It's January 4th, 2025, and it's my 4,968th day on YouTube. Let's go. I'm back home in the studio, really grateful for a nice trip to Legoland, and grateful for all of you who watched my January 1st and 2nd vlogs since I filmed this. I figured I'd just get all of those out fast and then get back onto putting out today's vlog. I enjoyed filming in different locations, and at the same time, I love the studio. It's so easy to film here. On the last two vlogs I got cut off, once at 30 minutes, which is reasonable, and then the last one at like 10 or 15 minutes, which felt unreasonable. So here we can just go. We can go all night, baby. We're not going to, but I could. It's nice to know that I could.
The $25 bag of s'mores
After doing a vlog last night, the family came back from doing s'mores at the campfire. At Legoland it was a $25 bag of s'mores stuff, and they said it serves eight to nine people. Now, how many marshmallows and Hershey's chocolate bars and graham crackers should I picture getting for $25 that serves eight to nine people? I'm thinking there should be a box of graham crackers, one of those big fat bags of full-size Hershey's chocolate candy bars, like six of those, and a whole freaking bag of the Jet-Puffed marshmallows. I'm thinking every person could have three or four s'mores and then binge on the ingredients individually, because that's how I do it. But wouldn't you know, for $25 Laura said it would appropriately serve maybe four or five people. It was just enough for the three of them.
I'm glad I didn't go down, because sometimes if you don't need something, staying away from it is the way to keep it that way. Like in AA, we say you don't hang around a barbershop unless you want to get a haircut. You don't hang around a bar unless you want to drink. You don't hang around the s'mores campfire unless you want some s'mores. I didn't feel like s'mores last night. I was full. I'm tired of eating food when I'm full. In my experience, if you're full, stop eating. So simple, right? You're full, don't eat anything else.
Breakfast at the pirate restaurant
This morning I got up hungry, and we went down to breakfast at the pirate restaurant. I asked for the plant-based option. They bring you these family platters with eggs and sausage and gravy and biscuits, all kinds of deliciousness, and Laura got a package that was included on our room. So we go down there and I get the plant-based entree, which they don't even charge anything extra for, which is nice. Then they bring out the meat one and the plant one. The plant one has got a big thing of plant-based eggs and vegetables cooked so you can make an omelet. You could put the plant-based sausage, eggs, and all the green peppers and onions together and make an omelet, so that's kind of what I did. Then they brought out a thing of salsa as well, which is awesome.
I eat like that because my body feels better that way. If I eat all that meat, I'm just going to be fatter. That's just how this body seems to function, and it's my belief or whatever. I feel like my body is very well proportioned and I don't need all that meat. Meat has a time and a place for sure, but I don't need it. My wife and my kids are lean. I used to be like, no, they shouldn't eat meat, but now I'm like, my kids are so lean, go ahead and have some meat. A little meat on their bones is perfectly fine at this point. My wife manages her eating. She just does. She stops eating when she's full, as simple as it sounds, and she gets full pretty easily. She even forgets to eat sometimes. She's looking beautiful training for this marathon.
So they get the meat-based thing, and I was wanting them to eat the sausage. One of the funny things is I often want other people to enjoy the meat they want to eat around me and to eat the stuff I'd want to eat. So I'm like, come on, y'all, eat the sausages. They almost didn't get any of those little brown sausage links. Jack had a bite of the sausage, Laura had a bite of the sausage, and I'm like, fine, if all y'all want a bite, I want a bite of the sausage too. So I had a bite. Then I reflected on how funny it is the way I cheat on my plant-based plate. I get this plant-based plate, and then if you were to watch me, well, he had a bite of the sausage from the meat plate, and he took half a biscuit and dipped it in the gravy, and then he was dipping hash browns from the meat plate in the gravy too. The only thing he didn't eat was the bacon. I had a stick of French toast off the meat plate too, and I ate most of my plant-based plate. So they have the plant-based plate, and then he cheats on the plant-based plate with the meat. What are y'all doing?
So I had a nice breakfast. That's the five-minute version of saying I had a nice breakfast this morning. I can't be bothered to take a picture of it. You can search what the plant-based and meat-based platters look like at Legoland, because they make them almost the same every time. I'm not trying to be a photographer while I eat breakfast. I'm trying to eat. I can be a photographer when I'm doing a video. I hate taking pictures all the time. I like looking back at photo albums and pictures, but I don't do it that often.
My kids and money
I took a picture of my son at the gift shop this morning. He bought this police Lego set, and I was rooting for him to buy it. It's on the counter at home now, and I love that he paid with his own money. He worked and got some bonuses for that money. He spent like $60 on that today, and he gave me $140 in cash today out of his own wallet at six years old. I love that. He understands working for money. He understands helping out, cooperating, and getting money given to you. He understands saving his money up, and he understands choosing what to spend it on versus what not to. My daughter, pretty much as soon as it comes in, it goes out on something, and then she's mad that she's broke. It's funny to see the personality differences already.
My son came right home. We drove an hour and a half home today, and my son came right home and made $8 watering the garden. My daughter folded some laundry and made like 10 bucks doing that. If I can pay them $20 an hour to do something, then I can get $100 to $300 an hour for the work I do. I think that's a good deal.
Driving home without glasses
So I came home today to respond to my open chat messages. The drive back was uneventful. I am grateful I can drive without any glasses in the daytime at least. I drive with glasses at night, but in the daytime I can drive with no glasses, which is great. That's something I've never been able to do, or chose to do. I always had to have the glasses. My vision has actually shifted more toward 20/20 in the last couple of years, and I'm comfortable driving without glasses. In fact, the prescription is too strong now, and it leaves me feeling a bit weird. If I need to drive with them for a few minutes around town, if it's raining or if it's night, I can just deal with it, but wearing the glasses leaves me feeling a bit weird.
So I'm imagining one day my vision can go back to 20/20 like it was when I was a kid. It pretty suddenly shifted to something like 20/40 or 20/60, and then wearing glasses shifted it a little further, but then I've spent time without glasses except for night driving, and it shifted back, which has been really cool. So we drove home, listened to a little bit of Harry Potter 3, and got home. The kids made a little bit of money working after spending a lot at Legoland and trying to work it back up. We unloaded the car, and I got right into the office to do work.
Lunch, the marketing group, and what's next
I had a carton of beans from Whole Foods for lunch, because I want something that nourishes me, that fills me up, and that's easy. So I dumped some scoops of tahini in a bowl with it, put some Cajun seasoning on it, and just ate it. I also had three Lara peanut butter bars. My God, those are good. I usually have two of those first thing in the morning, and I didn't get to have any of them because of the hotel breakfast, so I was like, God, Lara bars. I had three of those. That's good.
Then I jumped into my open chat to catch up on my messages. Two more people joined my marketing group for $100 a month, which is awesome. It's like 11 people in there now, which made like $1,100 in a month, the first month of starting our group out, which is amazing. At the same time, it does take a bit more time to respond to the messages and to get to know the projects, and that means cutting out other stuff. I'm at capacity. I do calls, do the marketing group, do my ICP videos, and respond to messages.
But I've been thinking a lot today about what I want to do with my music. I make enough money with crypto, and I get enough views with crypto. To me, this music stuff, the first rule is that it has to be just fun. In order to be fun, it has to be playful, and that's an exploration. What does it look like to be playful? I think to be playful, we just need to not put specific boundaries on what it needs to be. Just show up, play around for a few minutes, and that's what I'm doing today. So we're going to try just playing around with the music. I've been doing lyric songs, instrumental songs, preset demos, trying to take an AI MIDI and turn that into songs, and a whole bunch of weird stuff, which is great. But bottom line, I want to just have fun. I want to just play. Almost everybody with their music tries to make this formulaic music that gives you a certain feeling and a dopamine rush, and I know I don't want to do that.
The music I actually want to make
I still have these Tupac songs I listened to decades ago that come into my head out of nowhere. And then there are the newer ones too. "Got your girl in the French, don't give a damn about what she think, got the club going up, made at least 3,000, on the boulevard, I've been working graveyard, shifts like every other weekend." I'm tired of that stupid song. It's like a virus stuck in my head. And I don't want to do that to other people. I want to make some music that helps you.
A lot of the music we listen to today is like junk food. It just gets stuck in your head, but it doesn't really do anything for you. I want music that does something for you, that you listen to it and you feel inspired, or you get some new ideas. I want to make music that's just playful and fun. Because to me, testing out a whole bunch of presets and trying to get the EQ just right and get the words exactly so, all of that, is not fun. So that part is good when it gets out of the way and I can just play.
Visiting my mom and the lift it gave both of us
I visited my mom tonight across the street, which was great. I hadn't seen her in a week, and I loved how much better she felt by the time I left. When I first got there, she was feeling kind of down. I'm empathic, and it's pretty easy for me to read people's feelings, especially when they're close to me. She was pretty down, a little irritable when we got there. And in just 30 minutes of hanging out with her and the kids, she clearly felt a lot better.
If you can get anything out of these vlogs, I'll say this: I gave my mom these vlogs too. So maybe I'll remember and maybe she'll watch some of them. I don't think she's watched most of them yet. But I try to talk in my vlogs as if anybody I'm talking about could watch them too. I try to act in my life in a way that, if everybody saw me, anything I do, everyone could view it and it would be fine.
We are actors on a stage
I believe we're essentially actors on a stage right now. There's a massive audience that's able to watch everything we're doing at all times. Even if you think you're in a room by yourself, the whole audience can see you whenever they want to. People alive, dead, and yet to be born. Our lives are but a stage. So to me, you can't truly be by yourself, because there's an audience.
And if you can't see the audience, think of it like being on stage. The actors on a stage often can't see the audience because the lights are in their eyes and it's dark. This reality is kind of like that. A lot of the time you can't see the audience, but you can know they're there. In that sense, my life is constantly a performance. I'm on stage all the time, whether I'm in my studio by myself or I'm in bed. I even think our thoughts are viewable. So imagine an audience that can watch all of this.
I have a friend who passed a year ago. He was born six months after me, and he was one of my best friends in college. He comes to me in my dreams often. I asked him what it's like being dead, and he told me it's a big reality. His reality is much bigger than mine. He's much more free to explore reality than I am when I'm awake and quote-unquote alive in this life. Although in my dreams, I get some of that same freedom.
It was really nice to tie all of that back to a little bit of reality. It's really nice to see how much hanging out with my mom cheered her up in like 30 minutes. And I felt good because of that too. In my experience, being generous and loving, or helping somebody feel better, helps not just the person but whoever participated, and it helps people observing it too.
Why I always give at least $20
Take giving a homeless person $20 on the street, for example. To me, that's at least what you should be giving a homeless person. If you've got it, give it. If you've got $20 in your wallet, give it to them. Some millionaire or billionaire giving a homeless person $20 isn't special. But if you're just a regular person, you should have $20 for somebody who's struggling bad enough to be on the street. If you were them, if you were that desperate, wouldn't you want somebody to give you more than a dollar or two before going home to their house with their car? To me, if I can't give at least $20, I don't really appreciate what I've got.
So in that scenario, when you see me give money to a homeless person, I always give them at least 20. And then you see that I feel good, they feel good, and someone observing it feels good. That's what's really cool. And it also works in reverse.
Negativity in the algorithms
I saw a post that Elon Musk wants to start down-regulating negativity in the algorithm, encouraging more positivity. I appreciate what he's trying to do with that, because unfortunately a lot of these algorithms reward negativity. I find I need to mute words like "shooting," because I know these things happen, I just don't want them in my face. It's a relatively rare thing that happens, and I don't need to be seeing it in some city far away from where it happened. I don't need to see it if it was in my city. I don't need to see it if it was next door. If it was next door and I wasn't home, it doesn't really concern me. Even if it was my house, if I didn't get hit and nobody else got hit, that is not a big deal either.
With that in mind, seeing all this negative stuff and watching all these violent images, it's like jumping into a Warzone game. It takes your energy down, it takes all your opponents' energy down, and the people watching it get their energy siphoned too. It's the opposite of what I experienced with my mom. Watching all these depressing, sad movies, the people who worked on it lose energy, the people watching it lose energy, and everyone observing it all happen does too.
At the same time, free speech does mean the algorithms might push negativity if that's what people want to click on and engage with. So it does get into a slippery slope. But it's Elon Musk's platform, and he can do whatever he wants to on it. I feel really good about that direction.
Getting my passion back and keeping it sustainable
I'm going to do a detailed staking tutorial soon. I'm glad I've got my passion back. I feel like I finally got my work lined up so beautifully. The times when my work has been really hitting right have been really special to me. Like when I was on Udemy and all my course sales were blowing up. Or on Facebook when I was doing those Warzone streams and you got hundreds of thousands of views and all kinds of money coming in. I love that, man. I love that.
And at the same time, I want to make this more sustainable. On Udemy and on Facebook, I kind of overclocked it. I went too hard. I put too much effort in, and it was never enough either. But what I've got now is enough. You all have paid me enough money. You all have joined enough of my open chat groups.
I've got like $2,500 of ICP sitting in there that I've made in the last month. And I'm asking myself, do I want to put that in now? Because I need to sell that for earned income for my business to pay tax on. Or do I want to let the price ride in the short term on ICP? The roof just got finished, so I owe them $9,900, and I'm going to go pay that this week. Then I have a couple thousand dollars in estimated taxes, and I've got $12,000-something in the bank. So maybe I'll take that ICP I've earned this week, since I have like $5,000 more of it that's almost locked, and just put it in the bank. At the same time, I hate selling ICP so cheap right when I'm talking about the value of accumulating it. But I essentially got my paycheck on there. You deposit your paycheck. I'm going to ask for somebody else's thoughts and advice on that.
Always asking for advice
I'm big on asking for people's advice, getting other people's opinions on every little thing I'm doing all the time. To me, you're not going to go wrong in life if you're constantly seeking other people's thoughts. Now, yes, you do need to have your own internal guidance, and I do need to have mine. But it really helps my own internal guidance to see a lot of other people's perspectives. Then I tend to get clear.
For example, I've asked a lot of people about the JBBJ meme coin I created, and whether I should create another meme coin. After everybody's opinions, ranging from "yeah, get that money, Jerry, do whatever it takes" to "no, stay away from that, don't touch it," my own thoughts became more clear. I want to go more toward "don't touch it." Stay away from that. It's nasty.
I'm so glad to be back home, and I think it's time to wrap this vlog up. I'm going to play around with the music now and listen to some more of Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. I missed listening to that for a couple of days. If you want to follow along with more of these, they all live in my Life playlist. I really appreciate your love and support, and I hope this is a positive part of your life. It's checkout time. We gotta go.