake or something, like I could go the Riverwalk in Tampa, I could go all over the place around here and give books out. Then I could reach people in, you know, potentially traveling and things like that. I could give books out that would then get scattered all over the place rather than just having them all in one area. I want to focus in this area, but the books could then scatter and have a life of their own. What's nice, so I'm thinking what I'm going to do. My top priority needs to be to finish my book Uneffin Myself. When I finish that book, then it'll take about a month, I would imagine, from today to finish that book to start having copies. But in the meantime, I can practice by giving out copies of the books I already have. I was thinking, well, I can't go around giving out The Kind Divorce. Why not? I walk up to people and be like, hey, I wrote a book about divorce. Do you want it? Hey, have you been divorced? Here's a book I wrote about divorce. There's no reason I can't go around just giving out a book about my divorce or giving out my book about I was famous on the internet. I literally just give out all the books I have already. And then when I get on Uneffin Myself, which will be the most general audience book, and then whenever I write a new book, I can just constantly give out whatever book I write and just keep doing that and get my books in the hands of people. And that'll be my marketing. So I go to bed feeling hopeful. I'm like, okay. I got a strategy, and once again, it all comes back to fucking books. How many times do I need to have this realization? I need to write books, and then my marketing is to give books away to people and to give them away in person as much as possible.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.