This is my journal entry from March 7, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
First on the agenda today is going to the ACA meeting. I arrived there and sit in the same spot as last time, enjoying the company and wondering if the really attractive girl was going to be there again today from last week. It's 40 minutes after the meeting started and we got another 40 minutes or so left and she rolls in. There's two seats left. One right next to me and one on the other side of the table away from me. She sits right next to me. I make a little extra eye contact and smile with her. And I share to try and impress her. The topic is the third step. So I'm trying to tell her what I know about third step and how I'm living it. And she didn't share last time, but she shares this time. I can hardly tell what she's talking about. It's just being really vague and not really being specific about anything except talking about calming her nervous system down. I noticed a mounting excitement. I woke up kind of down, but sitting next to her, my whole body is just fantastically excited. I'm like, now this is at least how I'd like a girl to look for my second wife. She's lean, and at the same time, she's in shape, it looks like.
I ask her after we do the serenity prayer. I waste no time making sure to introduce myself to her. I shake her left hand with my left hand since she's got something in her right hand. I ask her what she does to calm her nervous system down. She says she does yoga and Pilates. And I say, where does she go? I do yoga at my yoga studio. She tells me a studio she goes to. And I ask why she does Pilates, because that's what she says she's really into. And she says it just feels better in her body. And then she kind of abruptly says she needs to leave and turns around and walks off and doesn't talk to anybody else. I end up feeling kind of sad like that didn't go very well. Like I had so much good feeling to give her and really wanted to tell her how glad I was to see her there at the meeting again. But none of that came up and it felt like we're almost having an argument, which is really annoying.
After that excitement starts to dissipate. Everything else feels boring. Like I'm ready to make it out of the meeting. But one of the women that's about 10 years older than me catches my exit and stops me. And I end up talking to her and a couple other guys for like 30 minutes before I leave. I tell them about the experience, too, with this girl. And they encouraged me to look at all the different personalities inside. You know, me, Jerry the child, Jerry the teenager, the young adult, the adult, the parent. What's interesting is I can very much see my excitement was clearly coming from the child and the teenager. But Jerry the adult is a little wary of this whole situation. And Jerry the adult's kind of relieved that, you know, it doesn't seem like this would be a great idea. This particular girl doesn't seem like quite the right fit based on just what I can read off of her, you know, by looking at her and talking to her a little bit. I head home feeling kind of like a balloon that's slowly letting all of its air out.
And I commit to going to a pole dancing class today. Like, you know, I could just go to my yoga studio for some yoga. I'm like, no, it's time to try something new. And I've been thinking about strip clubs. Like, you know what's better than going to a strip club is going to a pole dancing class. I head out to the pole studio, which a friend recommended I go to. I arrive there 15 minutes early, like I suggested. I get to talk to the owner for a little while. The pole studio is pretty cool. There's more of an advanced pole class going on when I get there, and there are some really skilled dancers in there doing some amazing moves. I don't get to see too much of it as I take my shoes off and hit the restroom, but I see them all on the way out, and I'm like, I should do some more pole classes. This would be a much better workout and a lot more quality interactions with no alcohol.
As everyone clears out from the last classes, we get ready to start this class. There's a bunch of people in the beginner class, and it's a friendly group. The owner gets us straight into some shit that I can't even do or hardly describe. It's like put your leg higher than your waist and tuck your knee, grab on the pole and then put your one hand way up and then try and like jump up on it. I'm like, the fuck? I can't even do this. My hands are hella sweaty. And just as soon as I grip the pole, I just start sliding immediately. The owner gives me some alcohol stuff to dry your hands out. And I get my little washcloth with an alcohol spray, but none of that shit's hardly helping. If I put more than like 10, 20 seconds with my hand on a pole, it's just sweaty again. And she does a couple of more things I have a hard time even attempting. And I'm really impressed that the people next to me are doing way better than me. Now, some of them have been to a few classes already. By the end of the class, I'm starting to get a little bit the hang of it. The last one we do is the one where you end up kind of like sitting on the pole. I finally get a couple of the poses, you know, halfway decently and awkwardly done. But man, my hands and my shoulders. I'm like, good God, this is a workout. And I'm thinking I definitely need to come back here. The owner encourages me to try an instructor's class on Thursday and to do some more beginner classes. And I'm thinking, yes, like this is a cool environment. And this is a different kind of strength than I'm usually using. And I'm so glad I tried something new today.
After the pole class, I head over to my ex-wife's house to pick the kids up and bring them back to my house. My son really wants this $250 RC car that goes 50 miles an hour. So I figured out a way to work that out. I'd like to get help stuffing all these envelopes. And my son wants this car. So I'm like, here, look at this arrangement, kids. If you take a thousand of these letters and stuff them into these thousand envelopes for me, I'll buy you that $250 RC car. The kids agree. And they're off stuffing envelopes. They get to my house. And between the two of them, my daughter agrees to help my son because she wants to drive it too. They each stuff about 50 envelopes. And meanwhile, I eat a salad because I'm hungry after that workout. And I watch them work. And I love their enthusiasm, the conversations they're having. My son gets a paper cut on the very last one. And I'm so proud of them. I'm like, nice job. You guys stuffed 100 envelopes, 900 more to go. Then the kids go play with friends. We also take a couple of the cars we already have, like the monster truck and this other remote control car my son has. And we play crash with them, wrecking them into each other over and over again. The monster truck just keeps shooting over the low profile of the other car. And I end up having fun driving the monster truck and doing tricks with it while the kids are off with friends. My ex-wife comes over. And then my ex-wife takes the kids back home. I'm like, all right, it's time to work.
I go through and catch up on several days of my journaling that I was working on. And I'm grateful the letter is prepared to give out. I get ready to figure out what I'm going to do this evening. And I'm thinking, I don't really need to go to the recovery meeting that much. I already went to the ACA meeting. But I text one of the girls asking a question about an event they're having. And she says she's actually going to the meeting and not the event. And I said, maybe I'd see her there. So I'm like, shit. I've known this girl since early sobriety. She's very pretty. She's dating someone else right now. But she's been a friend, very friendly with me. And I'm like, I don't have anything better to do than go to this meeting tonight. So I go to the meeting, dressed up in my nice clothes, drive like over 20 minutes to get there. I actually get there 15 minutes early. I sit down with a nice view of the room. And about five minutes after I get there, she walks in with her beautiful, energetic self, comes right over and sits down next to me. And we start having a great conversation. She gives me so much validation, too. Tells me she loves my shirt, that I look great in it, that I'm a big part of what motivated her to want to stay sober when she saw me at early meetings. And she tells me about, you know, the guy she's dating and everything and how that started. Then her sponsee walks in and she encourages me to shout out a line I used to call out during the reading. She loved how I used to shout that out at meetings when she was first sober. So I do it again in this one and get a positive reaction overall out of it. We have a nice meeting. I share where I'm at and she shares and her sponsee shares. So it's real nice to hear all of us talk. We talk a bit more after the meeting, exchange some hugs. And I head home feeling really good. Like, man, that was just what I needed. Like that really nice interaction with a friend. I'm thinking, man, if this girl ever breaks up with the dude she's dating, I'd definitely like to call next on that. But it is really nice to have that. What's there now is very nice. And I'm really grateful for it.
I drive back home. I start listening to this book called Cloistered, which is about a nun's time in a nunnery. I think it's in France, and that's interesting so far. Meanwhile, tonight, I've decided tonight's the night to write a letter to my sister. I get home about 8:30 from the meeting, and I take the rest of the time writing a letter to my sister. It's going to be her 50th birthday, and I want to thank her for all the difference she's made in my life and catch her up on what's going on in my life, too. And she's not much for phone calls. Neither of us are on social media. I'm not much for texting. And like, to me, texting is something, you know, let's schedule time. Texting is not like a way to get to know somebody to me. It's so aggravating and distracting. So I spend the rest of the night getting a letter written for my sister. I keep it to four pages so we don't go too crazy. And I'm also thinking, reading back my journaling, like I generally should record these the day after. I generally should get a night of sleep before recording the entry for that day. Because some of the previous entries, I'm like, how the hell did I ramble on for 30 or 40 minutes? Like, I should have got a night's sleep. And then after a night's sleep, you can often see which parts of the day are more important. And some of the fluff gets trimmed. Some of the tangents, some things get more clear and it's easier. I'm like, man, doing these all the time, I don't want to have 20, 30, 40 minutes of dictation every single day. It should be more like 5, 10, 15.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.