This is my journal entry from December 26, 2025 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
Went to see the kids first thing in the morning today since they're going on a trip to Orlando with my ex-wife later. Then I came back home and reflected that it's time to start an event again. I want to have an event people can come to every single day. Noon is the best time of the day since I can do it on weekends and when the kids are in school. Noon will be perfect. I'll have my evenings free, and I want something people can come to every single day. I was looking around for the best title for my event, and I'm thinking, what are people struggling with that I could help with? I settled on that the biggest things people are struggling with are being fat, broke, and single. So I put an event up with the following title, From Fat, Broke, or Single to Stable, Healthy, and Dating. This is a recurring event every single day. I initially put it at Crescent Lake Park, and I charged $23.45 for the event, and then Eventbrite sticks on like $5 of fees. But it's not legal to charge for an event without a permit, it turns out, which stupid ChatGPT had no idea about. And we did all the planning, I put it at Crescent Lake, and it's like, yeah, I just can't put an event in a public place. I knew this because I used to go to yoga classes on the beach, and when they were charging for them, the city eventually came in and closed them down. Thus, I got an event up seven days a week at 12 p.m.
I went to my yoga studio today, hoping to see the girl from yesterday, but she wasn't there. I put my mat down, and the girl next to me, who has a big wedding ring on, gives me a really nice smile. I'm like, nice, the people here are much more friendly than that other yoga studio. I swear to God, I was on a smile deprivation tour there. Everybody felt like she was being cold as shit. And I go to my studio, it's like, oh, hello. Some girl wants me to pick her up and I can't even do it.
Before that though, the day got interesting. Right when I was walking home from my ex-wife's house to my house, which is a couple blocks away, I ran into this girl with a big pink dog leash that says adopt me, and a big bandana on the dog too. I've been listening to Tucker Max, remembering some of the stuff I've learned. So I started talking to this girl immediately. I hollered at her from a distance so I'd have more time to talk. And I end up talking with her for over 30 minutes. We stand for like 10 minutes almost in front of my house. Then I walk over a mile with her and walk her back close to her house. The whole time, this girl's just talking about herself. And I realized maybe I should have made her listen to more about me. She talks a bunch about herself. She gives me her phone number. And she lives right in the neighborhood. But then I ask if I can walk the dog. She says no because it's a rescue shelter dog, and if anything happens, she's on the hook for it. And I ask her at the end of the 30 minutes of talking with her if I can have a hug. She says no, I don't do hugs. I'm like, goddamn, you're cold as ice. She didn't seem to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or anything. She lives with her mom. And honestly, she seemed completely shut down to me, like there wasn't any spark there at all.
But then I'm thinking, you know, I got her phone number and stuff, but I probably should have talked to her differently. I asked way too much about her. Do I really want to listen to her that much? I wanted to ask her, don't you have any curiosity about me? Like, why is this dude talking to me? What is his deal? You know, her curiosity just seemed either dead or totally filtered, because kids have a natural curiosity. They're so interested in what's happening. This girl just was happy to talk about herself, but was not interested in asking almost anything about me. I'm like, I guess I'm going to have to just start proactively talking about myself to these girls because they don't have the common courtesy to even ask about me. But it did feel good. She was attractive enough, and it left me feeling pretty good. Although at the same time, I'm like, I got to do something different. I'd rather spend my time around people who are genuinely curious and growing, so if that's you, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family.
I go to my yoga studio, and I'm listening to this other book on Audible about how women like men that can demonstrate signs that they have good genes, that they're intelligent, and they're mentally healthy. And the problem with that is, it makes sense why some of the girls in AA, who I've given my books to, are pretty turned off. It's called Mate by Jeffrey Miller. The problem is, though, see, this is why lying often works really well across all areas of life. Because when I met my ex-wife, I intentionally hid how mentally unstable and messed up I was, and then revealed it once I'd already gotten close to her. These girls that see me in AA talking about my struggles for real, I guess some of them take it as a sign that I'm mentally unstable, because they're used to hanging out with dudes that keep all that stuff secret. But what women don't realize is that a man who can talk about this stuff out in the open is extremely healthy. He doesn't have to hide. A man that doesn't have to hide and lie about himself is extremely strong and stable, because most men hide and lie like I did when I met my ex-wife. I hid and I lied. That's what I did with her. And it worked. That's what's messed up. It worked to get this beautiful girl to fall in love with me because I was a liar.
But now I realize, too, I've kind of been a liar also. When my agenda is that I want to be with some girl, or get to know her to decide if I'm interested, I'm not being honest when I ask all this stuff about her. I need to be more direct, like, hey, I'm talking to you to see if there's something real here, to see if you're available and stable. You know, that would be a kind of honesty. I realized I need to be more honest myself, because let's face it, when I'm talking to a girl, I'm trying to decide if I'm actually interested in her, and if she's interested in me, and if she's worth my time. And I'm tired of wasting my time with girls that aren't interested, when I could be at home writing books, I could be out trying to make some money, I could be hanging out with guy friends that I don't have to wonder about in that way.
So after I get home from yoga, I have a big salad for lunch and I don't have any plans until 7.30 for an AA meeting. So I work on getting the event finished off and edited and figuring out what I'm going to do next. I stopped sending out the letters. I've got over 350 letters done to my existing neighborhood, and I want to leave those for a couple of weeks, see if I get any responses. And what I want to do going forward is send letters addressed to my new neighbor, because just sending letters to my neighbor, I think a lot of people might throw those out. But they might be more curious if it's from an address nearby and it says my new neighbor. And then the purpose of the letter is to introduce myself. Hey, you know, I'm a single dad. I write books. I help people write books. I have an event, etc. I think that might work a lot better to introduce myself to my new neighbors rather than just solicit my neighbors that I already have for business. Introducing myself and building something people can actually be part of is what lights me up, and I'd love for you to come build it with us in the Family.
So I get that workflow ready, and then I start going through my phone and looking at all these women I have in here that nothing's happened with. So I go through and I send text messages. First, starting off with the girl I met on the walk today. I sent her a message, I enjoyed the walk with you and your dog, let's take another walk sometime soon. You think she replied? No. I sent one to a girl at a meeting yesterday. I say, hey, I always enjoy running into you at meetings, but we've never really had much time to talk. I'd love to change that. Want to go for a walk at Crescent Lake Park sometime this week? Do you think she responded to that? No. I sent a message to a guy yesterday talking about getting his book. Do you think he responded? No. I sent a message to a woman I had been seeing. I said that the last reply to her message was a big leap, I'd like to really catch up and see how she's been doing. Do you think she responded? No. I sent a message to a girl that I've had a few massages with and seen before. I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk at Crescent Lake Park. She's like, oh, these days are quite full and quite busy, so I'm not available, but I appreciate the invite. I'm like, at least she had the common courtesy to respond. And then this one girl, I send her a message, another one from an AA meeting, and she leaves a like on it. That's nice. All right, so what am I supposed to do with that?
And this guy texting me on Christmas that I know from AA got my phone number. So I messaged all these women, not one single response. So I start thinking, I need to take a different approach. My online dating shit is not working. I'm swiping all these women, I ask all these lame questions like, hey, what do you like for food, or what's your favorite Star Trek episode, or whatever they put on their profile I try and talk about, and it does not work at all, and I feel like I'm just being generic and not even standing out.
So I go to the AA meeting, and I talk about how praying to my late father helped me get sober, and I talk to the girl in front of me, who's one of the only two women in the meeting. The other one is older and once tried to tell me I shouldn't talk about sex in a meeting. So I talk to the only decent-looking girl. I sit right behind her and I'm like, I just sat behind her, let me say hi and not just be this creep that sat behind her. So I talked to her a little bit and she has the same name as a girl I met earlier today. I'm like, what are the odds of that? I've never met a girl with that name in my whole life until a few months ago, and I literally met two women in the same day with the same name. Leaning on my faith and my late father has been a big part of how I got sober, and if you're working through getting sober or another hard season, I'd be glad to talk one-on-one on a private Zoom call.
I get home and I'm like, it's time to redo my dating profile. I'm tired of being generic, the kind women pass over. So let me read my Hinge profile to you word for word. It says, instead of grabbing drinks, let's go to a funeral. This is a poll. Instead of grabbing drinks, let's go to a funeral, file our taxes, or get on the scale at the grocery store. Next one. Dating me is like a power yoga flow. You'll hate me for telling you what to do most of the time, but when you get to lay there for five minutes at the end, you'll be really happy you came. That's clever, right? Sexual innuendo, but it's clearly just about yoga. Instead of being an author, I changed my employer, what I do for work, to God, because that's what I truly believe, that I'm the creator of this universe. I'm God, so you better get used to it. Then scroll down. It says my last journal entry was about my plan to find a diamond in the rough on here and polish her. Then it says I go crazy for you wanting to have my babies and being a stay-at-home mom. Like this is so real. I'm not trying to put on an act. That's real.
Now let me go on Bumble. Let me tell you what I did with my Bumble profile. It says God as my employer. My bio says, I told my mom that I'm looking for a diamond in the rough on here that I can polish. She said that's really selfish because she thinks you're perfect just the way you are. I replied, the most selfless thing I could do is marry a girl on here that no other guy wants and turn her into a queen. Right? Like how nice is that? On Bumble then it says, instead of drinks, let's go to a funeral. Then below that it says, I show I care by telling you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it. And then the last one says, something funny I think about all the time is how you would make a great stay-at-home mom. It's so toxic, but it's so real. Like, that's what I want. I want someone who wants to stay at home, raise the kids, go get massages, go to yoga, have some girlfriends, and not have it all be about her work and her ego, because I'm bringing in all the cash we need, and then she can stay home and do that work.
So I'm like, I need to redo my Tinder too. So I go over to my Tinder profile and it says, you will love swiping right on me, enthusiastically messaging me, immediately meeting up in person, and living happily ever after. You'll be bragging to your friends how you were finally able to delete this app because you found me. Until I tell you that I want you to have my babies, lose that extra 50 pounds, stop drinking, quit doing drugs, and be a stay-at-home mom. The best part is I've already done all that, and I'll tell you exactly how you can do it too, and I've been a stay-at-home dad, so I know how it is. That's a killer profile, right? And the idea is the profile will pull off the wrong one. I don't want to mess with the wrong one. I'm tired of messing with the wrong one. I want the right one.
And yes, as I said in the profile, I went over to my mom's house. My mom and I got into it. I told her, look, there are women on these apps where you can tell that if they made some changes and took better care of their health, they'd be beautiful, and they just need a partner to support them in that. I saw one girl, young, with beautiful hair and a potentially beautiful face, who just needs to take better care of herself, and honestly she needs a partner to help her fix herself up. As my ex-wife reminded me, she's like, you know, I helped you lose a bunch of weight and get sober. I'm like, that's true. Maybe I need to find a woman that's a fixer-upper, someone who's struggling with drinking and smoking, and I'll be like, look, move in with me, stop drinking, eat right, throw out the vape and the cigarettes and the weed, and you're going to be the beautiful person I know you can be. Isn't that a noble cause? My mom said that was really selfish, the underlying assumption being that someone who's struggling like that really wants to be that way, that it's her best self and she's perfect just the way she is. I'm like, no mom, you've got things wrong, she's having a rough life, and the best thing that could happen to her would be somebody like me coming along and helping her turn it around.
Just like a fixer-upper house that some people totally trashed and wrecked. The best thing you could do with that house wouldn't be to just list it as-is and let some person move in and pay rent on it the way it is. What you'd do is gut it or knock it down, completely clean out all evidence of what happened before, and then put it back up looking beautiful, where you'd have no idea what a shithole it was before. See, I think that's the nicest thing I could do for a girl, to find someone whose life is totally trashed and to save her. Now, I know some of the dating books are like, don't try and save anybody, they don't want to be saved. But look, my ex-wife saved me. I was a wasteland, just in the middle of being a fat, alcoholic mess, and she helped fix me up. So maybe I can help fix somebody up. But she's got to at least have a beautiful face and nice hair once she's fixed up, because just getting healthier isn't going to fix everything. So if a woman has beautiful hair and a nice face and eyes, I think together we could turn her into a healthy, sober, beautiful version of herself. So maybe I should just open my filters up.
But I put it to just definitely wanting kids. So I swiped on this girl on Hinge. She said that I looked at her profile. And on her profile she's like, I want a man that's honest, and then one of the only things she puts as her simple pleasures in life is eating chocolate ice cream. I'm like, you say you want honesty, but I'm not sure you really want that. So I sent her a like and a message. I'm like, see, you say you want honesty, but you don't actually want it. She's like, try me. Okay. So I send her a message that goes like this. It says, wow, you're up at 3 a.m. First, put your real name or a nickname; the name you have ironically invites guys to do the exact thing you don't want them to do. Second, if you want a man that's honest, lead by example like I do in my profile. Be honest about what you're looking for. Try to write things that will turn the wrong kind of guy off so you don't have to bother with him. I found your profile because I only filter for girls that don't drink and smoke, and I'm most likely to like girls that want kids. You're one of the few girls that match those criteria in this entire area, and it's something important to lead with. Since guys end up being the ones to like you first, you want to provide a lot of information on your profile to give us a good conversation starter. I laughed when I read the combination of you wanting honesty and then liking chocolate ice cream, because I was sure you wouldn't want to hear my next thought after seeing the two of those together.
Then it got to be after 11, and I'm like, what am I doing not being proactive on my sleep? But then I'm like, I don't have to get up, so I turn my alarm off. I went in the shower and went to bed. I told myself I wasn't going to masturbate, that I didn't need to, but I ended up doing it before bed anyway, and it's fine. And I went to bed, and literally one girl said no to all my messages, and not one other one responded. Like, you know what? I got to do something different. I think I got to be more like Tucker Max. I got to be more of a ruthless asshole and less of a nice guy. These girls don't appreciate a nice guy.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.