This is my journal entry from January 14, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
It's my day to drop the kids off today, which makes complete sense after our overnight. We wake up and yeah, they're a little slow waking up, but I had a great night of sleep, man. Holy shit. I did wake up at like three in the morning, which to me is a great time of like divine guidance and inspiration. And I'm really prepared to wake up at that time and meditate and receive thoughts and think if I go to bed earlier. So this has been great with the kids. What I was thinking about three in the morning is, fuck, what am I going to do with my business and my money? Like, this is potentially a really bad scenario. Like, I'm just bleeding love, baby. This could go bad. Like, if nobody comes to my events and shit doesn't work right, it could really go downhill. But at the same time, like, you know what? I'm going to do my work. And I've got enough validation from the universe that this is a place. And if this doesn't work, we'll figure out something else. But right now, the best idea I got is writing these letters to promote events at my house.
Yesterday, I went through the events and thought a lot about it. And I'm thinking I need to brand this as a workshop. I need to charge accordingly. This should be at least $50 minimum to come to my house for two and a half hours and have a deep event. Not some quick, shallow $20 event per head and then trying to be going quantity. But even if one person shows up for $50 on average, that means two people come once, zero people come. Even if I can just get one person on average to come two nights a week, that turns into like $400 a month. That's enough to start making a little bit of real money. Even if I get four people on average, that's $1,600 a month. That's offsetting my rent. And I know I can get four people on average to come to my house for an event because there's a ton of people in the city that could use it. And I am going to write the letters and do the outreach to make that happen.
So I go back to sleep. I'm like, you know what? This is going to be all right. Don't worry about it. I'm going to do my thing. Everything's put me in this position to succeed. And I fall back asleep. I wake up with the kids. We get up and they have burritos for breakfast along with their fruit. I make sure everything's ready. Backpacks, get them shipped off to school, drop them off. My son and I read his Jupiter book in the back of the car and have a nice time with our father-son time in the backseat reading his book.
I then head home and I'm wondering, man, do I want to go to my gym for the marketing event today, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.? I really want to get the event created today, the Deeper Connections event. I want it created today. I need to work on the thank you letter. I spent some time working on it yesterday. It's just not in a good spot. And I'm like, I don't even need to go. The last couple of times, nobody even bought a book. And one time, nobody even took a book for free. But I told this one guy who texted me that I would be there, and I'm like, shit, I told this one guy I'd be there, and who knows what else would happen, so I'm like, well, fuck, I need to go, because I'm not going to disappoint this guy. This guy bought three books last time, and he actually is one of the only people who texted me out of all the times I've given my phone number out locally. This guy's one of the only people who actually texted me.
And yesterday, I also realized that I can put two phone lines on one iPhone, instead of having the old garbage iPhone 7 I had that I was using as my second public number that's on jerrybanfield.com, which was not charging very well and is annoying to text on. And then, you know, calls would miss and I wouldn't even see them. So I found out, I'm like, you can have two phone lines. You just use the second eSIM on your iPhone. So I got a second eSIM on my phone account. And it just dropped that on my iPhone 16. And I got both phone lines on the same phone, which is so cool. So now when people text me on that business line, they're going to get a much, much faster response. And when they call me, I'll be able to call them back, which is perfect.
I go to the gym marketing event, especially since I put out hundreds and I'm looking to put out thousands of letters with that phone number. I need to be responsive on it and not be waiting like this guy. He texted me Wednesday, and I just responded to him this week. Yes, I was moving, but still. That's a slow-ass response. I responded to him Monday. I get back to the house. I'm like, fine. I'll go. I load my car up. I drive to my gym, which is seven, eight minutes away. I pull in a parking lot, and I forgot my table. They don't have extra tables or anything. So I drive back to my house, grab my table, and then I get there a little before 9.30, but I forgot my blanket also. So I just have to raw dog the books on top of my bare table, which is fine because it's my own business. So it's not like I got an employer trying to get me to look a certain way. Maybe I'll get a proper tablecloth at some point. I get there and set up my books and I go to work.
Trying to figure out the event and the letter and everything, I reworked the letter into a new outline. The letter that so many people gave me feedback on and edited feels so fucked up at this point. I just need to restart it with a new outline and then just go over that. And I get all that set up. I start editing my sixth diary. Actually, no, I start editing my autobiography book that will be a prequel effectively. I start working on that.
And sure enough, one of the first conversations I have after being there for like an hour, hour and a half, hardly anybody comes by until a reader comes by. And he buys three more books. He bought Author in St. Petersburg and The Unpolished Truth, Living Alone Again. He bought those two last time, which means he bought two books from the Daily Autobiography series, but he skipped over The Kind Divorce and Sober Through Separation, plus now I have a new book called Nine Hours Later that continues it. I'm like, you need to finish the whole series. Like, you skipped over two of the best parts. So he uses his credit card and drops $30 and buys three books, which is awesome.
Right around when he's about done talking to me, a woman from my recovery group, who's gorgeous and who asked me to sponsor her the first time she ever met me, and I said no, even though if I had it to do again I would say yes. But at the time, I just had a crush on this other girl. I was tired of dealing with that. So this beautiful woman, the first time she meets me, comes up to me and asks me to sponsor. And I said no. And I haven't seen her in years. Last I'd seen, she was trying to get pregnant. And I see her and I look at her belly. I'm like, you're pregnant. Congratulations. She's like, yeah, it's my second. I'm like, holy shit. It's been a while since I've seen you. She gives me a big hug. She talks to me for quite a while. And she gives me her phone number too, which is so nice. She has a husband. I really like him as well. So it was really nice to reconnect with her. And it was funny. I was just thinking of her a few days ago. And all of a sudden, she runs into me. And I'm like, this is why these marketing things are very valuable for me to show up at. And I really need to be outside peacocking in places where people can run into me so that all these connections I made over the years at yoga and AA meetings and et cetera can show up and I can connect to them. And there's a woman I had a crush on; maybe I could run into her somewhere and something could happen, which got a Pitbull song stuck in my head. Not today, though, apparently.
The gym marketing, after the reader buys three books, he comes back when he's done working out like an hour later and he buys a fourth book in cash this time, I Was Famous on the Internet, and I'm like, damn, this makes my day. I told him, like, you are now my number one fan. Like, nobody's bought even as much as another reader who's read three of the books. I have a great five-star review, but I don't think he's bought past The Kind Divorce. This guy's now bought five of the daily autobiographies. And he bought Officer Banfield, he's reading it. And he bought I Was Famous on the Internet. He's literally got seven of my books at home. And that's some really nice validation. It's like if you've got people who buy three of your books, read two of them and are reading the third long one and want to buy four more of them, you've got something special. And that is going to work out if you persist.
I leave gym marketing about 1.30. I pick up all my stuff. And the woman at the front desk is flirting with me a little bit, teasing me that I'm not going to work out. And I can feel she was the one. She said the one day that I mentioned before, she came by and said that everybody loves me at my gym. And they got my book in a break room. I'm like, this woman likes me. And there's tension building with her. And I like that. I'm trying to figure out whether she's single and whether I could ever ask her out, and I'm hoping an opportunity comes up, though I'm not sure how to do that at work. So I try and give her some signals too and tease and flirt a little bit back within a professional enough context at work. She's on the phone when I get back in and I keep an eye on the front desk for any opportunities to talk to her while she's not at the desk or something. But I'm like, you know what? What's good here is that we're building tension. What I want to do with women is build tension because we build tension all over the place. Someday there's going to be a real, exciting connection in my life, and I'm building toward that. Not today, though, apparently.
So I head home from gym marketing and I'm not going to see the kids again today, because I already had them this morning. My ex-wife's got stuff for them all afternoon and evening. So I've got a nice block of time after I work out. So I take all my shit and put it back in my car. Then I work out until a little after two. Get some weightlifting exercise I saw in the HIIT class. Get everything strengthened up a little bit. Then I head back to my house for a nice big salad.
I also take a walk around Crescent Lake eventually, but I realize my son has left his blankets in his bed. So I asked my ex-wife, I'm like, you want me to bring these back to your house? So she says, yes, please. So I bring his blankets and I've got a dish of my ex-wife's and some stuff from the school. And I dump my compost at her house and I grab some stuff out of the shed and grab a bag. So I take everything up to my ex-wife's house, drop it off there. And then I stopped by the grocery store to grab some lettuce. And I end up buying all kinds of shit. Four things of strawberries because my daughter loves strawberries. And we ran out and forgot to get some at the store last night. So I buy four things of organic strawberries for $7 each. I'm not shopping like I'm broke, am I? I'm shopping like I got money.
And one thing last night I forgot to mention. We ran into a guy that was sitting on a walker outside of the store asking for $7 for the bus. And I gave him $20. And he said, thank you. And he introduced himself and the kids are like, man, dad, I love how you give people that need money. You know, you give it to them. And the kids are really proud of me for that. And I value their judgment. Like that's, you know, the point of view kids have to look at something like that and see that kindness and appreciate it. I'm like, that's good. I told the kids, I'm like, you know, I love doing that. And I tell them how I used to do the opposite. When my friend and I went to New Orleans in 2005, these two guys on the street squirted some shit on our crappy athletic shoes and started smearing it around, then trying to hustle us for a couple of dollars. And I started getting in their face. I'm like, fuck you. I didn't ask you for this shit. You just squirted it on my shoes. I didn't want that. I'm not giving you anything. And my friend, not one to have an altercation, gives his guy money. And then he gives my guy like five bucks. And then I was pissed off that he gave my guy five bucks. I'm like, fuck this dude out here hustling this bullshit on the street. He's like, hey, can you give me five bucks? Because I gave your guy five bucks. I'm like, motherfucker, no. I didn't want to give him anything. You shouldn't have given yours anything. That's on you. And he gets pissy. Like, oh, come on, man. I didn't want to have a fight. I'm like, fuck that. They shouldn't be doing that. And you shouldn't be giving them money. So that's how I used to roll.
So I acknowledge that to the kids like, hey, that's how I used to roll. But when I was treating money like that, I was in a spot where I did not accumulate wealth and I did not feel good about my finances. And I always felt like I didn't hardly have money. And since I got more money, especially online, and I read some books talking about how observing the need in others and being able to fill it helps you observe that need in yourself. I'm like, I feel good. You know, I'm rolling around $400 in my wallet and somebody wants seven. Fuck it, here's a 20. Right before that, I guess it was Ask Jerry for Money Day yesterday. Right before that, my nephew asked me for five bucks and I immediately sent him 30. He's like, dude, you don't have to do that. Why'd you send me 30? I'm like, I'm not sending you $5. Like that's too small of an amount of money to send. You want money? You want five? How about 30? It's like, it's not even worth my time to send you $5, but I'll send you 30 because that's enough. That's enough to buy something, you know? So he was really grateful for that. And I felt good too.
I'm like, a lot of people in my position will be going into scarcity mode, will be thinking I can't be giving to other people, I got to look out for me. I'm like, nope. I trust the universe. I trust the earth to provide for me. And I'm going to go forward as if I'm fully provided for. I also told the kids, you know, with my attitude about money, I go around giving people $20, $30 here and there, and you know what happens? The universe will drop $50,000 on me. I said, you could easily have some person that's a millionaire, a decamillionaire come along, drop me a $50,000 check to help them write a book. And that's how it works. What a lot of people don't do is do that little giving, especially when they feel scarce. And I'm like, I keep that going, and I know it comes back. It comes back tenfold lots of times. That's how I made all that money online, was changing my mindset. And then when I got broke, new opportunities came to me. And that keeps happening. I'm remembering all that from last night because I'm technically, I recorded last night's this morning and this one's tonight. So it's like, cool, this is my book. I can just put stuff in it however I feel like. Isn't that great? Back to today.
I had a nice big salad for lunch. Then I went to my ex-wife's house. And then when I came back, I realized I want to go to Crescent Lake every day. This is my chance to go today. So I took a nice walk after lunch, walked around Crescent Lake. And I'm very happy that the people actually looked at me and smiled and said hi. I understand people are in their own world so much. Amazing how many people, you know, don't even want to look at somebody walking by or make eye contact or smile. And it's like, damn, you are a lonely motherfucker, a distracted motherfucker. And I got almost all the way around and I saw this bench. Three people got up off of it and I saw this bench calling my name. So I sat down on it and I took maybe 10 minutes to just watch the birds and the ducks and the water and just zone in on, you know, isn't this nice? My mind mostly just went into observation and stopped thinking very much. Nice meditation by the water. And I'm like, man, I remember looking at Zillow and thinking, yes, this is where I want to live. And I'm like, I'm here now. It all worked out.
And I thought, that's how it's going to be with women. You know, the next woman that I'm really excited about, I'm targeting, I'm aiming, I'm looking for what I want. And one day that's going to all be worked out. And let's be grateful. Let's say thank you. Thank you for the adventure. Thank you for the uncertainty. Because there's a possibility it might not work out. That I might never find love again. That my dick might fall off, you know? Who knows what could happen? I called my sponsor while walking around and reminded him that I'm going to speak tonight at an 8 p.m. meeting. He said he'd be there, which is perfect.
I wrapped up walking around the lake, and then I finished up the book, How Could She? And then I looked up the author, and it turns out she died of diabetes recently, even though she was only 44 years old. And I'm like, man, I'm glad I looked that up. I'm glad I heard her story. Her story was inspirational. What's inspiring to read a book about that much abuse and overcoming it and bringing the people to justice and bringing that stuff out into the light is her journey of having all this shame inside and then getting that out and sharing it with the world and putting it in a book. That's on my wavelength. It inspires me to continue what I'm doing here with this.
After I finished her book, I looked around for other books for a while. Sometimes when you finish a good book, it's nice to really get into a book. Sometimes it feels kind of like a little bit of a downer, though. Like, I just finished that. Before I get to go to the meeting, I'm like, you know what? I want to get this event published. I've told people I'm going to create this event. It's time to get it published. So I go through and finish off the description. I dictate what I want the event description to be. I go back and forth with ChatGPT until we got a nice description. I go and finish and publish the event. And now the event is live on Eventbrite, baby. First one is January 16th, 2026. And if I sell a ticket, awesome. If not, I'll have time to write and work on my books and catch up. But the event is there. Before I finish the thank you letter, the event has to be there so then I can start distributing it.
Now, I also had an experience at my gym today that really showed me the power of having the letters there instead of the books. I was talking to the reader about this. I looked at my table. I'm like, look at all these books. I told him, you're special. Most people see this table. They see all the words, all the titles, and all the pictures, and it's distracting. It's too much for them. They look at it. They don't even know what to look at or focus on. I need to change that. That's poor marketing. He said, well, what's really poor marketing is some of these other tables where nobody stops by. I'm like, well, that's on them. He's like, you do really good marketing. I'm like, well, that's because I look at my marketing, evaluate it, and when I can do better, I do better, and I test and I experiment.
This girl came by, very pretty girl that I'd looked at and smiled at a time or two before. She actually stopped by my table. She has a 333 tattoo, which, you know, that's my dad's number that he loved. And I love that I lived in an apartment 333. Like, I love that number. So this girl gave me lots to talk about. But the thing that kind of bombed is looking at all the different books. And she really shied away when I mentioned my speaker meeting 2017 book about it being deep. And she said she was sober 13 days. And I realized, man, I should have a letter that says sobriety on it. And someone like her, I could just pass her the letter and have a 10-page letter in it about my experience staying sober and then invite her to come to my house and have my phone number on it. It'd be perfect. But instead, I'm fucking around with a 12-hour book that I wrote nine years ago that's very graphic, not general audience appropriate. This girl ends up leaving the table kind of scared off and overwhelmed by my table instead of having very clear calls to action.
I look back and a bunch of people started to look at my table, but nothing caught their attention right away. I'm like, if I had letters on there like divorce, sobriety, overweight, screens, money, work, death, legacy, if I had all letters like that on there, those would be simple. Instead of having hundreds of words on my table and combining all like 15 of the books, having an average of probably five plus words in the title. If instead you just had 10 envelopes of like one or two words each, the simplicity would drop, and anyone could easily look at the table and something would catch their eye. The money envelope might catch somebody's eyes who's struggling with money. The divorce one might hit somebody who's recently been divorced. This girl would have walked away with a sobriety envelope. Instead, she didn't even want to take a free book. All right, I've got a lot of validation that this is a much better marketing strategy. We need to get these letters done. We need to start with the general thank you letter because then the general thank you letter will be general audience appropriate. And then I'll be ready.
So I'm intending by the next time we have a gym marketing day, and there's two of them, I've got two weeks till the next one, and then there's one three days after that. So two weeks is enough time for me to grind out several letters. The thank you one, the sobriety one, a money letter, a divorce letter, a grief or loss or death letter, and a screen addiction parenting letter. I want to have at least five letters ready. Like five, 10-page letters. I want to have at least five of them ready, especially on like money, parenting, sobriety, and overweight or health. And a more specific one, like I could have a letter on infertility. Like I want shit that's so specific that if you walk by my table, something jumps out at you. Like you might have the whole rest of your shit together, but infertility is the one thing you're struggling with. I want a letter on that. Some people are like, no, don't do that, people will feel called out. Like, fuck that. If you want help and you're praying for it and help's that obvious, that's going to be a game changer. So first step was to get the event up because all my letters need to invite people to the event. Then we're going to crank these letters out. So I got two weeks. Crank out letters. Thank you letter first. We'll start trying that and dropping that off. Second, start grinding out more letters to give away in all other contexts.
After wrapping up and publishing the event, then I head to the AA meeting I'm speaking at tonight. The woman that's there is very happy to see me and tells me, she says first that I'm going to speak third, but then changed it to speaking first. It's a bit unusual because I'm not a member of the home group. I don't often go to this meeting, but somebody else requested a guest speaker. So I'm it. I greet some other people that I know. I sit down right in the front row and my sponsor gets there. A sponsee arrives right after that. I'm happy to see both of them. Got my sponsorship family. Then she gets up and has me up there just about five minutes after the meeting starts. I talk for a little over 10 minutes, which follows her instructions so that the celebrants have a bit more time. I keep my story almost totally focused on my sobriety, talking about magical experiences and Alcoholics Anonymous, which I'm going to describe in my sobriety letter in detail. And maybe I'll put my letters on the homepage of my website too, so that they're all there for anybody else who comes across my website and for search engines, for somebody searching in St. Pete. I can have a big website with a wall of text that'll index everything in Google. And that'll be great.
After the meeting wraps up, the other two speakers are awesome. They get lots of laughs, enjoy their stories. And I know the one guy, the other guy's new to me, which is great. After the meeting, I talk with a few people and I end by talking to the woman who invited me there. This is a woman I got her phone number a couple of months ago, at least a month ago, at the meeting that I had started. And she's the one I texted, asking if she wanted to go for a walk around Crescent Lake. And she just left a like on my message, which I guess she liked being invited. But I don't know. She didn't suggest any times. It's kind of a pretty silly response. So I talked to her tonight and I asked where she's living. She said she's living in a women's recovery house nearby, so she could walk to Crescent Lake also. So I take these as signs that she is interested in meeting up with me, so I said, well, maybe we can meet up at this coffee shop near where she lives one day, and she's like, well, you are divorced now, as I had mentioned in my share, and I'm like, all right. This woman's a little nervous in disposition.
She's estranged from her husband, hasn't seen him or her kid in years, and doesn't have a car right now. I could feel when she gave me a hug after the AA meeting, when we first met, that she's carrying a lot and could use some real closeness in her life, and I'm interested in getting to know her if we can navigate through some of the resistance. So I had a nice time talking to her at the meeting. I drive home and I'm feeling good. I'm feeling real good. I'm like, you know, having the kids the last two nights and then Saturday, I'm really happy to have the house to myself. Like, I'm not lonely here tonight. I'm like, shit, we're going to get to work. With the kids around the last couple days my usual private routine got thrown off, but I'm relaxed about it.
It's 1030. Life is good. I'm really grateful to have gotten to speak in a meeting with so many people. I'm grateful to have had the kids in my house this morning. Grateful that I'm working my ass off when they're not here. Like when the kids aren't here, I'm working my ass off. As much as I can, I'm working, I'm organizing. I spent over an hour cleaning up around the house as well, getting moved in. It's all good. So I'm so grateful, saying a lot of thank yous today. And you're probably saying, thank you I wrapped this damn day up, right?
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.