This is my journal entry from January 8, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
Awesome move-in day today. I'm so excited to tell you about it. I woke up for the last time at the place in my ex-wife's neighborhood, picked the kids up and took the kids to school. And after dropping them off, I came back to my new place to get on the computer and rent my truck. I chose a U-Haul truck downtown. And it's only $20 to rent it plus like a dollar and something a mile. And you refill the gas up too. So it should be under $50. I set the rental for noon and have a little snack here. Then I go to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that my sponsor is meeting me at today. We have a nice time there. And I talk about, again, how AA prepared me to have a divorce that was much easier than early sobriety. There's another girl that's just starting divorcing her wife, and I share after her about my experience with divorce, and a few other people do too. It's a really nice, warm meeting.
Then I head back to go get the truck. I stop at the new place real quick and get ready. Then I... Actually, no, I go back to the old place first to try and grab some shit real quick and then run it over to the new place before the U-Haul truck. So I've got everything ready. I get down and grab the truck. It's super easy. And then I get to work. A friend's not available until after three. So I take the moving truck straight to the old place. And I load everything I can in there, mainly a few nightstands. And then I go to my ex-wife's place, take apart the twin bed, load the twin mattresses and the beds for that into my truck along with my late father's headboards, get everything in there. Have a nice conversation with my ex-wife about moving on with our life. And at the same time, we're still connected. We still love each other. And this is just a new chapter of our family that doesn't include sex and finances tied together or being married, but does include love for each other and working together, which is really nice.
I drive the moving truck to the house, park it on the road, and walk everything in. I've got a good sweat doing that. Good workout. No need to do anything physical today. We're getting it in today. I make sure to have lots of little meals too instead of bigger meals because I don't want to slow down. I'm thinking that might be the way to eat, even though that guy in Metabolic Freedom encourages fewer meals. My body seems to like having smaller meals and not getting tied down with being overly full. After I unload the moving truck here, I start to just try and rearrange things, get set up and wait for my friend. And I have a little hummus to eat with celery and some of the crackers and a cucumber.
My friend tells me he's ready to go. So I drive up to meet him at his place and pick him up. We go to my ex-wife's place first to grab the dressers, which is all that's left there. She's already got her full bed set up, which is nice, so she'll be ready to sleep there. And it worked perfect for her that I took the twin beds out when she had time. We get the dressers loaded up quick. It's amazing. He's a former professional mover. It's just beautiful to watch how he thinks about moving things and how skillful he handles something like a hardwood antique dresser, loads it up by himself into a truck and doesn't even want me to help, so he can do it just right. He gets everything positioned in the truck. Then we go to the house in my ex-wife's neighborhood. We get the king bed in there, the table and chairs in there, the desk in there, and everything but the bed frame goes in there.
Which is actually perfect because I need to come drop him off in this neighborhood anyway. So he says to just toss the bed frame in there on the way back. We get everything loaded by 4.30 and are on the way to my place. So we're making great time. We pull up here and I try and pull up in the street, but he says, no, go around the alley. Go around the alley and it's a tight fit. I'm really glad I got a 10 foot truck, which is a small truck, but still, for driving, you know, down an alley, the 10 foot truck is perfect. It's nine feet high too. So you got to watch the clearance. I bumped some of the trees and bushes hanging out in the alley, which is pretty much unavoidable. He parks the truck so close to the telephone pole that it's gently leaning up against it, which leaves the alley clear for other people to drive by. We unload everything, which is the sweatiest thing I've done today.
He shows me how to get a hold of the dresser with one hand to balance and one hand for the main grip. We carry one dresser in, the other one he wheels in on a dolly, which was much easier for me, but the second one we carry in. He finds perfect places to put them in the house, and we get my king bed in the house as well. At just a little before 6, we've wrapped up and got everything loaded in the house, ready to sleep here tonight as soon as I set everything up. Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying my time with him today. It's great talking with him and hearing some of his stories. It's great for him to get out of the house. I've known him for years, and it's really nice to have this experience together. I could have asked people from AA to come over, but this is a perfect opportunity for time with him and to allow him to remember all his stories as a professional mover. I asked him what was the worst thing he moved before, and he said three dentist chairs, incredibly heavy expensive stuff on them, and he had to take them down three flights of stairs. Like god, that sounds miserable. Days like this remind me how much real time with people I care about means, and if you want that kind of connection, I'd love for you to be part of the Jerry Banfield Family.
I take him back to his place and drop him off and I love he has an open attitude about money. He's like, you know, whatever, whatever you feel is right, I'm sure it'll be more than whatever I'd ask. I have two hundred dollar bills in my wallet so I give him two hundred dollars for three hours of his time helping me move, which I feel is more than fair. Now, I could have hired little helpers for a couple hundred bucks for two people for two hours on U-Haul, and I think, did I give him too much? But then I'm listening to the book Happy Money as I drive away, and I load my bed frame up, and it's like the guy's... Ken Honda, the author, is talking about how he gives people more than they ask for. And it leaves a really good feeling and a really good karma. And I'm like, I feel great about giving him $200 for three hours of really valuable work. That means between him and the truck and the gas, the entire move is going to cost me $300. Plus, my ex-wife gave me all the beds I have in my house, which is enough to sleep the kids on and me.
At some point, I could have a girlfriend. We could all sleep in this house on the beds that my ex-wife gave me, which would probably be at least $1,000 to buy all those beds. So grateful. I've been thriving saying thank you so much. My God, thank you for this huge house. Thank you for the beds to sleep in. I go get the truck gassed up and dropped off at 645, so I avoid paying $20 extra for after-hours check-in. Then I drive up to a new discount grocery store near my house, and I want to check it out. I've been meaning to, and it's so close to my house. I'm like, tonight's the night to give it a try. I run into two people I know there.
The first one is an acquaintance from school who was really enthusiastic about Author in St. Petersburg. I talked to him for like 10 minutes outside. He asked me, is everything going all right? He tells me a little bit about what he's doing. I tell him that he said he doesn't have much time to read now. I'm like, well, if you have time to listen to audiobooks, my audiobooks are on Audible. And if your wife has a subscription, you can listen at no additional cost to the next three books in the series. So he's enthusiastic about that, and he's happy to see I'm doing well.
After that, I walk in, and I'm surprised how small the store is. It looked so much bigger. That's what she said. It looked so much bigger. And I get in there. I'm like, it's kind of small. Makes you really impressed with the fruit and vegetable section at a bigger grocery store. This place has like a really small section, but some of the things are dirt cheap. Like the German sauerkraut was like $1.50 or something. And I've been paying like four or five bucks for those at the regular grocery store. So I load up on German sauerkraut. I get plenty of fruit, strawberries, apples. I need to have all the stuff for the kids now since I'll be sending them to school. And they love when I pick them up and I have a nice... big bowl of fruit for them, especially since we're not getting fast food anything.
I see another guy I know from my yoga studio. I gave him my book I Was Famous on the Internet. He talks to me a little bit. I tell him that I'm going to a new yoga studio. I don't mention any kind of reason why. I'm just like, man, people have been saying it's cool, so I've been going there. He turns out he's been there a bunch of times as well. And then he lets me go. He says he needs to continue with his shopping. He probably talked to me for three or four minutes. But I end up feeling like, you know, he didn't like talking to me, feeling like he rejected me after he stopped in the store and had a conversation with me for a few minutes. And I realized I don't know what he's in the middle of. I don't know if he's got someone waiting at home, or he's trying to make his next video, or he's got an appointment to get to later, or, you know, he's about to start drinking for the night, or like, I have no idea what else he's enthusiastic about on Thursday night. It could be anything. It's 11, 11 p.m. as I'm recording this. How cool is that? But it's funny. I observe my thoughts and I'm like, okay. I throw on an audio book and move on.
I finish up Ken Honda's Happy Money book, which is fantastic. It's a great reminder that I do a lot of things right with money. And I'm saying thank you, thank you, thank you so much for the money I have. Thank you for the place to live. Thank you for the beds. Thank you for the landlords next door. Thank you for all of it. I get home from doing the grocery trip, and I have dinner right there, which ends up being... I've had four Larabars throughout the day. I've been hungry today. I've had four Larabars. I had a salad earlier, and I ate about a thing of hummus. I have some more hummus, and I get...
I eat three whole avocados and four bananas. I'm still hungry right now. I power through all that stuff with a little toasted sesame oil and salt on the avocados because fuck it, I forgot the soy sauce. Like one of the few things I still have to get in my house is the soy sauce, which I was going to put like an Asian avocado thing with sesame oil and soy sauce. I forgot half of that, but it turns out salt worked just as well. That's one of the big ingredients in soy sauce after all. So I put down that to give myself a nice full belly, but not too full. Then I get into the bedroom here to get to work on blacking the windows out because I want to get a good night of sleep in this bitch, especially my first night in here. And I need to do the blackout because it's so easy to get to the windows before I've got the bed set up.
So I butchered some of the blackout strips earlier, but I get it all right today. Everything looks awesomely blacked out as hell right now as I'm recording this in the bedroom. After getting all the windows blacked out, I set up the beds. And the kids' twin beds, two twin beds side by side, and my king bed fit perfectly in this room with my late father's nightstand he made for me in the middle of it. I mean, this is absolutely gorgeous setup. Gorgeous setup for a bedroom. I love it. It's got an air return in here too. Meanwhile, I'm listening to Ali Wong's special Single Lady, which is funny as hell. And I'm amazed how much overlap she has. She's talking about what a great relationship she has with her ex-husband and all her adventures dating. I'm like, this is some really nice validation right now. Like her experience and mine are overlapping quite a bit right here. How nice. If you're finding your own life overlapping with stories like this after a divorce, come share it with us in the Jerry Banfield Family.
After I get all that set up, then I'm getting ready to shower. I throw down some more whole foods real quick. I eat some sauerkraut. I had to get into that $1.50 German sauerkraut. That shit was good. This one's a little saltier than some of the other ones. And then right as I'm finishing getting the bed set up, I'm getting a door light blocker. You slide this thing under the door so it blocks the light that way, getting my lamp and putting the finishing touches on my setup. I'm like, you know what? You know what I should do? I should listen to this Kenny G album. It's called Breathless. My late father used to listen to it. It came out in 1992. Starts off with A Joy of Life, then the next song's Forever in Love. I listened to A Joy of Life last night. So I started off with Forever in Love. Now, when I first, my late father used to listen to this.
And I remember a year or two ago when I first listened to this album, I could only get one song at a time without sobbing and remembering my late father in grief. It literally took me four different times of going through the joy of life, forever in love, in the rain, and then sentimental. It took four different listens, and I cried every single time. And I listened to the joy of life yesterday to kind of calm down a bit, and I'm like, I'm good. I don't think we're going to need to do that tonight. But I put on Forever in Love and I started sobbing right away. I just started feeling so grateful. I'm like, look at this. In some ways, my life just got utterly destroyed with my career and my divorce and moving out. But look at this beautiful house I'm in. I love the neighborhood. Look at how much work, how healthy I am that I moved all this stuff in the house except...
The one truckload of things a friend helped me with, which would be the two dressers, the king bed, the desk, the entertainment center that I got for free, and the dining room table. Everything else, the other twin beds. And I helped him. He appreciated my help, said I was a good helper. I helped him. Like, thank God I'm this strong and this active that I can do all this stuff today. And I had energy for all of it. I didn't have a moment where I was too tired the whole day. I got all the blackout strips set up right. I love how functional I am. It's such a gift. Thank you for that. And I just felt so much love. I'm like, you know that last house was a transition house and I'm super grateful for it. At the same time I was like, the whole time I was in there, this is a short-term house. If you're starting a fresh chapter and want a sounding board for it, I'd be glad to talk it through with you on a private Zoom call.
And now I'm in this house. I'm like, I hope I'm here for a long time. Thank God for this house. Thank God for my ex-wife taking such good care of me, helping me out so much. And I've got like $20,000 in cash because I also took like a $12,000 cash advance from Discover. But it's on a balance transfer that I transferred to Citi, so I only paid 3% to borrow it for 18 months. Let's go. And I'm just thinking, like, thank you.
I have so much money right now. I have such a beautiful place to live. I'm desirable at least to some women. What a great life. I'm healthy. I have work I'm excited to do. What an incredible life. I shaved. I kept crying. Then I went to get in the shower and the fucking water flow out of that wand thing they have. I'm like this. Bitch is like fucking gently raining on me right now. Like I can barely feel the water. I can feel the time it takes from the water to hit my head and run down to my neck like this. I want to be fucking drenched by something. Tomorrow I'm getting my, what I've turned into a four gallon a minute instead of a two gallon shower head. I'm going to get that out of the last place along with the soy sauce. And we're going to get that set up properly.
I'm super grateful for my first shower here. Super grateful everything is set up for me to have a nice night of sleep. Man, what a gift. One of the things I remembered from Happy Money that he said today, that the guy he learned from had somebody who wanted to borrow money from him and start a business, and the guy said, I'll do it, but I want you to say thank you, arigato, 100,000 times first. I'm like, that's what I want to do. I want to say thank you 100,000 times. If I say thank you once a minute for an hour, that's 60. And even if I only manage to remember to do it 10 hours a day or maybe round up and we'll get 1,000 thank yous a day, that's 100 days. And I'll say thank you 100,000 times. And that's going to absolutely move everything in my life.
You know, that's the basic energy change, to say thank you instead of fuck you or I hate this or I don't like it. It's not right. Thank you. It's what you're grateful for you tend to get more of. Thank you. I'm going to wrap it up for tonight and see how my new night's sleep is. It's 1119. So happy for this day. Thank you. If anyone besides me actually listened to this, thank you.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.