This is my journal entry from February 18, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
Today's the day to get the kids to school early. We got up, moved it fast, and made it there on time. My son wasn't sure he wanted to go, but they had donuts again, so that satisfied him. I got back home and got ready to play tennis. Today, I'm thinking we got to do the Jerry Banfield show. That's where it at. But I just can't get to a spot where I feel happy about it. I think it'd be really easy to promote the show by giving out a bunch of envelopes and invitations. But then we're stuck having to deal with a venue. And I asked the venue where my massage therapist does her massage. And it turns out it'd be $1,200 a month for me to just have like three shows there. And they have a very reasonable room rental rate. It's like $25 an hour. But that adds up. And thus, if I was charging like $33 a ticket, I'd only even be able to make $3,000 a month in profit if the show was fully sold out, which could take some work. Thus, I'm not sure what to do. Again, as usual, ChatGPT says that I should just start with one night of the show. But that's like so little money. I just want to have something I do that makes like $10,000 a month and really transforms people's lives. I'll keep investigating that.
I go out to play tennis with a friend, and wow, I get fucked in the first set. I don't want a single game. I'm screaming and swearing all over the place and emoting, feeling like I just can't gain control of myself again. I, at least in the second set, do manage to get it to 4-4, but then my friend blasts ahead and finish it. My friend feels bad for me. It feels like we didn't play long enough as I still have a ton of energy. I take my shirt off during the first set and I'm super grateful. I have a crazy amount of energy today. I'm out here running around playing tennis, feeling like I haven't even done hardly anything yet. What a gift to have that much energy. My friend plays a few more points with me, maybe like 12 or 20 points with me. And then we have a nice chat afterwards. I ask him about the show. He says, you definitely need a venue. It sounds like something that there'd be a good need for. And I appreciate his feedback. The venue, the venue, the venue. This is what actually pushed me over the edge to contact the venue.
I get home and I have my ex-wife's picking the kids up today. So I don't have much to do, but try and obsess over the show. So I come home. I have lunch and then I record like an hour and 20 minute version of the show. Like I dictate what could be an audio book going forward. And I'm thinking, OK, I'm going to just get this down like I did with the book I'm seeking a wife. We're going to get ready for this and prepare and lay it all out and manifest it. After I do the book, though, I'm like, I just don't know about this. I don't. It's just too many potential complexities with it. But we'll keep working on it.
My ex-wife brings the kids over and they hang out with their friend not too long after they get home. And my ex-wife heads out. Then I take the friend to the park with us and they run around and play there. I love seeing them all dashing towards the park and on the playground, the slides and with their stuffies. It's just little bundles of joy. And this is why I love kids so much. After they play at the park, it's time to go to the song circle tonight. They opted to go to a song circle tonight at a friend's house. So we load up in the car and head out. We get there just at the right time. A bit after seven, we settle down and get some nice places by the fire. And I'm shocked this week. I have a whole different feeling. Like last week, it just... I felt so lonely being there, like I should have been there with a girl or something, or with my kids. But this week, it feels just right. The kids sit down, they love the fire, and once the songs start, they actually enjoy the songs and start singing them, and I'm singing them too, and it doesn't feel like the dumbest fucking thing ever, like it did last week, which is great. A friend is leading it and actually wrote several songs just for the song circle, and they come out beautifully.
There's a little boy next to me, too, that's leaning his back up against my back and he's playing with the basket of different sound shakers and, you know, like bells, lots of little things you can make noise with to join in on the music. And there's a mom right next to me. She's friendly and I don't know much else about her, but I like her vibe and it's nice to have her and her son next to me. And her son's like two years old. And it reminds me of why I want more kids. I just I love a two year old. I love a seven year old. I love a 10 year old. I love all of them. And I've got a lot more child raising in me before I'm done. This little boy. And then my son snuggles up with me eventually, too, because the wind keeps blowing the fire in his face. So he snuggles up with me on one side and the little boy sitting back to back with me on the other side. And I just feel like I'm in heaven. I'm like, this is so nice. It was so the opposite of last week is crazy. A friend of mine isn't there and I miss her. But an acquaintance from a local spiritual community comes in. I'm a little awkward seeing him because I left some negative feedback when I canceled my membership at the local spiritual community. But who knows if he really read it or not? I feel like I'm being kind of fake, but I also honestly tell him that, you know, I'm trying to have my own events and he's inspired me that I want to do my own events. And, you know, he's all love and light. Oh, it's all good, bro. You know, all that stuff.
And after it gets to be nine o'clock, my daughter is enjoying the singing. My son gets to ready to head out at like 840. We negotiate like nine o'clock. My daughter's having fun. We head out about nine o'clock just before the last song starts. And I'm really grateful for this time with the kids in this adventure. I tell the kids like this is they're like, Dad, we had so much fun doing this. And I'm like, what's cool about this is that this isn't something we would have done if your mom and I were still married. I went to stuff like this, especially in 2020 when everything was closed down. I was going to underground, not literally underground, but like things that weren't being posted on social media that people were keeping quiet. I was going to ecstatic dances that had like 20, 30, 40 people at them. And it was awesome. Like right when everybody was in this insanity and fear and locked in their houses, I'm out at dance parties. Like, fuck all this bullshit. My ex-wife and her family were all pissed at that. And I was going to AA meetings also in person. So I've been doing events and going out to stuff like this for years. And I never took in the kids because my ex-wife, while she would have allowed it, she always discouraged it. She always mentioned about bedtime and wanted the kids home. She wouldn't have wanted us to be out until after nine and then a 15 minute drive home plus showers and stuff. We end up getting in bed just a little before 10. And that wouldn't, on a school night, that wouldn't have been okay living with my ex-wife. But I tell the kids, I'm like, this is cool because this is stuff, you know, this is a benefit that you get to go see and do stuff like this with me when it just wasn't happening at home. And it wasn't just my ex-wife also. I was just in the passenger seat with my parenting, like letting my ex-wife decide most all the stuff the kids did and kind of silently, resentfully doing stuff on my own, wishing I could take the kids, but feeling like she didn't want me to. So we'd both gotten a bit of a funk with that.
I drive the kids home and my daughter showers. My son finishes up his homework. And earlier today, I was looking at my hair, and I gave myself another buzz cut with the number one clipper. I think this is the way to go with my hair indefinitely. My hair grows too slow to grow it out. You'd be guaranteed months. I did grow it out to several inches long in 2020, 2021. It was so curly. I hated trying to do stuff with it, and I think the buzz cut looks the best on me. Like I look the best with a buzz cut. That's what I often had as a kid. That's what feels comfortable. So I made a decision on my hair. I mean, it's months, at least a month, to undo the decision to reverse it. The hair also got a little lighter in the back but that's okay, especially the buzz cut it makes no difference, it just looks like I have a nice head for a buzz cut. And my ex-wife helped me polish the back of it off when she got here. I said, don't worry, when I get a second wife, she'll do that.
I'm really happy to get the kids in bed and that we had so much fun with the song circle today and that they had time with their friends, time with their mom, time at school, and time with me in the morning and the evening. It was a lovely day.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.