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.
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.