This is my journal entry from January 6, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I wonder if anybody's gonna ever read this besides me. I guess it doesn't matter. Me creating it's the main thing that matters, right? And if I just create it like nobody's ever gonna read it, fuck, that's no pressure at all. I'm recording this in my new house at Crescent Lake. I moved a bunch of stuff in today, which was awesome. I started the day off by getting up and waiting for the internet guy to get here a couple hours. By the time he gets here, I'm really happy to see him. I'm like, this is a valuable thing he's doing, getting my internet connected. He takes about an hour to get everything set up out back, comes in, I brought my equipment from the last house, plugs it in, it all works, and he's out of here.
I'm grateful I have time to make it to my yoga studio for the noon power flow. I get there and put my mat right in the middle of the room for the best show, of course, and one of the guys with the Star Trek tattoo on his chest is there that I've known from a yoga studio for like a year. The chiropractor that I talked with, I think back in The Kind Divorce, I went in that book and talked about the discussion we had there. So cool to see him at my yoga studio. And I talked with a girl next to me a little bit on my left. We had a couple of more smiles in the class. It was a great workout, a great sweat, and it felt good to interact with the girls there and with the chiropractor as well. After my yoga studio, I went home quickly and stuffed my face with a huge salad since all I'd eaten was a Larabar and a couple of pieces of fruit the whole rest of the day.
I woke up this morning having had some vivid dreams. One of the dreams I remember being on a boat, it felt like an aircraft carrier or something like that. And we got sunk. Then I just remember plunging so far into the water that I was trying to swim for the surface. And I remember thinking quite calmly, like, fuck, I'm not going to make it. And I just died. And then I was on to the next thing like it was no big deal.
I had a few hours last night where I woke up thinking about my business, and I worked on refining that this morning. And as I close up the day here, I had talked to one of my friends from AA about the idea, and she said she wouldn't pay $25 to come to my house, even though she makes a lot of money at her job, which is kind of funny. And I think about writing the letters and stuff. The books definitely had a reaction. I'm just kind of filled with doubt right now. I'm like, almost everything I've tried, at least on the surface, seems to have failed to help people. Hasn't been very well thought out. Is anything going to work? I've put up several events. Is anybody going to come to the events? Am I just going to crash and burn? Probably not. Probably not. I always make it. If I look at the past, I've always made it. And I'd like to make it more sustainable and help people more this time than I did before.
I get home, I have a huge salad, home to the house in my ex-wife's neighborhood still that I'm cleaning out. And then I have just enough time to eat a huge salad and fill up another huge bowl of fruit for the kids. I go to pick the kids up from school. They're very chatty. I talk with one of the moms at the school, have a nice conversation with her. And I also know her from AA, so we're talking about sobriety, which is really nice to have a quality conversation like that. I notice I seem a little less aggravated, but I'm also not like swearing and talking a bunch of shit in these either, which I guess there's ups and downs to every approach. I drive the kids home. They're happy for the fruit. They eat all of it, except for maybe like 10 or 15 grapes. But I peeled like three, at least three oranges, had a bunch of grapes, an entire carton of strawberries, and they ate all of it. I love that healthy eating. Having a real, sober conversation with someone who gets it is one of my favorite parts of any day, and that's exactly what the Jerry Banfield Family is built for, so come join us if you're looking for that too.
We get home and my son wants to go to a little waterfront park again to fly the drone and drive the car. My daughter doesn't want to go, so I already have the stuff at my house close by. I go pick it up and take my son to the park. We go right in the little beach area. I fly the drone up high. I'm trying to mess with birds with the drone. Like that's the most fun thing I think to do. There's like three or four birds in the sky kind of near the drone, but nothing happens. But if I'm being real, I'm trying to fucking wreck it into a bird if I can. That feels like it's illegal to wreck a drone into a bird in the air, but anyway, I can't even get the drone close to the birds because they fly away from it. But it is fun flying the drone around, looking through the camera up like 300 feet in the air. And I land the drone manually this time. It works great.
My son's car, unfortunately, isn't going as fast this time, but he manages to find some fishing line with a fishing hook attached at the end of it. And he decides to try and fish in there, which I'm not sure if that's legal either without a fishing license. But like, all right, he's seven. He's throwing a fishing line that he found in there. We weren't trying to go fishing. I even throw it in a few times because he asked me to try it. And I sit down there with him. He's sad that the drone controller died, so he doesn't get a chance to fly the drone, which he takes pretty well. He drives the car around some more and eventually has me attach the fishing hook to the car, which gets tangled in the wheels, but he enjoyed driving around with the fishing hook and trying to fish using this amphibious 4x4 car with a fishing hook. I love how creative he is, and I'm super grateful for our time together.
I'm pleasantly surprised how much I'm looking forward to overnights with the kids. It's been tough with the divorce of just my ex-wife having the kids all the time. And I know it's been tough for her having them a bit too much and then I'm not having them enough. This has been a nice time for me to, you know, enjoy myself and do stuff like yoga and go on dates and stuff and write books. But the big reason I rented this house here is because I want to have the kids like three days a week and have my time with them and have my bedtime with them and get up in the morning with them. You know, I want my quality time being the primary parent with my kids. And I love that it's during the week when they're in school. And, of course, I can do stuff here and there on the weekends with them. But, you know, taking them during the week during school is really helpful for my ex-wife because the kids are mainly her social life, you know, and hanging out with their family. So I'm really excited, and we're getting so close. The kids are going to have their first overnight with me on Saturday, which is, I think Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So four days away right now. I'm looking forward to that a lot. And I hope they're comfortable here.
I ordered more stuff on Amazon, like a showerhead extender. The showerhead is too, like I can't even stand under the showerhead they have. And it has a hose to take off, but I'm gonna just get it. I got an extender for like 30 bucks so I can have my double showerhead set up with the one four gallon a minute to just dump water on me. And then the other one, to switch to it if you need a handheld one.
After hanging out with my son, I took my son back home at like 4:30, so we had a good hour and a half together plus the school drive home. And then I was going to go to an earlier AA meeting because I was going to meet my friend there to call me, but I realized it'd be better to try some of these other AA meetings and check the vibes out there and check the girls out there and see which guys are there. This is a time to test different meetings while I have the flexibility, especially ones that are near the new house. So I take the next couple hours to just load my car up repeatedly and bring stuff to the house. I've got a lot of stuff at the house already because I've taken so many trips now.
Listen to more of Seth Godin's book about This Is Marketing. But I learned some helpful things in there like to think about what value am I giving to people. Clearly with writing these daily autobiography books, like these are not just books to hand out on the street. I think listening to his book helped me get the idea to write letters. Like just give people a 10-page letter talking about whatever subject you think they'll be interested in. Let them pick the subject. You know, try and help someone and offer an event. The events could help someone, could really make a big difference to somebody's life. So think in terms of marketing, like what am I going to offer that's going to make a big difference to somebody's life? What am I going to offer that nobody else is offering this thing? Nobody else is writing them a 10 page letter on a specific subject, you know, with my experience and that somebody they can actually talk to and we'll have an event and we'll do coaching. All right, I'm getting more excited about it now.
I end up talking to my mom too. I give my mom a call, which feels good. Talk with her about 30 minutes on the phone. And a good reminder, like use the phone with my mom. Like talking with her on the phone while I'm moving is allowing me to be productive and stuff without just sitting in her house. It's funny how we get stuck in a rut sometimes thinking we just need to do things such a certain way. And, you know, I talked to my mom for years on the phone and that was the main relationship we had except seeing her once or twice a year. Sometimes I didn't see her for several years in person. So the phone is useful and use it when it's possible.
I then went to a later meeting that I hadn't been to in years. And there's tons of dudes there. Five or ten guys I know at the meeting, which is nice. I actually get there early. I'm consistently getting in meetings early, which is really nice letting me talk with people, say hi, have conversations beforehand and afterwards, which is something I hadn't done since early sobriety. Well, you know, after I came late all the time, then I started going a bit earlier. Feels good. After like 10 or 15 minutes into this meeting, an attractive girl sits down next to me, which is nice because there were a few seats besides the one next to me she could have chosen, but it felt good to have her sit next to me. I put out good vibes towards her, and I got called on to share last. I thought, because I don't know so many of the guys this meeting, I thought I'd be off the hook for sharing, but you know I love to share too. One of the guys called on me, and dude, I fucking killed it. They were laughing so hard and so much.
I wasn't even sure like what did I do, like I'm just being real. I was talking about how in early sobriety I was so selfish, like I didn't even consider what my drinking was like for my ex-wife to experience, and early sobriety was hard because I was full of self-pity, like oh poor me, I can't drink, my life sucks so bad. And people were laughing at this the way I shared it. And then I said, you know, my sobriety set me up to deal with things like divorce, which, you know, those are hard for everybody, but my divorce was easy compared to early sobriety. And I said, I didn't have self-pity because I'm like, I know how I got into this. I see what I did. And if I was her, I'd divorce me too. Like it's perfectly reasonable. So, and I set the divorce up to try and make things good for her and the kids.
I'm really proud of me. I'm proud of my ex-wife, proud of the kids. We've made this transition. We've all been very considerate of each other. And I'm just, that's the most surprising out of me. Like my ex-wife's always been considerate, so have the kids. And I'm grateful that I fit in now, that I've been considerate and tried to, you know, explore and have an open mind and be creative. And at the same time, I'm sitting in a house that my ex-wife and the kids are very happy with. My mom's happy with. My mom said she'd be happy to come down here and take some more walks with the dog. And I told my mom, I said, look, you know, instead of the kids playing at your house, why don't you bring some of the toys down here and leave them at my house and you can come down here and play with the kids and draw and do, you know, artwork. Or my mom plays Barbies with my daughter. Like I said, mom, you could come down here and play Barbies with my daughter while I take my son over to the park. Like it's a perfect setup for that. Getting through a hard transition while staying considerate of each other is something I'm genuinely proud of, and if you're walking through your own big change, I'd love for you to grow through it with us in the Family.
After the meeting was over, I ended up getting to hold the attractive girl's hand next to me. And then I talked to her a little bit. She gave me a name that I've never heard before that I asked her to repeat. I talked to her a little bit, but I could tell she couldn't wait to get away from me. Maybe not me in particular, but it was only her second AA meeting ever, she said. So I remember I always tried to leave the meeting as soon as possible whenever I got to a meeting. She didn't seem to even be trying to approach any other women, too, so she's definitely pretty new. I hope I see her again.
I was talking to my mom, and I'm like, you know, she said you need to figure out kind of where you're flexible with what you want. Like, I know what I want. I want a woman that I'm attracted to, that I have real sexual chemistry with, and a woman that's attracted to me, too. I want a woman who wants kids, at least two more kids. This was a big point of disagreement. And a key part of my ex-wife and my divorce is that I want at least two more kids and she doesn't. It's been that way for seven and a half years. And we did plenty of things to make it work and compromise. But in the end, if one person wants kids and the other person doesn't, you just need to find somebody else. I want a woman who lives a sober lifestyle, that's not an alcoholic, a pot smoker every day, you know, constantly escaping via plant medicine. And I want a woman who would be happy being a stay-at-home mom, who doesn't need to be a career woman. You know, I'd like to be the main source of income and I'd like her to support my work, that she will inspire me. And, you know, if she does work, it'll be to help me do my work.
I was trying to figure out with my mom, or just start thinking about, where am I flexible? You know, am I flexible to have a girl? Definitely not flexible for older women anymore. I want a woman that can easily have two kids and doesn't need to be thinking in vitro, or she's too old, or she can't have kids. I want a woman that can comfortably and is confident that she can have and would love to have at least two kids. So ideally, that's probably going to mean a woman in her 20s or at the 30s at the latest. You know, certainly 40s is possible, even 50s is possible. But, you know, I could compromise a little bit there. If you're trying to figure out what you really want and where you can bend, sometimes it helps to think out loud with someone, and I'd be glad to do that with you on a private Zoom call.
But what I did actually, this woman I went out with definitely wants kids. And she was 40 years old. I guess she still is 40 years old. It's funny in so many ways, she was so compatible with me, but our personalities just clashed. There were things that were cool about her, too. If I'd been more attracted to her, or if our personalities had clicked better, that might have been a great match for me. But I want the whole package. I want someone I'm thrilled with. And it's clear, like a woman I'd been talking to, I haven't talked to her in a few days now. She's not the whole package. She can't have kids. That's not going to work, period.
But where can I compromise? You know, my brother married someone quite a bit younger than him, and that's a pretty big gap. Could I do a little less than that? And a girl that's active and fit. Like the girl next to me I talked to at yoga today, she's pretty, she had a pretty face, she's doing a hot power yoga at noon. At the same time, though, she's a bit heavier than what I usually go for, and I'm like, could I compromise there? Like if she had everything else together, an awesome personality, she wanted at least two kids, and she was healthy and sober, could I get past the physical difference? She carries it pretty well, and she looks like she's in her 20s or maybe early 30s at the most. And it got me thinking about my own health journey: I've lost 80 pounds and kept it off for a decade, and I believe in eating whole, plant-based food. If I were with someone, I'd want us to get healthy together and support each other in that. Something like that could work, I think.
After the meeting, I talked to this girl a little bit and then talked to some of the guys. Thanked the guy for calling on me. I forgot about him at the AA meeting yesterday when I shared. And then I went to the grocery store and picked up some crackers. I was looking for some crackers that don't have one of these garbage, you know, canola oils in them. And I found some, they just somehow put these seeds and nuts together and get some soy sauce or some shit to get them to stick together, which is pretty cool. So I went home. It's a new way for me to have my nuts. So I got these nut crackers and they're good. I had half a package of them. There's only four ounces in them though. So don't go fucking crazy or anything, which is only two servings twice. So I guess that's four servings, but I had half a package. So it's two of those servings. And I dipped those in hummus and made a really nice meal. And what a perfect thing if I can do, if I can combine my beans and my nuts together. Then you could do salads and fruit and you'd be set. I dropped $76 at the grocery store on nuts and tahini, but it's worth it for food that's whole and good and keeps my body from being inflamed, keeps me super healthy. I'm really grateful for it.
I opted to take one more trip over to the house today, and I'm leaving my laptop here because I've got my internet here now, and it makes sense to just be all in here. I'm only sleeping at the old house for two more nights, you know, tonight and tomorrow night, so I might as well just have everything here, and basically the only thing I do is go over to that old house to sleep there and everything else I do here. I got a lot of work to do here to get the rooms blacked out, put this chair together. I'm sitting in like a lawn chair right now in the living room because I don't have any other furniture, so that's it. It's checkout time. We gotta go. I'm listening to the Scarface finale today. Feeling like, you know, that's kind of like my marriage. Just got shot like Tony Montana did in the back. And we're on to the next movie.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.