I used to tell my life story in pieces, and it never felt like one thing. Now I see it as one long arc, and I can look at it with respect instead of regret. My short answer is this: I was a kid who got a lot of good and a lot of hard, I made choices as an adult that pulled me down, and getting sober in Alcoholics Anonymous in 2014 is the turn everything after depends on. I see it as a story I am still telling, and I want to tell it straight.
What I believe most strongly is that the hard parts were shaped partly by things done to me and partly by my own choices, and only the second part is mine to change. In January 2026 I wrote that I got here through my own choices and my own beliefs, and that it is a place with ups and downs, negatives and positives, not a place that is right or wrong.
The story starts before I can remember it. I was born in 1984 to parents who met at a racetrack in Michigan, where my dad was a harness horse jockey and my mom was a track veterinarian. I say I remember choosing them, and you can decide what to make of that. What I know for sure is that we moved constantly, from Japan to Alabama, Texas, Germany and Virginia. The darkest part started in Germany when I was 13, while my parents fought more than ever. You can read the early years in my life story from the racetrack to college.
College is where the mess started. I had never drunk before the University of South Carolina, and by the end of it I was an alcoholic who had wrecked my car and almost died. I became a police officer at that same university, which I called my dream job, and my drinking blew it up. The 2019 excerpt from my memoir Officer Banfield is the most blunt account of those years I have written, and it does not spare me.
Two things changed the course of my life: getting sober and building the business. I met my wife in 2011, started my online business that same year, and we married in 2012. My dad died in 2014. After I prayed for help and went to Alcoholics Anonymous, I got sober, and I have stayed sober since. The business took off that year too, and I was one of the top 10 Udemy instructors in 2015 and 2016. The climb is told in From Police Academy to My First Online Million.
Later I blew up on Facebook gaming, and then Facebook canceled me after a post went viral. YouTube has been the most supportive place I have built. A November 2025 look at my resume helped me see the whole career at once, including over a billion views online that I chose to delete. Seeing it laid out, I felt proud instead of like I had wrecked everything. That moment is in Seeing My Life's Whole Arc With Respect.
The hardest recent chapter is my divorce. Alone in a new house in Crescent Lake, I had to admit that I really need to love myself through the choices I made, because I got here through them. That is the heart of I Got Here Through My Own Choices. I also had to accept that the old family life is gone, as I wrote in There's No Going Back to Fourth Grade. More on the separation is on my divorce hub.
Two older pieces show the same thread. In Remembering Christmas in Pain and Experiencing the Joy of Holidays from 2022, I wrote that arguing with the past only keeps you stuck, and that the better question is what future you want to build. In Going Back to Comfort My Eight-Year-Old Self I describe a life coaching session that took me back to being eight, locked in my room by my father, and how I hugged that boy.
Read in order, the posts show how my view changed. In 2019 the drinking years were told bluntly and without softening. By 2022 I was using those hard years to help other people. By late 2025 I could look at the whole career with respect, and by January 2026 the focus was on owning my choices.
Below this opening you will find a contents list and then all eight posts in full, as I originally published them. If you have a chapter of your own that you want an honest outside read on, you can get a personal video review from me at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- My Life Story: From the Racetrack to College (June 17, 2026)
- There's No Going Back to Fourth Grade (January 20, 2026)
- I Got Here Through My Own Choices (January 3, 2026)
- Seeing My Life's Whole Arc With Respect (November 25, 2025)
- From Police Academy to My First Online Million (October 30, 2025)
- Going Back to Comfort My Eight-Year-Old Self (September 2, 2025)
- Remembering Christmas in Pain and Experiencing the Joy of Holidays (December 10, 2022)
- How I Used People and Called It a Life (February 9, 2019)
My Life Story: From the Racetrack to College
From my video published June 17, 2026.
My friends, here is the life story of Jerry Banfield, the early years. I was born in 1984 to my mother and father, who met at the racetrack. My dad was a harness horse jockey at the time, where he raced horses sitting in a cart behind them in Michigan. My mother was the track veterinarian when they met. At the time, my mother was already married, and my father had already been divorced once. My mother went through her divorce and got it finalized right around the time she got pregnant with me. My father had been divorced a few years from his first wife, with whom he already had two kids, and he saw being with my mother as a second chance at a life with a family, one of redemption.
I knew this. I actually remember choosing my parents. This is a memory I've been gifted recently. I'm almost ten years sober now, and I've really opened my mind. I've done a lot of hypnotherapy and read lots of books on reincarnation. My mind is very open, and one of the memories I've been gifted with is the memory of choosing my parents. When I chose them, my mother was in an abusive relationship with her first husband, and my father was an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict, a gambler, and a horse jockey with very unreliable income. I looked down at the two of them getting together and thought, this is where I would like to enter this reality. This looks like it'll be a really fun ride. I can help these two as parents, and they will give me a perfect stepping stone, a launch pad into this reality myself. And they did exactly that.
My father, in the midst of his addiction, and my mother, in giving birth to me, gave up her time. She gave up being a track veterinarian so she could actually have the time to take care of me and not be on that crazy schedule working in the middle of the night, taking care of horses at the racetrack, which was not a place for a woman with a baby. With no income of her own and my dad providing none either, my mom moved in with my dad's family, including his mother and his sisters, into the house my grandfather built. My dad and all of his brothers and sisters grew up in Farmington, Michigan, and this is where I was a baby. My grandfather, who worked at the racetrack, would come home and throw me up in the air in the middle of the night. I had great affection for him. My grandfather and my mother were my main people when I was born.
Off to the Army
My father was kicked out of the house around Christmas the year I was born. He went down to Texas to try to live with his aunt and uncle and sober up, and my mom was left wondering what exactly to do with this baby and how to provide for him. The best option she could find was to go into the military. The Army was very enthusiastic to have a veterinarian with actual experience, and they let her come in directly as a captain. My mom went down to San Antonio to do her basic training, where my father met her at the airport. To celebrate getting his life back together and her coming into the Army, he immediately started drinking again, at which point my mom really got to begin learning about alcoholism.
After San Antonio and Fort Sam Houston for basic training, my mom moved to White Sands, New Mexico, where she was assigned. My dad quit his drug addiction in New Mexico one night just by praying to God and swearing he would do anything to never do the drugs again. Some of my first memories are in New Mexico, aside from remembering being born and choosing my parents. I remember riding my dog. My mom had this big hundred-pound dog, and I remember getting on his back. I loved the feeling of being on top of a dog when I was one year old.
When I was about two, my brother was born. He was unexpected, a surprise. My mother really wanted to have me, and my brother was a surprise they were not prepared for, but very happy to receive. My mother says the best day of her life was the day I was born, and my brother wishes he hadn't asked her that question when he did. My brother was a C-section, so my mom didn't have the same kind of experience with him as she did with me.
Japan, Alabama, and Texas
My parents then moved to Japan, as my mother was assigned to Yokota Air Base for her work as a veterinarian. A lot of my first memories are on Yokota Air Base, going to kindergarten, going to the Bear Store in Japan, and to Disney, and to the Hacienda Mexican restaurant on base. That's one of my mom's favorite times of her life, and I have very fond memories of childhood. That was also where some of my earlier traumatic memories began, where I started learning to be afraid and to feel awkward and weird.
Then, when I was six, we moved to Auburn, Alabama, where my mom was doing her master's. When you are a veterinarian, you do your master's after you get your degree as a doctor of veterinary medicine, so she studied really hard and passed the boards. I went to elementary school in Auburn, Alabama, which was interesting because they were still doing desegregation there. I lived in a mostly Black and college-kid neighborhood, so me and all the other Black kids got bussed over to this white school, which was a fun experience. I loved that elementary school. I had a lot of great friends there, and we'd always play at recess. I remember we'd get 20 or 30 of us at recess just playing football games. My best friend at the time was in a wheelchair, and he'd quarterback from the wheelchair. We had a great time in elementary school. That was also where I got in the worst trouble I'd ever been in. My parents grounded me for somewhere between a week and a month. There's debate now, because I was just totally out of control as a kid, fighting my parents and messing with them constantly and trying to push against their control. My dad tried to really lock me down, and it worked to some degree for a while.
Then we moved to San Antonio, Texas, when I was in elementary school, around fourth grade. I loved San Antonio. We went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas and SeaWorld all the time. That was one of the most fun parts of my entire childhood. My dad's dad, my grandfather, passed away in 1994, right after we moved to Texas. For years, my dad was determined he was going to give my brother and me the best childhood possible.
The Darkest Part of Childhood
Then the darkest part of my childhood started. My mom had an officer who was harassing her at work, and to get away from him, she took a command in Germany, got promoted to lieutenant colonel, and got a unit there. For some reason, everything went downhill when we went to Germany. I was 13 when we moved, and I was hitting puberty and feeling really uncomfortable with myself and my body. My mom started having chronic headaches all the time and really wild, violent mood swings. My brother and I had all these friends in San Antonio, and we left them all behind. I started to get really lonely, got really heavy into video games, and became kind of withdrawn at school. My mom and dad started fighting at levels way higher than ever before. That was a darker, scary time.
Then we moved to Virginia, back to the USA. My childhood was pretty nice the way I look at it today. I went to a really nice high school in Virginia. Then all my college plans got screwed up. I was going to do ROTC, but the University of South Carolina was the only place I applied to with an ROTC program where I had signed a letter of intent to go. I had been set on Virginia Tech, but I stayed overnight at their ROTC and it was horrible. It was like going to West Point. So I decided to take the only backup option I had and go to the University of South Carolina.
College and the Start of the Mess
I remember being a military brat who had lived all over the world. I guess this is going to be a life story in 20 minutes, because we're about halfway through. So we'll make it a life story in 18 minutes or something. When I first drove down to the University of South Carolina, I remember thinking I had really screwed up. How could I go to this hick, backwards, redneck place? But I quickly got used to it and felt at home there, and I made some really good friends I still talk with today.
After my parents had kept me in control and on a short leash at home, college was a complete shift. I had never drunk. My dad got sober in 1990, when I was six years old, and he never drank again. I never drank until I went to college. At home, my parents had strict bedtimes and stuff like that. When I went to college, it was like, I'm going to stay up until seven in the morning playing video games, Axis and Allies. I had gotten almost all A's through all of school, except I'd taken four or five AP classes my senior year. Then I started playing this video game, World War II Online, and I got way, way into it. Some of my grades suffered, because for the first time I stopped doing my homework and I stopped caring as much about school after I got accepted into college.
At the University of South Carolina, my life, which had been pretty smooth and controlled by my parents, started to get real messy and nasty, especially internally. I had felt pretty good about myself and loved myself up until I went to college, although there were certainly a few things here and there. But then I started drinking. Then I started downloading all this music, first on things like LimeWire. That snowballed into downloading movies, which snowballed into downloading adult movies, and then watching all of those things along with all the drinking. We would do all this crazy stuff in college, which I'll elaborate on with more stories in the future. By the end of college, I was an alcoholic. I had wrecked my car. I had almost lost my job. I had almost died. I had thrown up while unconscious, passed out face down. I hadn't drunk a drop when I went to college, and I came out an alcoholic, with a bunch of self-hatred, all these secrets, and a girlfriend. I went to college thinking I'd be an engineer in the Army, but after two years...
Doing ROTC at the University of South Carolina, drinking and playing video games and chasing girls became much more important than going in the military. Halfway through college I decided I would switch to criminal justice, because crime really interested me and I thought it would be fun to be a police officer. I couldn't stand the idea of ever doing a boring office job. Out of college I took a bunch of crappy little jobs first, like door-to-door sales and some insurance billing, that kind of thing.
Then I got a job as a correction officer, which was one of the scariest jobs I've ever had, working in a prison. I got physically ill from the stress of the job multiple times. By the end of it, though, I had outlasted almost everyone in my demographic. Most of the young white males who started quit within a day or two of their first shift. I made it eight months, and then I got a job as a police officer and went to the police academy.
While I was in the police academy, my girlfriend dumped me, and I sank into one of the lowest mental states I'd ever been in. I tried to get sober at the time and ended up relapsing. Then I got what to me was my dream job. I became a police officer at the University of South Carolina, where I'd gone to undergrad. That was a dream job. It was one of the best paying jobs in policing in Columbia, South Carolina, and my drinking ended up blowing that job up, even though I did well while I was actually at work.
The decision that sent everything downhill
One of the more pivotal decisions I remember making there was this: should I chase the dispatcher, or should I focus on being a corporal? I decided I didn't really care about the job that much. I wanted the dispatcher. So I got the dispatcher, and then everything went downhill from there. I ended up moving home with my parents in 2009, and that's where my alcoholism got the ugliest and the craziest. I have lots more stories about that period coming in the future. I did one telling of it on my original channel, but I'll be breaking it down into smaller segments in the Jerry Banfield autobiography.
Moving back home with my parents is actually where my life really got on track. One reason I moved home was that I saw my dad starting to have chest pains, and I realized he was going to die fairly soon. I figured I'd better spend more time with him, and I'd better meet my wife. My dad was the person I was closest to in the world. He was the person I called when I was a police officer, in the depths of my alcoholism and self-hatred, and told him I couldn't stand to live anymore. I felt safe opening up to him about those things. He helped me and he understood me.
After moving home, I lost a bunch of weight, got healthier, and started going to the gym. I got into grad school at the University of South Florida, moved there about a year later, and then met my wife three, four, five months after I moved to start my master's degree. I met my wife and everything was going great.
Meeting my wife and starting online
My wife unleashed this giant wave of inspiration in my life. I started my first YouTube channel in 2011, just a few months after meeting her. I started my business online that same year, after I met her. I moved in with my wife just seven months after we met, pretty suddenly, ditching my lease at just the perfect time to get out of it before the next school year started. I had never lived with a woman before.
I'd had a great first year at the University of South Florida, and I was under the delusion that my drinking would be okay because I'd left that old, crazy police officer life behind. But once I moved in with my wife, the drinking became a front-and-center issue again. It was right in her face, and she couldn't stand it. So I went through these on-and-off periods of sobriety for a few years.
My wife and I had some fantastic times. We started dating in 2011, got married in 2012, and did our honeymoon in Vail. We had season passes to Disney and went a bunch of times. We had season passes to Universal one year. We ate out several days a week, we'd go to movies, and we did so many fun things together. We really enjoyed our time. I managed to string together periods of sobriety in there too. I was sober about six months one time, and several other months at various points.
Getting sober and building a business
Then my dad died in 2014, and my drinking started to get really ugly. I prayed to God: please, I'll do whatever it takes to get sober. After that I went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I've been sober ever since. My life has been absolutely fantastic since then.
I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, and my online business started to take off in 2014. I got to be one of the top 10 Udemy instructors in 2015 and 2016. Then I got banned from Udemy, basically for being a loud mouth, obnoxious, and talking a bunch of junk about them and making them look bad. They made up an excuse to ban me even though I wasn't violating any of their policies. I'd made very sure not to, because I figured I could run my mouth and say whatever I wanted as long as I followed the rules. It turns out that's not how it works. These platforms can just get rid of you for any reason.
Then I got into gaming and streaming a lot. I got popular streaming League of Legends on YouTube, and that was one of the things that blew my first YouTube channel up. I got into crypto and became one of the top crypto YouTubers in 2017 and 2018. I got heavy into gaming, quit gaming for a while, and then kind of bottomed out with crypto in 2018, getting disgusted with everything and taking all my profits out. After that my business just sucked and went downhill. It was a rough stretch of doing all this stuff that didn't work in my business for a few years, hitting bottom at the end of 2019, really wishing I could turn everything around, and nearly declaring bankruptcy after all that earlier success.
During this time, my wife and I had my daughter, and then my son as well. My business has been something I've really been focused on, honestly obsessed with, ever since I got sober, carrying my message and helping people online.
Where my life is now
Then in 2020, everything turned in my favor, because people were locked at home and didn't have anything better to do than watch me play games on Facebook. I blew up on Facebook gaming and became a Facebook partner, one of the very top streamers. Then I had a similar issue to the Udemy one. I ran my mouth as much as I possibly could, one post went viral, and Facebook decided to cancel me over it. Now I'm live streaming on Twitch, and I've found my home on YouTube. YouTube has proven to be the one place I've created that's been the most supportive since I started.
Today I'm a full-time YouTuber and Twitch streamer. This is what I do every day. I go to yoga almost every day, and I'm at AA meetings most days. I'm there with the kids and my wife every day. My mother lives across the street now, and I'm as healthy as I've ever been. I love my life. I'm really proud of my life story, and I'm really excited to see what happens next. If you want to follow more of these stories as I share them, you can find them in my Life playlist.
This was going to be my life story in 10 minutes. But now this is my life story in 20 minutes, as a part of my autobiography.
There's No Going Back to Fourth Grade
Originally published January 20, 2026.
This is my journal entry from January 20, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I love the doubleheader days as I look at it where the kids wake up at my house and go to bed at my house. There's only usually one of these a week so far. And we had a really nice time. The kids woke up here and we took a nice hour to get up and get off to school. They got to school and are looking forward to seeing me after school with my ex-wife planning to come over, bring the dog and go to the dog park as well as my mother coming. I went straight home to try and do a little bit of work before I then went to work out at my gym. I saw a woman who works at my gym was there at the desk and she smiled, like laughed when she saw me say hi. And then I talked to her a little bit before I left. And it seems like she's pretty into me. I'd like to figure out how to see if we could take things to the next level. But not sure how to do that right now. But I like her. And it'd sure be nice to see if there's anything else there. After going to the gym, I thought I was going to shower. But I didn't even hardly work up a sweat working out today.
I went home and then went to see a friend for our massage trade. I had listened to her podcast this morning, talking about where her partner, a friend's partner, and a previous kind of lover, I guess, or platonic friend where boundaries got blurred, an acquaintance of hers, she had both of them on her Luminators podcast, which I just listened to, so we'd have lots of material for conversation. So we had a great conversation talking about all the material from her podcast. One of the main points I was going in on was semen retention, which I talked about back in Author in St. Petersburg, which I guess is too much for some people. But I think semen retention is ridiculous, and it's something that's not natural, that screws the body up, that is one of those kind of cultish, sabotage-y practices of deprivation that can really screw men up. So I'm very much against it. However, I do acknowledge we all have different ways we're designed. While most of us have pretty similar bodies that we all eat, we all defecate, and we have sexual functions and stuff, perhaps some people's bodies do function differently. What it seems like to me is there's a lot of toxic narratives that men have got wrapped into with semen retention. And yet what I observe usually is screwed up and not properly flowing, which makes sense, right? Anything like that that requires willpower to me is not worth doing.
Like, do you think a breastfeeding mother would use a narrative that, oh, the baby's just sucking all the energy out of me, that I should withhold my breast milk from the baby? My ex-wife got mastitis a couple of times because she was pumping instead of having my daughter breastfeed because of the difficulties that came up with that. And when you don't drain the breast properly for breastfeeding, you can get mastitis where things get screwed up because all the milk's not getting drained. And I look at it the same way, in my opinion, which this is really all my motherfucking opinion while we're at it. I hope my son never gets talked into some stupid shit like semen retention by dumbass videos online from self-proclaimed experts who talk about how great it is. Ridiculous. I tried it myself for 10 days and my body was fucked up. Like my back went out. Because my energy was not flowing properly. And like guys are just trying to push their way through things like this. And it's like, God damn it, stop that.
A friend also encouraged me to think about a woman I'd been talking to and to send her another message and to follow up because my friend seemed to be identifying a lot with her. And I wouldn't say as much taking her side, but empathizing with her. She was talking about, like, extractive, you know, you don't want a situation where it's extractive. I'm like, and I said, look, what does she have to offer me? Sex? Companionship? Like, what? She doesn't have money to offer me. She doesn't have a place for me to live. She doesn't have any money to, you know, help me work. I'm like, now she can't help me have any kids. Now let me see what I could offer her. Like I can offer her sex also and women value sex. I can offer her a place to live. I can offer her money, both in terms of paying the rent and giving her money to spend. And we could work together on a business. So the way I look at it, I have much more value that could be extracted out of me from her than the other way around. It's so silly how, again, I swear to God, people watching this Instagram shit all think the same fucking way, as if, you know, men wanting women to have sex is extracting value. It's like, well, how about we exchange value? How about that? Like, just, yeah, damn that, ugh.
And then she was talking about, you know, women need to feel safe. I'm like, yeah, but women also want to feel a sense of adventure. Like if safety was all that was desired, I don't think most women would ever date or put themselves in a position to be approached by a man. But part of what's fun dating a man is a sense of adventure. And with me, all this bullshit about women, you know, I need to be safe. Like, you are safe. Look at the goddamn statistics. This is the safest period, the safest time we've probably ever seen in history to be a woman. It's safe, all right? And I realize men are bigger and some men have done some awful things, but most men are not doing those awful things. And this culture screws up, you know, with the emphasis on, oh, women need to be safe. It's like, fine, you just ruined the adventure. All right, why don't you just hold my hand and make out with me and be intimate when you're ready and I won't make any advances. I won't ask you out. I won't get your phone number. And there goes your sense of adventure. No more adventure for you. You're perfectly safe. You create your own adventure. Like that's where all this shit leaves me. It's like, you know what? If you want me, I got a lot of value that you could extract. And then I've got money, at least for now, and a place to live. And you know, I got value. You want it, you better come and get it. It's a balance in life. Like you want safety, you trade a sense of adventure. You want adventure, that means surrendering some safety because when you have too much safety, it ruins the adventure. Sometimes the best adventures are dangerous ones. So my friend and I, we had a bit of an intense conversation. It was nice. And I helped her out with her book a little bit. If you have a book in you and want help getting it out of your head and into the world, that is one of my favorite things to work on with someone, so schedule a private call with me and bring it to our call.
Then I went to pick the kids up. I brought the kids home. I thought my mother was going to come later. But my mother got to the Crescent Lake Park at 4. My ex-wife got there at 3.30. So we had my mother and my ex-wife together and the kids again. My son had one emotional outburst after another. It was a tough day for my buddy. And he was just all over the place having a hard time. But, you know, today I have some empathy with him. At the same time, you know, trying to keep him moving. Like, hey, you know, it's just, you're feeling emotions. It doesn't have to be any reason or any story or anybody did anything. You're just feeling emotions. You're feeling frustrated. You're feeling angry. You're feeling helpless. I get it. It's just emotions. It'll pass. We brought the soccer ball and then our football. And a kickball. And we lost one of the balls. My son kicked the kickball by me. And it went into the lake. That was one of the last breakdowns. But I get it. Life's hard. I remember as a baby one time, I had this insight that he was just so frustrated. It seemed like nobody understood him. And he didn't understand why it was like that. He expected people should understand him easier.
I had a real nice time talking to my mother. It was so nice, she spent almost three hours, two and a half hours with us. It was so nice to have this time outside with her while the kids could run around. It was great. Then when I was taking the kids home I was thinking maybe we should go over to her house once a week but I'm gonna think about that a bit more before acting on it. When we got home I got the kids food and we went to the store, had a great time with them there. Thankfully, my son had got all his emotions out already. We just purely had a good time. We bought some more noodles at the store and they looked through the toy section, didn't even get anything. I left them by themselves in the toy section and I went to get the food meanwhile. Then we went across the street to the other store. Great. The two stores right next to each other, got the burritos, came home.
And then the kids read and had their dinner. And they went to bed at nine. It was so great to see them put themselves to bed. They were tired. So they put themselves to bed, which is often the opposite of what happens at my ex-wife's house. They asked me to get ready and wind down. They got in bed at nine. I sang to them and then I wasn't very tired yet and I had forgot I needed to shower because I hadn't showered after the massage. So I ended up showering and shaving and cut my nails and stuff. And then I got in bed a little before 10 and they fell asleep while I was in the shower. So it was a beautiful day with the kids. I'm so grateful for it. Super, super thankful for everything that's lined up to have this time with the kids like this. I reflected with the kids that, in some ways, yes, I do have some grief and just miss that old life we had together, but at the same time, that's normal. Like when, you know, my daughter's in fifth grade, there's no going back to fourth grade. Fourth grade's gone. And then fifth grade will be gone soon. And life's like that. It's just constantly one progression to another, to another. You constantly move from one thing to another and there's no going back.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
I Got Here Through My Own Choices
Originally published January 3, 2026.
This is my journal entry from January 3, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I had a nice morning and was really excited about all my plans for the day. I went to my yoga studio for the 10am yoga class and I could barely get in there. It was so crowded. I dropped $10 for a donation and enjoyed the class. Got sweat all over my mat. I hollered at a girl that was crossing the street who was in class with me, she stood out because she was wearing socks, and she called back a couple of things. I was like, eh, I'm not going to bother trying to do more than just say something real quick. I'm going to move on.
Then I went home and had a nice big salad, and right after I got done eating lunch and I was about to work on my books, my ex-wife called, and my son said he wanted to come over and play. My son came over and he was really excited to play the Harry Potter Hogwarts battle game. We had so much fun. We whooped the Death Eaters' butts too. We beat them. They didn't even win the first location. Every villain got knocked down quickly. My son and I had so much fun.
Then I took my son down the street and my daughter got ready to go with my ex-wife, and we all went to look at my new house in Crescent Lake and get the keys. I'm really grateful my ex-wife and the kids love the house. My ex-wife said she loves the neighborhood and it's got a great vibe. She likes the owners, and there's so much space there. I could have a pool table, an air hockey table, a shuffleboard. There's so much space. We looked around at everything, measured everything. I'm going to see about getting blackout curtains and then pinning them down around the windows so that we can get sleep. There's tons of options for laying out the rooms and sleeping arrangements. After that, my son stayed with me a little longer to measure, and my ex-wife took my daughter home. Then I brought my son back to my ex-wife's house, and he was really excited to see when the car and the drone would arrive today. It looked like it was going to be too late for him to get to play with it today, though.
After dropping my son at my ex-wife's house and saying goodnight to everyone, I went out to the vegan sushi place with the woman I'd been talking to. We had a nice time there. I ended up getting a bit too much food, even though I got one sushi roll. We split the ramen, and I got the tahini dumplings. It still was very filling. The sushi rolls are huge and plant-based, so they hit heavy. We had a good conversation, and then I asked if she wanted to go look at my new house at Crescent Lake, which she did. So we drove like 10 minutes over there to meet at the house, and we were both a bit nervous when we got there. I let her in and showed her around the house, and she commented on it. I noticed she was a bit defensive, which she hadn't usually been. She had her arms crossed, which she hadn't been hardly any other times I'd been talking with her.
Then I felt like there was some good chemistry between us, so I leaned in to try and kiss her, and she gave me a little kiss, but it wasn't as intense as I thought it'd be. At the same time, it makes sense because we don't hardly know each other. We haven't built that much tension up. But then again, my ex-wife and I, on our second date, had a really powerful kiss, and it was very intense. So it ended up being kind of disappointing. I walked her back out to her car, said goodnight to her, and then I felt pretty bad after that. I drove back home, got home about 7.30. I texted my ex-wife to let her know, to tell my son that I got the drone and the car, and he was very excited.
I sat down on my bed, and there was a lot of tension to release after a disappointing night, so I took care of that and took a shower. Then I sat down and I cried for like 30 or 40 minutes. It was a lot today with looking at the house. I mean, this is very much a real house that I'm in while I'm dictating this, but every house is temporary, of course. But this house is just a quick stop between this place and the next one. It's still in the same neighborhood. So this is a big step, moving into a new neighborhood, getting a house that's going to be longer term. $2,700 a month rent, which is a great deal, actually. Zillow says this house that I'm renting should be $3,100, which makes sense based on the neighborhood. And fuck, man. I was just missing doing stuff as a family with my ex-wife. It was so nice to have her and the kids over to look at the house. And I was just so sad that I'm moving into the house by myself and not all four of us together. I thought about my son and my daughter and how much time I'm missing with them because of the divorce. And I cried some more.
And I remembered one day when we had a fight. My ex-wife and I had a, you know, it wasn't a bad fight, just, we got upset with each other. I remember going out to the shed and listening to that Journey breakup song, Separate Ways, I think it is. I remember thinking that my ex-wife and I might break up and just crying and thinking about how horrible that'd be. And then I'm like, God, I'm actually living that scenario now. Jesus. Wow. I'm like, well, I guess this isn't as bad as I thought it'd be, but it is kind of horrible. But at the same time, it already has happened. It's done. So there's that. It's happened. And we're moving forward. We're going to do our best and enjoy life.
So, yeah, I had a hell of a cry. I got a T-shirt out of the closet to just snot on. I wailed like a baby too, I straight up cried and sounded just like a baby, and then I sang a little lullaby to myself, the one my ex-wife used to sing to my daughter when she was a baby. I really need to love myself right now, because I got here through my own choices, my own beliefs. And it's not a place that's right or wrong. It's a place with ups and downs, negatives and positives. My marriage before had negatives and positives. I've gotten to have quite an adventure by doing this divorce. It's been challenging, but at the same time, it's been fun. Loving myself through the choices I made is the heart of how I'm rebuilding, and if you're doing that same hard work, I'd love for you to book a one-on-one call with me and rebuild alongside me.
Although I thought, man, maybe I should try and see if I can really jump realities and go into a reality when I go to sleep where my ex-wife and I aren't divorced. But at the same time, I remembered my parents didn't get divorced and that didn't go so well for them in my opinion. So who says staying together is the best option? I really wanted to talk with my ex-wife, so I texted her to see if she was available to talk. I texted the woman I'd been talking to, to thank her for coming out and tell her if she was at Crescent Lake again, I'd be happy to hang out with her.
Then I opened up the drone and the car that I ordered because I know my son will want me to be ready for tomorrow. The drone, I'm not ready to deal with that except charge it and read the instructions. But the truck, I got the truck and drove the truck. The little 12-inch or so monster truck, I drove it for like 20 minutes out in the street in the dark tonight, and I hoped I didn't look sketchy by the road holding a remote that, if you weren't seeing very clearly, might look like somebody was holding a gun, because it's one of those remotes with a trigger that you pull and a thing on the side that you twist to turn. But the truck was cool. It went really fast. And I drove it up and down the street until it ran out of battery, and then I plugged the battery in to charge it so that it'll be ready. They each come with two batteries. The drone has two batteries, and the truck has two batteries, which is great. So I'll have them all ready for my son and my daughter tomorrow.
Then the woman I'd been talking to sent me a text saying that she wouldn't be in St. Pete tomorrow. She's not sure when she'll be back, but when she's there, she'll let me know, which is good. Just give her a little space. From just meeting her yesterday to trying to make out with her today was moving pretty fast. I definitely like her. She's really cool. She's pretty. She's got a nice energy about her. At the same time, I barely know her. We've literally known each other two days. It was just a little over 24 hours at this point. I was thinking too, like, man, I could really go for a girl 30 years younger than her too. Definitely part of the thing that triggered me was all the things together all at once. Trying to kiss her was a big reminder of like, this is someone I barely know. I don't feel qualified to do dating at this point. But this is something that just came right to me. I might as well walk through the open doors, as Robert Glover says in his dating book.
Reflecting on it, if I had to do it over again, when I noticed she was a bit defensive and I was nervous, I would speak into that and try and lighten the mood before trying to kiss her. I didn't pick the best time to try and kiss her. My ex-wife was thoroughly warmed up and in the mood when I went to kiss her, after a really nice date and walking her back to her car. This woman looked like she'd gotten a little defensive and it was a little too much, especially since she's looking for a place to live right now. And I suggested, you know, if we cooperated, she could just move into my Crescent Lake house, which obviously there's things she likes about. But at the same time, it's a bit soon. Somebody you just met thinking you could live together, right? It's a bit fast. Hi, I'm Jerry, here's the U-Haul. You don't move in as soon as you meet someone.
After my cry and bringing the truck in to charge it, I'm thinking, should I call my mother? I just don't know what to do with my mother. I really need to talk to my ex-wife. And thankfully, my ex-wife said she was ready at 10 o'clock to talk. So she called, and we just had a nice hour-long call. We went over all the things, and she said she had a good cry earlier today. The kids really, my daughter went off this morning because the dog had pooped in the house and she didn't even see it; it had just happened the night before and she got all mad about it. And then that spiraled and they didn't go to the market. And then my son had had his emotions playing the game of life later. She had her emotions today as well, and so did the kids. It's nice to know we're all in this together. That one honest call reminded me how much a real conversation can hold, so if you're carrying something heavy right now, I'd be glad to talk it through with you when you schedule a private call with me.
I was going to record this tomorrow, but I'm like, shit. The one thing I wish I'd had time to do is do some stuff with my books, but I kind of did have time. I finished my laundry up today. I don't know if I put too much in the washer or what, but the washer broke, which is convenient because I'm just moving out of here and I don't think I need to use it again. That does suck too, the neighbors are knocking the house down. We're going to take the washer and dryer over. But I'm glad it decided to break down now. So I'm grateful. I feel like I'm just clueless right now. I felt so smart in my life, and I just feel like I don't even know anything anymore. Which I think is good. That means I'm cleaning stuff out, clearing space for new things to come into my life. And I'm excited to see where we go from here, even though it doesn't sound like it.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Seeing My Life's Whole Arc With Respect
Originally published November 25, 2025.
This is my journal entry from November 25, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Divorce Day — my real, unedited days, published in order.
I slept on the couch last night with the cats, and all things considered, it went pretty well. They weren’t there the entire night, but at some point they came down and woke me up. The couch wasn’t exactly comfortable, especially compared to my usual routine of sleeping alone in a blacked-out room, but I still managed to get a decent night of rest—enough to feel ready for a power flow yoga class in the morning at a local yoga studio.
My nephew got up and headed off to school, and then my sister woke up. We sat together and had a nice cup of tea while she made me avocado toast. After that, she left for her group, and I drove over to a yoga studio in town. The studio is heated to 88 degrees, which made me grateful I wore workout shorts and took my shirt off. It’s a strange experience to walk outside in forty-degree weather wearing a jacket and shorts, knowing you’re headed somewhere that feels like summer inside. The staff at the studio were friendly, and the teacher—attractive and clearly very experienced—was leading the class. There were only two of us students there, which made for an intimate, focused power flow that felt both grounding and energizing.
After class, my sister had suggested I go next door to the coffee shop right beside the studio. I brought my laptop and my Can You Catch a Cold? book with me and walked up to the counter, where a beautiful barista with a smile that lit up her whole face greeted me. I ordered a chocolate-dipped date and a Nutella strawberry croissant to go with my matcha tea. I sat down, opened my book, and read in the coffee shop, and it felt genuinely good just to be out. I could have easily done the same thing at home, laptop open and book in hand, but being around people made a real difference. I need to do more of this—more time out in cafés, just sitting among other humans—because I get lonely too easily. Being in a place like this, surrounded by quiet activity and presence, seems to keep that loneliness at bay.
After about an hour, I realized the Wi-Fi wasn’t working and my phone hotspot was crawling, so I headed back to my sister’s house. I wasn’t sure if my niece was home since she’d stayed back from school that day. I asked if she was there and said hello, but there was no response, and it seemed like I had the place to myself. The house was quiet. I took a shower and then sat down to work on my résumé, along with recording the last two diary entries I’d fallen behind on. It felt almost funny to be working on a résumé after all these years of not applying for jobs, but a man at the tennis club had asked me to send one over. I dictated a long voice memo to ChatGPT, laying out everything I’ve done, and then spent a couple of hours refining it with the help of the AI. When it was finished, I looked at it and thought, damn, this actually looks impressive.
Seeing it all laid out—over a billion views online that I chose to delete, being a top 20 Facebook partner, a top 10 Udemy instructor, millions of dollars in online sales, coaching clients in more than 30 countries—hit differently on paper. The résumé reflected a wide range of skills: speaking, coaching, consulting, writing. It genuinely looked solid. I’d been feeling pretty down lately, but regardless of what happens with any résumé I send out, I felt proud of where I’ve been and what I’ve done. For once, instead of feeling like I’d completely fucked up my career and my life, I could see the full arc of it with a little more respect. Laying my whole career out and finally seeing it with respect instead of regret shifted something in me, and if you’re struggling to see the value in your own story, I’d be glad to help you look at it on a call with me.
Later that evening, my sister got home from her group and made chili for dinner. One of her friends came over, and oh my god—this woman was funny as hell. She’s a middle-aged Black woman with purple hair and has two kids of her own. From the moment she started talking, I felt it instantly: she talks the way I think. It was like having a stand-up comedian in the room, completely off the cuff, sharp, real, and unfiltered. We were laughing nonstop. There was no performative energy to it—just raw, observational humor pouring out of her in a way that felt effortless.
We ate the chili together and then headed to the AA meeting. At one point, one of the guys said something so funny that my sister’s friend literally put her head down so she wouldn’t laugh out loud in the middle of the meeting. Later, when it was my turn to share, I talked honestly about going through divorce, being sober, and feeling that heavy sense of hopelessness—the “why bother” feeling that creeps in when everything feels stripped down. One of the guys came up to me afterward and told me how much what I said had impacted him. He shared that he’d felt exactly that way a few years ago, right in the middle of his drinking, and that now he was sober, engaged, and had a new baby. He said he was genuinely grateful he’d made it through that phase of his life and that what I shared really hit him. He told me he felt like I was there for him in the meeting that night, which was honestly beautiful to hear.
When we got back to the house, my sister, her friend, and I all sat around talking. My nephew came downstairs too, and the whole thing just turned into one long stretch of laughter and shit-talking. I mostly sat back and listened while the three of them carried the conversation because they were absolutely killing me. Every once in a while I’d jump in with a comment, but mostly I was just enjoying being entertained. Eventually, after my sister made some tea, we all started winding down. We didn’t get to bed until around 11:00 p.m., and that hot tea in the cold Michigan climate hit perfectly. I finally understood why tea is such a big deal in the UK—drinking hot tea in Florida just isn’t the same. In winter, it lands differently. It settles you. I figured I’d probably sleep better on the couch that night, especially since my sister and her daughter took the cats upstairs with them. With any luck, that meant a quieter night and a little more rest.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
From Police Academy to My First Online Million
Originally published October 30, 2025.
This is an excerpt from my memoir, I Was Famous on the Internet — my honest story of 14 years of internet fame and what it really cost, and why I deleted it all to choose real life.
From Corrections to Graduate School
The one saving grace I had after college was the sense that I should find a career that wasn’t just another office job keeping me on a screen all day. I gravitated toward criminal justice because I identified so much with the darkness in my own mind. I thought that meant I’d make a good police officer, and I graduated in 2006 with a degree in criminology.
Unfortunately, in 2005 I had smoked weed for the first time while drunk which made most police departments instantly disqualify my applications. That decision limited me to working in corrections until a couple years had passed. Being a correction officer was brutal, especially because some nights I would drink before going in and then drink even more when I got off. A year from graduating, I made it into the police academy by finding a department that did not ask about “undetected crimes.”
During my first month at the police academy, my college girlfriend left me. She got tired of me spending my weekends off drinking and playing Rise of Nations. When she finally broke up with me, I hit a very dark low, and that pushed me into sobriety—at least for a while. I turned to Facebook to find another girlfriend, randomly friending women in South Carolina until one of them agreed to date me. On the surface, this looks like the internet helped me. It was true that I could find girlfriends online—first in college, then afterward. Yet if it hadn’t been so easy, maybe I would have gone out and met women more naturally. Maybe I would have found something healthier than quick hookups or short-term relationships that never worked.
Once I had another girl to hook up with, I went right back to drinking, and I never stopped gaming. As a police officer, the main thing I did off duty was play Halo 3 and then Call of Duty: Zombies. I eventually landed the police officer job of my dreams, but I lost it because of what I did off duty. Drinking led me into bad decisions, especially after coworkers introduced me to strip clubs. For the first time, I realized I could have fun going out, but that only made things worse. The combination of drinking, gaming, and loneliness pushed me into sending reckless texts and drunk messages on Facebook. In the end, the department suggested I quit instead of being fired. You can read that full story in my book Officer Banfield.
After losing my job in law enforcement, I moved back home with my parents. Most of the time I stayed sober there, but my video game addiction was out of control. I binged Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, along with Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3. I played eight hours a day, seven days a week on my Xbox 360. The people I was closest to were my Xbox friends. That really sucked because I only ever met two of them in person. It’s hard to be truly close with people you only connect to through a headset while you try to win simulated battles together. These were shallow friendships that filled the space where real ones could have been. I spent almost a year at my parents’ house staring at a screen. What started as fun had turned into an addiction that sabotaged the rest of my life. If your closest connections live behind a screen right now the way mine once did, I would love for you to book a private call with me so we can start trading some of that for something real.
In 2010, I moved out and went to graduate school. Big life changes often gave me a temporary balance. I cut back on gaming, focused on discovering a new area, and made the effort to meet new people. I even got back into sports. Yet I quickly fell back into playing as much as I could between classes. Before I moved to Tampa, I already had a girlfriend lined up. But my drinking and gaming got in the way, so I got rid of her.
In January 2011, I met my ex-wife on Match.com. Before she joined, her father had told her online dating was only for losers. That wasn’t the whole truth, but there was some truth to it. It was for people like us—people who struggled to meet enough people in person, who lacked close connections in real life. That was my ex-wife’s reality, living at home with her parents and pouring herself into law school. That was my reality too, with all my energy going into drinking, gaming, and graduate school.
Since we lived an hour apart, I was able to hide my drinking and gaming for a while. In Alcoholics Anonymous, we call that “taking a hostage” given we trick someone into falling in love with us without showing them how bad we are. When we finally moved in together in August 2011, the truth came out. My drinking and gaming became a problem that erupted into loud fights at three in the morning. I’d be drunk, screaming at zombies on Call of Duty, while she tried to sleep so she could wake up at 7 a.m. for work. I had hoped that moving in with her would help me change, that I’d finally stop gaming and drinking so much. It worked for a month or two, then everything went back to the way it had been. I always had this pattern where I could stop a bad habit for a short time—drinking, gaming, whatever it was. But the anxiety and stress would build until I crashed right back into it. If you keep crashing back into a pattern you thought you had beaten, you can set up a call with me and we will talk through what is really driving it, drawing on my experience and your own situation.
I quit video games for the first time as an adult after finally admitting to my ex-wife they were an addiction. In October 2011, I started an online business to help people with video game addiction with the hope by helping others I could also help myself. I also thought if I focused on video games, I could sidestep the drinking problem. That didn’t work. After a couple weeks off the video games, I dove into another drinking and gaming bender. I rented Call of Duty: Black Ops from Redbox on the way home from USF in Tampa after I had sold the game on Amazon the week before. The result was one of those huge fights with my ex-wife at three in the morning. Afterward, I admitted to myself that alcohol was a problem too. I told her I wouldn’t drink anymore which left me able to rationalize gaming again despite running a business I started to help people with video game addiction. I did manage a few months sober from alcohol before my first of many relapses.
Still, there was one silver lining. By admitting I had a video game addiction and intuitively realizing that helping others was part of the solution, I began my online business with good intentions. Unfortunately, I gave up quickly on the idea of helping people with video game addiction and instead worked on monetizing my addiction by selling t-shirts that made fun of gaming addiction. I sank thousands of dollars into buying inventory that hardly anyone wanted. Most of the cheaply printed shirts I ended up giving away.
Going Full Time
I am grateful that all the excitement I felt doing things online gave me an alternate career path instead of being confined to teaching in person or doing research for universities. In 2012, I quit my PhD program at USF to focus on my online business full-time. It felt like I finally had a chance to monetize my addiction and bring together everything I had learned. I had played so many video games and spent so much time online that I seemed to have this intuitive knowledge about how things worked that most other people lacked. It was difficult to explain logically, but it was like I could feel the energy of an application just by using it. I could look at a website and immediately sense how to interact with it successfully, or I could spot opportunities that most people missed.
One of the first opportunities I saw was Facebook marketing back in 2012. I started a Facebook page with the hope of promoting my business and quickly noticed how hard it was to get likes. From there, I realized that if I was struggling, everybody else was too. If I could figure it out before they did, I knew I could monetize that. By 2013, I had my first $10,000 month online as I got clients to pay me to help them get more likes. Meanwhile, my personal life was falling apart. My attempts to stay sober kept failing. I was drinking more than ever, and at the same time, my dad was dying. My emotions were an absolute mess.
In the middle of all this, I did my first YouTube live stream to attract clients in August 2013. It was a big hit. I shared the secrets I’d discovered—how I got Facebook likes for less than one cent each directly from Facebook ads. People were blown away that I had grown my page to over 100,000 likes for less than $1,000 when most people were paying more than a dollar per like. That’s how people first started telling me about Udemy.
Most of the early years of my business felt like constant struggle and failure. In 2014, after my dad died and I got sober, I finally had my first taste of real success. I had been helping people with Facebook marketing and ads, but my drinking and my lack of desire to manage client campaigns tanked that part of the business. Out of desperation, I created a course on Udemy to see if I could make some money with an online course. When I failed to sell my course, I started giving out thousands of free coupons so I could feel like I had not wasted my time filming it. The free students put so much time into watching my Facebook course that it became the highest ranked on a trending new topic.
In July 2014, Udemy included my course in their promotions and I made more than $1,000 without doing anything for it. This happened again in August and September. By then, I realized I had stumbled into the best opportunity I had ever seen online. After earning over $6,500 on Black Friday in November 2014 with just three courses, I committed in December to going all in on Udemy. For the first time, I was sober, and I felt like I could give something everything I had. I set my sights on making my first million dollars online. Over the next two years, that’s exactly what happened.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Going Back to Comfort My Eight-Year-Old Self
Originally published September 2, 2025.
This is my journal entry from September 2, 2025, part of my daily autobiography The Kind Divorce — my real, unedited days, published in order.
My life coach gave me a remarkable hypnotherapy and life coaching session today. I arrived at her house at 1 p.m., and we began by sharing tea while she asked me about my goals. I told her that my primary aim was to help my mind accept, enjoy, and even play with the thoughts it generates. I no longer want to battle with my mind or weigh myself down with shame over my inner life. Whatever passing thought my mind generates, I want to meet it without judgment. I trust myself to choose actions that respect and consider others, which means there is no reason to feel guilty about what arises in my imagination. I asked my life coach to help me clear any lingering resistance to this acceptance and to reprogram the old codes still running in my subconscious.
She led me into a regression exercise, guiding me back to one of the most painful times in my life. We returned to when I was about eight years old. My father had caught me lying and decided that I needed to be broken of my rebellion. He spanked me, shut me in my room indefinitely, and made me write lines, one of which was “obedience to obey.” That period might have only lasted a week or two, yet it felt endless. I have never again been as lonely, sad, or hopeless as I was during those days. My life coach asked me first to anchor in a vision of joy from my life now. I imagined myself surrounded by my family and friends on a tennis court, with a massage table nearby and my books stacked at the edge of the scene. Then she guided me back into that childhood memory, where I relived the suffocating isolation of being locked away with no comfort, no distractions, and certainly no alcohol yet to numb the pain.
My life coach encouraged me to paint over that memory with colors of my choosing, and I filled it with rainbows. As I lay on her table, I let out a deep cry. The most powerful part came when I imagined myself now, at the same age my father had been during that time, arriving with my ex-wife and our children to talk with him. I did not confront him harshly but instead offered a gentle perspective: there are other ways to handle a rebellious child. A parent doesn’t have to break a child into blind obedience. You can honor a child’s spirit, appreciate their boldness, and even play with their rebelliousness instead of crushing it. In this vision, I hugged my younger self and showed him what life would one day become.
My eight-year-old self was amazed. Compared to the narrow world he knew at my parents’ house, my adult life looked like pure fantasy: a home filled with love, books, family, and meaningful work. All the struggles that consumed him would be resolved, replaced with joy and purpose. He saw my son at nearly his age, which gave him hope and pride. The scene expanded further. I pictured my father’s father, my mother, and my grandmother all joining us in that space. Then, decades into the future, I imagined my own son coming with his wife and children. Soon the living room of my childhood home was crowded with love, joy, and understanding spanning generations. Again, I wept as the image unfolded. My life coach told me that everyone cries during this exercise, and I understood why.
The experience with her was sacred. Her compassion, rooted in her own struggles and healing, created a safe space for mine. I left grateful to have done this work just before starting massage school, trusting it would make my experience there richer and healthier.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Remembering Christmas in Pain and Experiencing the Joy of Holidays
From my video published December 10, 2022.
My friends, today I want to share the stories of some of my Christmases in the past and my holiday seasons, which I hope will be useful for you. This topic was specifically requested in my Discord, so I hope that talking about my experience both in the sad, sorrowful holidays and in the happy, fulfilled ones, and everything in between, will help you. I know some of you out there are feeling alone and feeling lonely. This holiday season is bringing up feelings of shame and guilt and sadness and remorse, and ultimately wishing things were different. And I swear it's designed that way. Who actually gets a picture of everything you'd think a perfect holiday season would involve?
Mine is pretty close at the moment, and yet, on Thanksgiving, even though my life from the outside would look like a picturesque commercial or a Hallmark card, I still felt sad most of the day. Even though my mother was there, my wife and kids and family were there, and it was all fantastic, I'm looking outside and yet I felt sad most of the day. So I swear the holidays are a time to dredge up sadness and review your life at the very same time you experience the joy of being around people you love. You are in good company. You are in good company if you're feeling sad and you're wishing things were different.
Wishing Things Were Different Keeps You Stuck
What helps a lot is to not wish things were different. If you're wishing things were different, you're stuck in the past, and being stuck in the past, especially during the holiday season, really stinks. You're wishing things were different, you're looking at how things are now, and you're criticizing them and tearing them down, and that makes it difficult.
For example, Christmas 2013 was like that for me. My dad was dying, it was his last Christmas, and all I felt was so much sadness that this was going to be my dad's last Christmas. I felt like it shouldn't be this way, and I felt like I really needed some relief from all these bad feelings. I remember being very stressed out and irritable, even though my wife was there, my mother was there, my brother was there, even though I had lots of love around me. I brought all these feelings with me, and they all came up, and I felt out of control. I went into this outrage and argument and argued with everybody in the family, demanding that we go get the Christmas tree and set it up, even though my dad was feeling very poorly. He didn't want to drive with me and open up the storage locker and get it out. I just complained until we finally got it out, and I set it all up, and it was a rough Christmas.
And yet, I look back today and I see that I did a lot to make it rough. What I brought to things is what really made it rough. Maybe not at the time, but I now have the capacity to accept things the way they are, to accept that feelings are part of the human experience, and to accept things as they come.
You Have Control Over the Story You Tell
There's a particular viewer who was talking about how they're not going to be able to see their kids for Christmas. They're splitting up with their partner, and they're really sad about it. And yes, that sounds sad to me. At the same time, you have complete control over the story you tell. When I told the story that this really sucks for me, that my dad's dying, it's not fair, it's so sad, things shouldn't be like this, I felt bad. And when I today choose to tell the story that I'm very happy for the people who are here this Christmas, that I'm very happy for the chance to help others and to share my experience, that my painful memories are a tool I can use to relate to and help somebody else today, that I'm very happy with the people around me and the love I have in my life, it makes all the difference.
One thing that really helps to get out of this pain and this selfishness, really, is to go find somebody else to help. In my experience, I consistently feel better after I do my livestream, and after I create something and put it online, because I've done it with the intention to help somebody feel better. I also relentlessly focus on what I can do with what I've got today, and how I can help someone else feel better today, and what kind of future I'm creating.
I repeat this over and over to people, because it seems the main thing people around me are struggling with is being stuck in the past, fighting with the past and the present, and not putting hardly any attention on the question of what kind of future they want to create. When you keep operating that way, you keep creating the same future that you're so pissed off about right now. I talk to people and they say, well, this happened, and that happened, and this was painful, and this was embarrassing. And I say, what kind of future do you want? What can you do? How can you use what you've been through to help somebody else? Sometimes you might have to stop yourself 50 or 100 times a day and redirect your thoughts. I think almost exclusively about what I can do today with what I've got, and what I want to create.
One viewer put it perfectly: we always use the holidays as a feel-good, feel-bad time of the year, and it ain't about us. Exactly. So if you're missing family and you're feeling alone, then go help someone else, someone who's feeling the same way. And if you don't know where to find someone else, then pray, then set an intention, then open your ears and listen to what people around you are saying, and be ready to help. By helping, I don't mean you need to go out and change somebody, but just show up and be there for someone else.
Suffering Is an Opportunity to Help Someone Else
For example, let's say in some parallel universe, Laura had gotten tired of me and taken the kids and left, and I decided to move to another state or something. I know what I'd be doing. I'd be looking for another woman to keep me company and whom I could keep company. I'd be looking for alcoholics to help them get through the holidays. I'd be out there doing yoga. I would be looking for other people to spend time with and to connect with, and to have a nice holiday season together. I have a friend who doesn't have her family around for the holidays, and she has several of her single friends, and they all get a house together and have beautiful holidays together. If I went somewhere, or was somewhere, where I couldn't spend the season with a woman, I'd find a group of guys to have a house with and play video games and hang out and watch movies and go to yoga, and go to AA meetings.
The meaning of our suffering in life is an opportunity to go help someone else. One of the basic ways we get misled is to feel shame and guilt and remorse, and to keep criticizing the stories we have in our head, instead of using the opportunity to go out and find somebody who could use our help. If this is resonating with you and you want a place to do exactly that, alongside people working on the same thing, you're welcome to join the Jerry Banfield Family and be part of the community.
On Presents and Too Much Stuff
Someone in the chat asked, do you do presents under the tree? In this culture where we've got Amazon and we have storage lockers full of stuff, in this culture of too much stuff, I prefer and try to avoid buying anybody presents. I told my wife, you want something? Here's an Amazon gift card. Now send me some money on Zelle for that Amazon gift card, and you can buy yourself whatever you want. And if you'd like me to buy something for you, just tell me what it is. I personally can't stand buying anybody presents right now.
I did buy my mom a necklace. That's the only gift I think I've bought anyone this year. Given how many necklaces my mom already has, I probably wouldn't buy her another one. So I don't find any joy in buying anyone a present unless I feel moved to buy one. I felt moved to buy my mother that necklace, and if I don't feel moved, I don't buy anything, especially after taking so much of my mom's stuff to the landfill.
My kids get so many presents. My wife buys them lots of presents, my mother buys them lots of presents, my wife's family buys them presents. My kids have a ton of presents for Christmas. I advocate for opening them up as soon as possible so there's not a ton of crap to open on Christmas Day. No, I do not buy my kids a gift for Christmas at all, because they have enough gifts. I feel no joy and no desire to buy them anything else. When you consider the presents my wife's bought, my mother's bought, and my wife's mother's bought, the kids have more gifts than they need for Christmas. They have more toys than they can even play with. If anything, they have too much, and we're consistently trying to get rid of stuff. I used to buy a lot more presents, not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I should, or like I had to. Now I don't buy anything unless I feel like I really, really want to and I'd love to.
Someone asked, I hear you say you give homeless people $20; could you use that to give them gifts as children for Christmas? Yeah, if I run into a homeless person and they ask me for money, I'll generally give them $20, or if I know they're homeless and they've asked me for money a lot in the past, I'll just hand them $20 proactively.
The Places You Go Shape What Happens to You
I find that the places I go and the things I do are often heavily related to the things that happen. So I don't go to bars. I'm sober eight and a half years, because when I went to bars, lots of stupid things used to happen. I don't go to bars and I don't drink, because bars are places where crappy things happen. That's why I stay out of the bars. I stay out of places where people mistreat each other, and I don't keep people around in my life who talk junk anymore. My wife does tease a lot and is very sarcastic, so I guess I make the biggest exception for my wife.
My wife's character is so fantastic that she kind of needs to have some small character defect, so to speak, or something weird is going to happen. Someone asked me how I could give a homeless guy twenty dollars but not give my kids a gift for Christmas. Here is the thing: my kids don't need a gift from me for Christmas. Now, if my kids weren't getting gifts from anybody else, I'm sure I would feel moved to buy them something. And if my wife didn't buy them any presents, I probably would feel moved to buy them something. But since my wife, my mother, and my wife's mother handle all the presents for the kids and for each other, I don't do anything. And my wife has everything she needs.
She jokes that I don't buy her jewelry, but I tell her I'll go buy her jewelry. I'll be happy to go buy her jewelry. I don't feel any desire to buy her jewelry, but if she wanted some, I'd go drop a grand or several thousand on something nice for her. I would be happy to do that. Do you want me to do that for you? She says no. And I say good, well, let's not do it then. My wife already has one nice wedding ring, an engagement ring she wears that she got from her mother that means a lot to her. I used to buy my wife jewelry in the past, and she's got enough jewelry now. But if I ever feel moved to buy her a certain piece of jewelry, I will buy it.
Someone asked if the kids go to grandma's on Christmas morning. I imagine my kids will have Christmas at my house, Christmas at my mom's house, and Christmas at my wife's sister's house.
Letting go of the pressure to consume
I've felt relief from a lot of these societal pressures. I've come to believe a lot of these holidays are merely excuses to promote consumerism. And I take pride in using things like this iPhone. Look at it — it's an iPhone 8 Plus. I'm proud that I've had this iPhone for more than five years, and I'm trying to keep it going as long as possible.
In the past, I gave a bunch of my family Jerry Banfield gaming shirts. When I first started my business online in 2011, everybody got Jerry Banfield shirts for Christmas. My mother actually whipped one out the other day that was still in the plastic. I said, wow, that's still smokeable. I did some live streams with my wife on YouTube, so you can go on my YouTube channel and look at the Jerry and Laura Banfield gaming videos together, and you can decide for yourself how she looks.
Sadness is a normal part of life
I'm grateful that, after a lot of holiday seasons filled with sadness and loneliness, and lots of holiday seasons filled with joy and connection, I see that I have choices. I have choices in my life about how I process things. And you know what? Sometimes things are going to be sad, and that's okay. That sadness is a normal part of life. That sadness actually makes for a more interesting experience.
If you look at something like a rainbow, imagine the rainbow if it just had one color. If the rainbow just had one color, you wouldn't even know that there were other colors. We go through our life and look at our feelings and think, I want to get rid of this disgusting feeling of sadness, please make it go away. But here's the thing: if you could get rid of all those other feelings, life would be really bland with just one feeling, wouldn't it? So I'm much more accepting of that now.
Our culture conditions us, for some sick reason, to believe we should be happy all the time, and that if you're not happy all the time, there's something wrong with you and you should go see your doctor about that. And then your doctor will make a profit off your normal human feelings. And then you should go see your psychologist as well, and your psychologist will make a profit off your normal human feelings. Ironically, in my experience it can reinforce them, telling you things are wrong with you instead of saying, hey, you're having a normal human experience. A normal human experience includes being sad sometimes. A normal human experience includes feeling a little lost sometimes.
But what really takes the edge off is finding somebody else to help. Finding somebody else to help takes the edge off. It's about taking the focus out of the past and out of what's wrong with today, and putting it into the question: what kind of experience do you want to have? I would love to enjoy a connected, happy, and joyous Christmas with my family.
Getting perspective when the holidays get hard
Last Christmas we had a very nice day together. The Christmas before that, I showed my daughter her Christmas presents the night before Santa was supposed to come. My wife and I had a fight over it, and Christmas morning was tense. I called my mother — this was before she lived next door — and I said, Mom, I'm really mad at my wife and I don't want to be. I know I love my wife and I want to remember that I love my wife. I don't want to be mad at her. My mom told me about her Christmas, and that was really helpful for me to get some perspective. So if you're struggling more than usual on Christmas, try hearing what other people are going through.
What I love about Alcoholics Anonymous, and generally about twelve-step programs, is getting to hear what other people are going through. If you have an alcoholic friend or family member, or a spouse, or child, or parent, you can go to Al-Anon. If you are a child of an alcoholic, you can go to ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. If you're an alcoholic, you can go to AA. If you're a drug addict, you can go to Narcotics Anonymous. If you overeat, you can go to Overeaters Anonymous. And if you don't feel like you fit into a twelve-step program, if you don't know where to go to help somebody, just pray that you can see the opportunities in front of you.
I would appreciate each of you helping me know what to talk about and what to play. If you want me to talk about a specific topic or play a specific game, one of the best things you can do is join the Jerry Banfield Family and let me know — hey Jerry, I'd like you to play this, or I'd like you to talk about this. That really helps me.
The book I'm afraid to write
I'm thinking of writing a book now. My idea for it is called I'm Black Now: My Transracial Experience, chronicling my whole story this year with changing my race and what I've learned. And yet the idea of writing the book kind of scares me too. It scares me, because honestly it's a book that I kind of don't want to write. I'd like to just move on. Haven't I done enough in that area? In some ways it'll be hard to write, and I can imagine all the criticism from it as well. And if I write the book, that'll take hours and hours away from my live stream.
Someone asked if that's why I don't buy gifts — because I can't keep the presents a secret. Yes, that could be part of it. I'm reading a book by a woman who was in the NAACP; her book is called In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World, by Rachel Dolezal. People compared my change to hers. Will my book be at Barnes and Noble? I don't know. I'm still deciding right now whether it would be worth my time or not, and whether it would be good for me and for people collectively.
Christmases past
Let me tell you about some other Christmases. There was a Christmas when I told my wife that we should move another woman in, and that I should have two wives. That was last Christmas. My mind was filled with this idea of how awesome it'd be to move another woman in and have two wives at the same time, and grow our family, because my wife doesn't want to have any more kids. So I thought, well, let's just move another woman in here.
What was amazing is that we had about three hours of upset. My wife cursed me out a little bit. For the sake of privacy, I'm not going to mention the specific woman I had in mind, but I did tell my wife who it was. Thankfully, she helped me see that, A, she wasn't interested in doing that, which I already knew, and more importantly, B, that it might not be as fun as I imagined it to be. There'd be a lot of downsides that I wasn't considering. Someone in the chat said, isn't one wife already too much? One wife is just right for me. The wife I have is just right for me.
That said, it might be fun to try having two wives — and it might be miserable to try having two wives too. I applaud myself for having the courage to bring that up, because it was something I had thought of for a long time. After bringing it up to my wife and hearing her opinion about it, it really killed the idea in my head. I'm hoping this year we can do without any of that.
Three years ago, we went and visited my mom right after Christmas, which was the first time I had ever taken my kids to visit my mother since they'd been born in 2015. It was a really magical trip. It went super smooth. It was a huge leap forward in my relationship with my mother. So that Christmas in 2019 was a really special Christmas. The challenge that year was that my wife was sick for Christmas and at the beginning of the trip to visit my mom. It really is simple having one wife.
I really appreciate the simplicity in my life. Around that time I watched some videos about people who had two wives, and I listened to a book where a woman had two husbands, and it just looked more complicated. I already have enough complication in my business that I really need the rest of my life to be pretty simple. So I've had mostly really nice holiday seasons. The two saddest ones I can remember were 2012 and 2013.
Two Sad Holiday Seasons
In 2012, I'd just gotten married, and I was really missing my family. By my family, I mean my mom and dad. I made the decision to have a drink with my wife's family when they came over for Christmas Eve, which resulted in me being like a crying, self-pity mess. Self-pity is when you feel sorry for yourself, and in my experience feeling sorry for yourself is usually enabled by not knowing what other people are going through, by not thinking about or considering what other people are going through. It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you're aware of what a lot of other people are going through. When you're aware that other people are losing so many difficult things. Their first Christmas alone. Their first Christmas with their son having died. Their first Christmas with their parent having died. Their first Christmas with a new spouse and a new baby, which having a bunch of new things that we think of as good can be very stressful too.
I find it really helps me to be happy to have those uncomfortable conversations, because now I don't go around fantasizing about having two wives anymore. I'm aware that from my wife's point of view she's not interested in that, and it might not be better than what I've got now. It might be worse than what I have right now, and I certainly don't want anything worse than what I have right now.
So in 2012 I essentially chose self-pity. I chose to drink, which brings on more self-pity and depression. Same thing in 2013, although technically I was sober for Christmas. The day I left in 2013, my dad broke his arm just from waking up in the morning, because he was almost dead, had cancer, and had all kinds of disease in his body. His arm broke and I was like, sorry about that, I need to get home though. And I really didn't need to get home. I could have easily stayed a whole other day and helped my mom. But I needed to get home and drink. I needed to get out of that house as soon as possible.
Stop Arguing With the Past
Today I don't regret that either, because it was a valuable learning experience for me. If you want to stop arguing with the past, what helps me is to look at it as a valuable learning experience, and to start thinking about how I'm going to behave next time. If my mom has a fall, am I going to be there to help her? Or am I going to try and avoid it as much as possible? Our past decisions ideally help us figure out what kind of future we want to have.
So I hope you get this from it: if you catch your mind arguing with the past and debating the past, stop that. Think, how can I help somebody today? And what kind of life would I like to have in the future? By me thinking constantly about what I want to create and what kind of life I want to have in the future, I'm able to ask for and get other people's feedback. For example, when I'm thinking of writing a book, I ask you about the book and then I get your feedback. When I'm thinking about having two wives and I ask my wife and she doesn't think that's such a good idea, then I adjust what I want in the future. Because in an ideal scenario, we consider other people's wishes and desires alongside our own. We neither put our own desires away and just serve other people, nor do we put other people's desires away and ignore them and just think about ourselves. We balance consideration of what other people want versus what I want.
The Worst Gift I Ever Received
Someone asked what the worst gift I ever received was. One Christmas, I gave my mom a list of three video games I wanted. I wanted Call of Duty: World at War and two other video games on Xbox 360, and then I gave her a backup list of Christmas presents like rechargeable batteries and a couple of other things, in case she bought all the video games and still wasn't finished, then she could buy those. On Christmas, I opened up my rechargeable batteries and my couple of other backup gifts and I was looking around like, where the hell are the games, mom? I don't see Call of Duty: World at War anywhere. Where's Battlefield? I wanted Battlefield, where is it? And she's like, I thought this is what you wanted. And I'm like, no mom, this was the backup list. This was not the primary list. The primary list were the things I really wanted, and the backup list was for if you bought all the primary things and still wanted to buy more.
At the same time, she showered a ridiculous amount of gifts on my brother's girlfriend at the time. Tons of gifts on my brother's girlfriend, and I get rechargeable batteries and a couple other cheap things. I'm like, mom? So my mom took me to GameStop a couple of days later and bought all the video games I wanted.
Most recently, my wife gave me this nice Gap jacket. It's like a hundred-dollar jacket. When I opened it, she was all excited to give it to me, and she could clearly read how I felt. I was sad. And she's like, what? And I'm like, I already have a jacket. She's like, I know, that one's old and I thought you could use a new one. I'm like, I don't want a new one. I like the jacket I already have. This old Jacksonville Jaguars jacket. She gave me a jacket to replace a nearly 20-year-old Jacksonville Jaguars jacket that I've had since college. I've got a lot of memories in that jacket.
Who Is the Gift Really For?
Someone pointed out that I've said the reason I don't buy gifts for other people is because it doesn't bring me joy, and that the purpose is joy for the person you're buying the gift for. I trust that if another person really needs me to buy them a gift, I will feel inspired to buy the gift. There's not a separation between me getting excited about giving somebody a gift and them feeling joy in receiving it. My mother felt great joy in receiving the necklace I gave her, and I felt great joy in giving her that necklace. My wife has everything she needs. She doesn't need any gifts that I'm aware of.
It's just like with my wife buying me that jacket. She was frustrated with the jacket-buying situation, and so was I. She says sometimes other people's waste bothers her, and I'm like, you're wasteful. You bought me a jacket I didn't want and didn't need, and then you put me in the position where somehow I'm rude because you gave me something I didn't want, and now I have two jackets. Now you're expecting I should get rid of the jacket that I want. Now I'm stuck with a situation I didn't ask for. So I've made it clear: don't just buy me stuff. I don't want that. That's wasteful. Somebody took their time at work and made that jacket and I don't need it. I have a hoodie. I've got a raincoat. I've got the Jacksonville jacket. Now I have this other jacket that was a hundred dollars just pissed away, and somebody's time and energy to make it was pissed away too. Somebody else could have that jacket who maybe needed it.
My wife cried when I had that discussion with her. But it also was useful for her to see that sometimes we think we're doing things for other people, but we're not actually considering the other person. We're doing it for our own selfish reasons. In my wife's mind, she wanted me to get rid of that old jacket. So instead of talking to me about it, she bought me this new jacket with the expectation that I would get rid of the old one. From my point of view, what she did was inconsiderate. She did not clearly consider me at all when buying the gift. She bought a gift for me that was really for her, because she was tired of looking at that old jacket.
I've noticed a lot of our gift-buying is kind of selfish like that. We buy a gift for someone because we want attention. We buy a gift and tell ourselves it's for them and to make them happy, but really we buy the gift because we wish we would have gotten that gift ourselves. We buy that gift because we're lonely and sad and we want to go shopping. We buy that gift because we want the other person to change something in their life, and by giving them this gift we're going to force them to make a change. So this is why I'm very thoughtful with my gift-buying now. Because we live in a consumer culture that pushes buying things all the time, I try to avoid buying things.
Someone commented that the person who made that jacket was a seven-year-old boy in China. I think about that. The way I look at it, if things were made in China, it's kind of slave labor in my mind, because of the wages they get paid and because they're living in an authoritarian government where their freedom is very restricted, often working very long hours.
My wife definitely does not need a gift. Me being around and me being considerate is the biggest gift she could get. So I try to avoid buying physical things. I've found that for me, my area of irrational spending often comes into play with my business. And yes, I did dump about three grand of loss into Gods Unchained. That was a good lesson for me.
Learning To Spend Smarter
I am usually hesitant to buy physical things, but when it comes to digital stuff I've been more willing to spend, and honestly to waste, my money there. I am learning, though. I've blown hundreds of thousands of dollars unnecessarily in my business online after making millions of dollars, and the amount that I blow now is a lot smaller. So my financial decisions are definitely getting better.
Getting out of God's Unchained, at least in the short term, put seven or eight thousand dollars back in my bank account. In the long term, I might have been able to sell my cards for fifty or a hundred thousand. They still might be worth that someday. When I first got into God's Unchained, it looked like the cards might be a great long-term investment, and they still might be. But at this point I'd rather just pay my debt down than sit here holding God's Unchained cards. I ended up taking about a three grand loss on God's Unchained, and for where I am right now, I'm at peace with that.
Wrapping Up And Staying Connected
I think we've wrapped the Christmas discussion up, so let's end there and maybe transition into a different topic. If you're reading this, we originally did this live, and I'd genuinely love to stay connected with you beyond one stream. In my experience, the best way to keep the conversation going and actually work through this stuff together is to join the Jerry Banfield Family.
A lot of these conversations also live on in my Life playlist, and I share the same stories on my podcast, The Jerry Banfield Show, which finally got monetized. So thank you for listening on there. That way, if you ever miss one of the live streams, you can easily get caught right back up.
How I Used People and Called It a Life
Originally published February 9, 2019.
This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
There is a Tupac song called "All Out" that I used to listen to before I would go out, and it would make me feel like I could really let it out.
Let's look at some of the stories from the bars and strip clubs tonight. The one that's coming to mind is one that I think was on my last shift at USCPD.
I was out at the bar one night, somehow I wound up by myself on this particular night. This might have been the night I met the girl at the strip club, but then she wasn't doing whatever I wanted, so I left and went back downtown. It might have been the night I was drinking with my friend, I don't know.
Long story short, it was something like one in the morning. I was out at the bar by myself. I was getting a drink, a girl walked by and clumsily spilled what seemed like damn near an entire beer all over my shirt.
I looked at her and said, "Bitch, what the fuck are you doing?" or something like that right at her and she started going off naturally.
Then this dude turned and looked next to me, and started trying to stand up for her.
He said, "Hey, you better back off."
I said, "You want some of this too, motherfucker? What? Are you with her?"
He said, "No, I'm just standing up. You ain't going to talk shit to this girl right next to me."
I said, "This bitch just spilled a beer all the fuck over me. Do you see my shirt? Do you want me to put this shirt in your fucking face?" or something like that.
I don't know how I had seen it, but I had seen him whip out his wallet before and I had noticed he had a green stripe on the top of his ID card, which meant it was an ID card instead of a driver's license.
He was trying to talk some hard shit back to me and I said something like, "You punk motherfucker, you don't even have a driver's license."
This freaked him out because he wondered how I knew that. He asked,
"What are you, a Fed or something?"
He was flipped out at this point.
Most people wouldn't just notice from seeing someone's wallet really quick. I had an eye for that shit because a green stripe on the top of your ID card was a sign you probably had some criminal justice issues.
If I saw that green ID card instead of the red South Carolina driver's license, I knew you probably had some charges.
That was some of the bias in policing as the assumption was you were probably up to some shit because how did you lose your driver's license anyway?
You probably already got some criminal charges. I flipped this dude out.
He said, "What are you, a fucking Fed or something?"
I said, "You don't want to know what the fuck I am."
He talked some more shit.
I said something I deeply regret, told him to come outside, and stormed out in a blind, drunk rage.
I walked right out to my car.
My mind in that drunk, raging state was a dangerous place, especially for someone carrying a badge.
So my dumb ass sat out there in my car for a while in a rage, and thank God the guy stayed in the bar. He was probably scared shitless of how out of control I was over a spilled beer. Trading that out of control life for one you don't need to escape from is the work I do now, so if you want that too, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and we can work on it together.
Thank God, the guy stayed in the bar and I did not see him. I finally felt like, "Fuck it." I just drove home and went to bed.
I woke up the next day thinking, "Oh, my God, if I see this guy at work one day, I'm fucked. I am fucked. I crossed a serious line, and if I see this dude at work, I am fired and I might be facing criminal charges."
I said, "Jesus, man. All right. Well, I just won't go out to the bar anymore.
That's it. I'll just drink at home from now on. It'll be all right."
Another night, I went to the strip club. This was the night the dispatcher and I had what you would call our only real date. I know going on an out-of-town trip is kind of more than a date. We went out to dinner and lunch on
that trip. We met out at Zaxby's for our first date. God, she was looking good too, just banging.
She actually got there before me. I remember I was talking to my friend who worked at another Police Department, we are still friends to this day. I was talking to him, I was so excited that I was about to go out with her. I was talking all kinds of shit about how happy I was.
I got there a little bit late and she was just there early looking banging.
We had a nice chicken sandwich or something at Zaxby's and I was feeling on top of the world. I remember this because I just got my contacts this day also.
I was then going out to the bar with my friends. We went out to some shitty bar in the Vista with several officers on shift. Meanwhile, someone was driving the whole time. A police officer who was working with us was drinking and driving us. I think I drove and I think at least one if not two of the other officers also drove.
Everyone had at least two, if not three drinks, before someone got the idea to go to the strip club. On this particular night it was a little cool I guess. I was just talking to the dispatcher, we had our first date and it must have been in late April.
I was wearing these like ugly ass khaki pants, just like some cheap shit you would get at Walmart, and then I was wearing some like green color shirt. Again, some total tool looking outfit and for some reason on this night, I decided it was important as a police officer to take my little 38 special gun with me and I forgot to leave it in the car.
I walked in and took my gun into the strip club, and thought, "Shit. I'm a cop. I can have my gun in the strip club. I haven't been drinking that much."
I couldn't just be satisfied sitting out there drinking and having the strippers dance on me, we had to go right in and start getting the lap dances. A stripper was dancing all over me and she danced up right on top of the gun, and I guess she had felt a gun before.
She said, "What the fuck? Is that a gun?"
I moved it and I said, "Bitch, that's my fucking wallet. Get off me."
You know, that hard defensive response, but that's what I said. Naturally, right away I said, "Shit."
So, I slipped my gun around and I put it in like the crack of my ass. I was walking into the bathroom after the lap dance, because I had to go piss.
Thank God, it was while I was walking into the bathroom, the gun fell down my pants and came banging out onto the tile floor of the strip club's bathroom in full view. It was a silver 38 special right on the fucking floor in the strip club.
I said, "Jesus Christ. If I can scoop my gun up, throw it back in the pocket of my pants…"
I think I took it out to my car or some shit at that point.
I said, "Oh, my God. This is stupid. How do I get myself in these situations?"
This reminds me of another night. I almost forgot. All right.
It was the same strip club, but a different night. I went out with other police officers again that night and there was a whole bunch of us at the
strip club.
There was this stripper who was really hot and she started sweet talking to me. At this point I had been in the champagne room, I think I had already had sex with another stripper, but I'm not sure, I lose track of these things.
I asked this stripper if she would have sex with me. She agreed and she said that she would meet up with me after she got off work. She said she just needed me to give her something like $500 or maybe a little less than that, maybe it was $300, and she wanted like half beforehand.
So, my stupid ass, I went to the ATM and I pulled $150 out of the ATM
machine. I gave it to her and she said, "All right. Good."
She gave me some apartment in the ghetto to go to, some cheap hotel or place you would stay weekly at, and I made very careful note of that, and I was trying to watch for her coming out of the strip club.
I walked around for a while, then I got my friend who was going home from the strip club. He gave me a ride and I asked him, "Look, I need to go over and see one of my friends."
I made up a total fucking lie. I told him that there was some girl I saw from high school at the strip club.
"Bullshit."
He said, "Okay."
I said, "She's over here staying in one of these weekly apartment little studio kind of things."
He said, "Okay."
He probably thought I was buying drugs or some shit, which I wasn't. I
was trying to go have sex with this stripper.
I went over to the exact address she gave me. I was drunk and I might not have heard her correctly, but I'm imagining she just bullshitted me an address, and when I knocked on the door I saw someone pull up the blinds a little bit.
Now my first thought was, "This isn’t fucking right. I gave this stripper $150, and this is clearly not where she lives."
I had the intuition that this was not anywhere she stayed, that she had given me a bullshit address and I was in the wrong spot, and I had better get the fuck out of there while I still had a ride home.
I did not have any cash or anything left on me because I had bullshitted her too. I didn't have any more money myself. We had both been bullshitting and she came out of it with 150 bucks and I came out of it looking stupid.
I hauled ass out of there and said, "Fuck that bitch. This fucking bitch took my money and led me to the wrong place?"
Oh man, I was hot. I was really hot, but thank God, my friend was still waiting there for me. He was a fellow USCPD officer who drank a whole lot that night himself, but not as much as me.
He must have thought I was buying drugs or some shit. I came right back to the car. I was not gone for more than like a minute or two. I came right back there and I said, "Shit, she's not there. I think she gave me the wrong address or something."
He took me right back home and he didn't ask any questions about it either. I'm imagining he figured the less he knew the better, and he was probably right about that.
Another night I'm remembering, I was out of the bar in Five Points. There was a girl shooting pool. It turned out she was a mom who was about 15 years older than me.
She was shooting pool and we started talking and bullshitting. I ended up making out with her at the bar that night, then I got her phone number. A few nights later, she called me up and asked to meet her downtown somewhere at Five Points.
I went to meet her, but she was not there. Then, she gave me this shit while we went to the strip club. The same strip club where damn near everything I've talked about went down.
So we went to the strip club and I met her there. She was with a bunch of other girls and some guys, and there was a big party of people. She was so distracted and I was all pissed off.
I said, "Fuck this dumb bitch. You don't even have time for me? This is bullshit."
I just got up without saying shit and left.
She might have sent me a text like, "Where did you go?" or some shit and I didn't respond.
Then like a year later, she sent a mass text. She started a business, I guess. This was after I had been a police officer and moved home with my parents.
I was on a road trip. I was up visiting my family. I was staying with my
aunts and uncles and cousins in their huge house in Michigan, and she was still living in Columbia, South Carolina.
She sent this mass text to everyone in her phone that said, "Hey, I'm offering haircuts now."
I think it just said something like, "Hey, do you want a haircut?"
She had started a business cutting people's hair. She would come to your house and cut your hair. She started a business cutting hair and she just mass texted everyone in her phone.
"Hey, do you want a haircut?"
I thought, of course, that it was just a message for me at first trying to like hook back up.
I said, "A haircut? Why? What are you doing with a haircut?"
She said, "I'm cutting hair now."
I said, "Okay. So, what about when we tried to hook up before?"
I don't know how we got into this, but we ended up sexting each other. I even showed the messages to my friends, which I'm not proud of, but we will get to that in a minute.
Who knows what I was thinking. I was acting completely on impulse and addiction. If you see your own impulses running the show the way mine were, I would be glad to talk it through with you when you book a private call with me.
So I drove 700 miles to go to hook up with this girl. Even though I was having a great time with my family in Michigan and I love staying with them,
I drove 700 miles back to Columbia.
Now, the best part of this shit is that I was sexting her while I was driving back all day, warming it up. I was driving back on a Thursday, and I was planning to see her the next day.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.