This is my journal entry from January 4, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
The only thing I had on the whole calendar today was my AA meeting. I got up and my idea I had last night in bed, I guess really this morning, was that I should do a marketing letter. Get a letter inside an envelope, a letter that could really help someone, share all of my experience and ask for help. I think on the outside of the letter I would write 'help.' And on the inside, it would offer help in areas that I've had success in, like how I lost weight and kept it off, what I did to get sober, how I went through a divorce smoothly, my thoughts on money, et cetera. I'd share my experience, strength, and hope for someone. And then at the end of the letter, I'd ask for help. And I'd be like, hey, I'd love your help monetizing these things. I know there's plenty of money out there. I'm just not sure what details we need. Do I need a mastermind group where we meet up at my house? Or should I do one-on-one coaching, help you write books, consult with marketing, etc. And also be like, hey, this is who I'm looking to date, these are the things I need help with. And I think the best thing we could do for the world is make an attempt to try and help each other as best we can.
So I'm really excited about that letter idea, especially because it should only cost me like 20, 25 cents to put one of those little letter packets together, like five, ten pages front and back, put it in a six-by-nine envelope and just drop it on people's doors. I just really want to get out there to more people, man. I feel like that's often the difference, getting out there to more people. I want to start thinking, what can I do to help somebody else too? Can I drop something on somebody's doorstep that would change their life? Like my last letter, basically it didn't offer much to somebody. It just was kind of a sales pitch. I want something that really leads by example, offers help, could change somebody's life, get somebody thinking, and be a gateway to work with me. Getting out there to more people and actually helping them is what drives me, and that's the whole reason the Jerry Banfield Family exists, so come be a part of it if that resonates with you.
I got the drone and everything already. And it was a little foggy. My son called first thing in the morning at like 7.30 to ask about the drone. And since it was foggy out and wet, I'm like, why don't we wait a little bit? Well, then my daughter got some plans in the afternoon with a friend. So at around 10, I'm like, let's go to the park, kids. Let's use the drone. Let's use the new monster truck car. I pick the kids up at my ex-wife's house. I've got the drone and the car and everything's charged. We drive down to a park and it's perfect because I have a drone and a car. The kids can take turns. So my son's so excited to drive the car and my daughter's so excited to drive the drone. So I first get my son on the car. He has fun driving it all over. Then I get the drone set up and fly it up in the air myself to make sure I know how to use it. Then I pass the controller over to my daughter.
The drone lasts about 20 minutes in air. And my son figures out, based on the video we watched of the car, that he can actually take his monster truck in the water and it will swim. Like, this is pretty crazy. I was so surprised. But the truck has four-wheel drive and the wheels have treads. So in the water, even if the wheels are not touching the ground, the truck will essentially swim, which is really cool. My son got these other kids to notice him driving the truck in the water. So he had a couple of boys watching him and waiting their turn. Then the drone battery ran out. So I tried to land it, but when I pushed the landing button, it went into this automatic return from the takeoff point. And unfortunately, there were some trees between where we took off and where the drone was flying back to automatically land. I didn't realize it would go into this automatic landing so quick. I thought I had time from when the battery went low to fly it back or just land it where I was. Thus, the drone goes crashing into the tree and breaks off a little branch and falls all the way down onto the grass. Miraculously, none of the blades broke on the drone and the drone itself appears to be uninjured. I swapped batteries out.
I get the drone in the air again, and swap them out in the monster truck also and give my daughter the controls. Now my son gets his turn on the drone, and he does great. The drone says it's for ages 14 plus, but my son flies it around and has a great time with it, and there's no issues at all. Then I'm able to safely land it as the battery runs out. Meanwhile, my daughter's putting on a show for these now three boys that are over there watching her have the monster truck swim in the water like my son did. My daughter even is kind enough to share the remote with some of the boys and let them drive the car. And amazingly, the car does not go off to sea and die where they couldn't retrieve it. So we have a great time, spend a little over an hour out at the park. I bring the kids back home.
They both got money, so my daughter wants to shower and my son wants to take a bath to clean off. Meanwhile, my ex-wife's putting together dressers, because I am taking the dressers that she used the last few years since my mother moved in, so she's had these dressers three years, for the kids' clothes. They were the dressers my late father made for my brother and me when we were kids. Beautiful pine for my brother's dresser and mahogany solid wood dressers that have lasted over 30 years at this point. I am going to take these to my house, and since I need to get a moving truck anyway, I might as well take the furniture and move that to my house as well. My ex-wife ordered some dressers online, and she's working on putting them together. Thus, I figure I can be helpful and take the trash out. I take a bunch of trash and recycling out for my ex-wife.
And then after the kids are cleaned up, they want to play the game of life, which my ex-wife's been having lots of fun playing with them. We play the game of life and have a great time. It's a very close game. I decide not to go to college and just jump into a career, which ironically, I get the vlogger career fitting, right? Then my daughter just barely wins. My son gets second and I come in pretty close third. It literally came down to like who gave who money, but we tried to keep it kind of fair. After playing life, I feel like it's time to wrap up and head back to my place, which is a little bit before 1. It was a really nice morning with the kids and with my ex-wife, especially after my ex-wife and I had a nice talk last night before bed. It was great.
Then I go back to my house. All morning my nose had been running. Last night I had a really good cry before bed, and my nose had just been consistently running, and I'd been sneezing since then. In my experience, I wondered if some of it was the food from the vegan sushi place or if it was just all an emotional release. What I do know is I had a T-shirt, and off and on during the night I was wiping my nose and sneezing.
I get home a little after noon, and I'm thinking, should I eat or should I work out? When am I going to work out? I miss being able to do the yoga class that I wanted to go to. And I realized it's been a few days since I've lifted weights, so let's go to my gym. So I go to my gym and put in a hell of a weightlifting workout. I go all over the gym using all kinds of machines, free weights, all over the place. My preferred workout strategy for many of the exercises was to just do one or two sets and to do a wider variety of exercises so that I engage more muscles and more movements. Not looking to break muscles down all the way, just looking to stay functional. I run into three people I know from AA at the gym. One of them's an attractive woman. She's been through a divorce. I had a nice conversation with her and then moved on. Then a couple of them were other guys from meetings I talked with and enjoyed the conversation with as well.
I ended up spending almost an hour at my gym doing a weightlifting workout, which is about the longest weightlifting workout I've done in a long time. Feels really good to build my muscles and to see that I can still do the same amount of weights on some exercises that I could a decade or more ago. In fact, on some, I've gotten stronger. Like I did the leg machine where you sit down and your legs are spread out and then you crunch them together, I think that's the abductors. I was able to do the maximum weight on that machine, which is 180 pounds. When I first sat down, I tried to do it and I was like, oh, that's too heavy. So I went down to like 120. But then I worked my way up to 180 and I was so proud. I was able to do like five or six reps at 180, which is awesome. That's literally more than I weigh. And I'm glad those muscles have been strengthened by doing all the one-leg balances in yoga, because you have to engage those there.
After I got home a little after 1, I felt great about my workout. And I listened to a book on Audible, which I listened to most of today, although I started it yesterday. It's called True Wealth: Nine Lessons from a Grandfather on Happiness and Abundance by Ken Honda, who's from Japan. And it was a beautiful book. I really enjoyed the lessons in it. One of the things that stuck out to me was to think of, how can I add happiness to somebody else's life? I often am thinking about how can I get what I want, but that often backfires because sometimes the strategies to get what I want don't match what I could do to make someone else happy.
Like I was thinking in the shower tonight, maybe if I go to bars or dance clubs, I can meet women there and get what I want, and maybe even find a woman to be my second wife. But then I'm thinking, would those be places where I could help somebody else have a better time? No, that's ridiculous. When I think, how can I make somebody else's life better, the letters that I sent in the mail before were an example of, I don't think those letters made anyone's life better. But if I could put a letter on somebody's porch that they'd read and it'd make their life better and add happiness to their life, that's what I want to do. And I want to build a business around, can I find a creative way to try and help somebody have a better life? And I'm sure from there, all good things will flow. Building something that genuinely makes someone's life better is what I want most, and if you'd like to build that kind of life with people who get it, I'd love for you to come build it with us in the Family.
After having a nice big lunch and listening to True Wealth, I then went to work editing my memoir book, which will cover basically everything before Daily Autobiography, with the working title Automatic Escape. But I think we're going to do a different title than that. I don't know if I'm feeling a title that's Automatic Escape. I spent hours editing the book. Then a friend, who used to be a professional mover, texted me that he was able to come look and assess the move right now if I was available. So I said, yes, please. So he came over to my house, looked at the stuff I've got here, and then went to my ex-wife's house and looked at the stuff there. He thinks a smaller medium truck should be able to easily do it. And he said he should be ready on Thursday, which is great. I'll have a few days to prepare.
I ordered some blackout curtains and a chair, which to me are two of the main things I need to be set up there since I don't have a couch that I'm going to take over. And the blackout curtains, we need to get the bedroom blacked out. I just ordered a couple of blackout panels. I spent some time researching and it seems like the best thing I could do is get these blackout window privacy film coverings that you put water on to stick onto the window. So I ordered enough of those to cover a couple of windows. I'll test that, and if it works good then I'll do the other couple of windows and hopefully be ready before I'm even sleeping there.
After a friend came over to assess the move, initially he said he might be able to do Tuesday, so I immediately just start throwing littler stuff in my car and driving it over to the house. I'd rather put as few things in a moving truck as possible and keep the moving truck just for bigger things I can't put in the car. So I spend a little over two hours running back and forth to my new house. There was a moment where I stood in the house and I just felt the energy of the people that have been in there and all the good times I'm going to have in there. I'm like, thank you. This is so awesome. I'm really grateful for this house. And I'm sure the funds will continue to pour in to support it.
My ex-wife sent me the last of the marriage settlement. Now it's my turn to sign over the car and the house. That money has paid all my bills though, that's been everything I've paid for: rent, security deposit. So 5,400 of that is security deposit and rent for the new place, plus several thousand in rent for the existing place. But that's also everything else. I've spent most of it already. I'm really excited to see what I'm gonna do to make money.
I get to the AA meeting tonight after running to the house a few times, and I tell one of the guys, who moved recently from up north with his girlfriend, my business idea. He thinks it's exciting and he's working on starting his own business as well. I get into the meeting and sit down and the girl next to me gets up immediately as soon as I sit down and moves where she's sitting. So I give her a little shit. I'm like, wow, you didn't want to sit next to me, huh? Something to kind of tease her. And she ends up sitting right in front of me anyway. What's funny is, she has her hair up, and I don't even recognize her. She clearly knows me, and then when she puts her hair down, I remember, and she tells me her name. I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, I've seen you at at least 10 meetings. There's a couple of really hot girls at the meeting tonight, and I make sure to share so I can get them to know me. Whether they like me or not, they'll know.
My name is Jerry Banfield. I got a laugh tonight when I said that one of the things that's important is to have a feeling that you're part of something bigger, which a lot of people are lacking. And then a lot of people call that God, which makes it too esoteric and hard to imagine. Like to me, I said, there's all these cells in my body and I'd like them all to joyfully know that they're a part of Jerry Banfield. And that's how I feel with this body being a part of earth. This body is a cell. This human body is a cell in the body of earth. And we are all part of something huge. And we're all valuable. Like all the cells in my body are valuable, and I count on them to do their roles to keep all the good times rolling.
We had a nice meeting. I laughed and smiled, and I shouted out when they read How It Works tonight. One of the guys was reading it and he left a nice clear pause for me to shout out the part where some of us exclaim that it sounds like too tall an order, I shouted that out loud. And the girl in front of me who moved her seat shook her head. And I'm like, that's fine. It's okay if you want to shake your head. I don't know what she's shaking her head for. Maybe she likes it, maybe she doesn't. What the hell do I know?
After the meeting, I talked with three of the boys. Had a good chat, talking all kinds of shit, laughing, cracking each other up. Felt really good. And I appreciated that I was probably the one laughing the most. And that's a big success, to be finding so much humor in life. I talked to one guy about dating a lot. And I realized, one thing I know that works really well dating is to put out an energy towards women that says, I love you, I appreciate you, you're the greatest. And lately, I haven't been doing that. I've been putting out this 'fuck you' energy. And that's been putting women off for sure. So I'm going to make sure to turn that back on. That's how I got that girl at yoga to get such a crush on me, I put that energy out towards her. The same energy I often was putting out towards my now ex-wife. I put that energy out and it got her attention. So we're going to get some more attention. If you're working on your own dating life and want to talk it through with someone who's been in it, I'd be glad to dig in with you on a private Zoom call.
I was driving home, I drove over to my new house to drop my last load of stuff off. And I was driving home like, do I want to call my mother? I almost called my mother, because I haven't talked to her much in the last week. But I was thinking about Derek Sivers's book that I finished, Hell Yeah or No. It's like, is calling my mother a hell yeah? And it's like, no. It's not a hell yeah at this point. I do miss talking to my mother a little bit. But it's also such a drag talking with her sometimes, especially when she's in a fucking mood and all angry. She easily could reach out to me and be like, hey, you haven't talked much in a week, are you okay, what's going on with you? She expects me to just call her and keep up with her. And yeah, I feel like it's kind of mean in some ways that I haven't seen her for a week. I went over there the last couple of times and I felt worse after. I'm tired of hanging out with people sometimes. Hanging out with the boys felt great tonight. Going to see my ex-wife and the kids felt great. Just too many times I go over to my mother's house and I feel worse. Especially if I'm in a good mood, it's hard to go over there with my good mood. I swear sometimes I just get myself in a bad mood so I can go over to her house.
So I didn't call her. I drove home. And after getting some gas, showered. And it's 11.16 right now. Kids are going back to school tomorrow. So I'm going to wrap up and head to bed. And if anything can motivate me to keep these short, it's realizing that for every minute I dictate, it takes about a minute to edit. And I think I'm probably at least 15 or 20 hours behind on my editing right now. So yeah, if I could just catch up on the editing, that would be great.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.