This is my journal entry from March 4, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
It's our early day going to school. The kids are up and off by 7:30 and delivered on time. I'm grateful everything was so smooth. I come back home and I feel that today is the day to get the Jerry Banfield shirts ordered. I'm tired of wearing out these blank shirts, which don't promote my business when I could be wearing shirts that do. So I go on Etsy. I find a couple of sellers that do glitter bling shirts, and I order these shirts that say Jerry Banfield, author in St. Petersburg on them. I asked ChatGPT about the branding, and it encourages me to keep the branding consistent everywhere. Jerry Banfield, author in St. Petersburg, is great branding. It shows everybody that I'm local. And with my name and author in St. Petersburg, you know everything you need to about the high level, and from there people search Jerry Banfield author and find my books, my website, and if they want to write a book they might think that, oh, he's an author, he could help me write a book, which is perfect. I spend two hundred dollars ordering like seven different shirts. I order two from one seller that are forty dollars each. And then another seller has this big discount where they're only 20 something dollars each, which is crazy. Like that is super cheap for a front and back glitter shirt. So I buy five glitter shirts from that seller and I should have them in a few weeks. I'm excited to have these new t-shirts and I'll clear out all the old ones as soon as I get these new ones, drop them all at the thrift shop or the clothing giveaway.
After that, I've been wondering what I should do this morning. Maybe I should try out a fun new yoga because a friend canceled for tennis. So I'm not sure what to do. I look up. I see some aerial classes. I could do vertical ventures. There's no pole dancing class now, but I could do one of those later in the week. I find a few different activities I could do, but they all look pretty intensive. And I'm like, I don't know. My elbow is still a little sore. And if I do some, you know, hard like vertical climbing activities based on doing pull-ups before at the gym, I better let this elbow heal a little bit more before I get into that. Thus, I just canceled my yoga studio membership and I'll just do donations instead. But I do still have today left. So I'm like, let me go the noon power flow at my yoga studio with a yoga instructor. She always does a good workout. I figure I'll just do that because I don't have any better ideas.
I show up there. I throw my mat down right in the back middle because I just barely get there on time. And I see a woman over in the back right corner. I've seen her a few times here and talked to her. I met her originally at a yoga studio. She was a girl who was very friendly and seemed like she wanted me to ask for her phone number, but I didn't. And she hasn't been on my radar that much. But I'm noticing her today. I'm like, what's going on with this girl? And I start thinking I should give her my new book on effing myself and ask her if she reads. So at the end of class, I drift on over to her and talk to her. And sure enough, she does read paperback books as her preferred reading format. She's about to take a trip to Miami. I'm like, great. Why don't you come out to my car and I'll give you my new book on effing myself.
She's talking to somebody else. And after she's done talking to him, she comes over and parks next to my Corolla. And we keep talking. We find out we've got some surprising things in common. She's born the same year my brother's born. And I give her the book. She's like, you know, being friendly. I leave there. I'm like, it gave me that Beauty and the Beast feeling, like something was suddenly there that wasn't there before. I'm like, what is going on with this girl, like, I keep just running into her, and I told her my phone number's in there. So I went through earlier focusing on my local marketing and I printed a version of my local letter that I've been putting in envelopes, but I printed a version of that to put inside all my books also. So I printed that letter, and I stuck it on the inside of the book, and I told her, you know, my phone number's in there if she has comments or questions, which she thought was funny. Said she's going to Miami for a week, so that's nice. Like, she's thinking about when she'll see me again.
I'm driving home. I'm like, this, there's something, there might be something special here. Like, this feels very aligned. She said she got divorced last year, just like me. She doesn't have any kids, although it seems like she wants some. We both, like, on a similar schedule, like doing hot power flows in the middle of the day during the week. And I'd come to share a skepticism of conventional germ theory myself, at least that's how I see it. I'm like, this could be something here. Like, she's beautiful. She's strong, like able to do one of these classes. And I'm like, hmm, that could work. That could definitely work. And I send my friend a message because, I don't know, I just, this whole thing meeting and talking to her this morning kind of reminded me of my friend's story meeting her partner that she wrote with me. Like, this feels kind of special here, and I'm interested to see what happens.
I go home, I shower and I pack the kids some snacks. I go pick them up from school for snacks. We drive back to my place and they are coming home and doing their, you know, school stuff. And they're just doing their homework really quietly. I'm like, man, this is pretty amazing. And we don't end up having time to play Catan, but my son's all obsessed about getting an RC car today. And we find one that's $250 on Amazon that goes up to 50 miles an hour. And I say, well, you know, I'll put this in my cart and I'll save that for later. At the same time, buddy, you have two cars you can drive that are remote control and you don't drive them that much. So he starts going nuts driving the car. So we go to the park, fly the drone. So, I mean, I spent $200 buying a drone and a monster truck that they haven't been driving much lately. They drove it a lot, like almost every day when we first got moved into this house. I'm like, buddy, you know, I don't want to buy you a $250 race car and you use it for a week or two and then you're over it. I'm like, if you want a race car, you should really enjoy the stuff you already have, like the drone and the two cars you already have. So he was driving the hell out of those today. We go to the park. We have some fun and sweat and run around a bit there, run out both the drone batteries and run out the car battery.
And we come home. My ex-wife comes over. And the kids are like fighting and fussing with her. And when she's around, I'm like, they really saved this mood today for you. After she leaves, then I take them to get an acai bowl. And there's a little bit of a fuss before that. They'd like hit each other. I said they weren't going to get an acai bowl. I said, you know, why are we going to get an acai bowl when you're fussing? They apologized to each other and made up. I said, you know, I'm sorry for saying, you know, trying to punish you by not having an acai bowl, whatever, let's just go eat. We go eat and I drop $35 for two acai bowls for the kids. I share some of theirs to make sure they're all eaten. We come back here and then my mother arrives right afterwards and the kids want more stuff for school lunches. So my mother's parked behind me. She's like, you could just take my car. I'm like, I have to adjust all the mirrors and all that crap. And she's like, fine, we'll just switch places. It takes my mother gets in and like does like a 15 point turn to like back out of my driveway and then I go to the grocery store.
I'm walking around there wondering if I'll maybe meet the love of my life there. Maybe I already did, you know, maybe she's it, who knows, maybe the next match. I haven't heard from my matchmaker since Monday but I imagine she's working. This guy at the grocery store asked me if I'm a runner. I'm like, no, but I play tennis and stuff, why do you ask? And he's like, oh, I saw your calf muscles. I'm like, well, thanks, I appreciate your attention to detail. Like, I would not think to look at a dude's calf muscles or even a girl's calf muscles and be like, are you a runner? I appreciate how this dude started conversation with me. I'm like, that's pretty cool. You know how he just got that going like that. So I come home and wait in front of my house while my mother, you know, changes positions with the car again and eventually get everybody in bed a little before 9:30. And I go to bed thinking, like last night I was thinking about wanting some validation. I'm like, yeah, I don't know if those are my best ideas. We'll keep thinking on those. Hope I have some better ideas tonight.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.