On December 25, 2024, Christmas Day, I want to take you through the whole thing with me. It was my 4,958th day on YouTube. I'm a full-time YouTuber and a crypto investor, a dad, a husband, and a dog owner, and this was our Christmas at home.
Waiting until 7:30 for two Christmases
We woke up early. My daughter woke up at like six and came and laid in the bed. She snuggled with me and fell asleep in my bed until seven, because we told the kids you get up at seven every day, we don't care if it's Christmas, and we're going to wait until 7:30 until my mom can come over from across the street. So they were great. They were patient. They did get to go into their stockings, but we had breakfast, and then at 7:30, my mom wasn't over, so we waited 10 more minutes. She still didn't come over, so I called her. She didn't answer. So after 20 minutes at 7:50, we banged down our door. And then she came over and opened presents at our house.
Laura got the kids a lovely spread of Christmas presents, reasonable, plenty but not too much. Then we went across the street to my mom's house, and she had as many presents as Laura got. My mom had that many also. So the kids got to have two Christmases down here, and they got more great presents at my mom's house. Some of the presents included a remote controlled car that Jack really enjoyed driving. My mom got my daughter a Barbie trailer that she was having fun with. My son got more magnet tiles. And my mom got Laura some stuff too, makeup, which she enjoyed.
Why I don't buy gifts, but I do send money
I personally don't buy anyone gifts. People were really toxic on Facebook about that a few years ago. I don't buy Christmas gifts, birthday gifts. I don't buy any of that. Now, I put a few hundred dollars in Laura's stocking, and I sent her $1,000 yesterday for Christmas, because we still have separate bank accounts.
We don't have any joint credit cards or bank accounts at all after being married for 12 years, because she said when we first got married that her parents didn't do that, and she didn't want to do that either. I was a bit offended at first, but I'm like, okay, that's fine. We can do that. I don't see why that'd be a problem. We've always just sent each other money over the years when one person or another had more or was spending more. It's one of those things where the way my kids and my family are taken care of doesn't have to look like everyone else's, and I've made my peace with that. (If you've ever wrestled with this yourself, I wrote more about how I think about it in my kids are taken care of no matter what.)
The massage stocking I regifted to Laura
The place I go for my massages gave me a Christmas stocking yesterday. So I got all the stuff out, and it's like moisturizer, an eye thing to put on your face. And I'm like, I don't need any of this stuff. But I dumped all of it in Laura's stocking last night. I'm like, this is stuff that Laura would like. And sure enough, she thought it was perfect for her.
A $333 Christmas call and an ICP tip from the toilet
At about 11, we came back home from my mom's house. And then Laura took the kids down the street to her family. I had a call at 11:30. A guy who watches my videos paid $333 on jerrybanfield.com, and the Christmas present he gave to himself was an hour to talk to me. And I enjoyed talking with him. He showed me all around his office and what he does. He shared a lot of stuff about his personal life, which was awesome. I really enjoyed getting to know him on that level.
And if you don't have $300 to pay to talk to me one on one, what I love is when people just make a video and upload it to YouTube totally for free, a new video that tells me about yourself and your life and how you found me and the Internet Computer Protocol. I've watched those. I love watching those. Those are my favorite thing to watch right now.
I gave a guy a 1.11 ICP tip today, which is like $12 or so. I was watching him while I was going to the bathroom. I was sitting on a toilet watching this guy in Nigeria do a video telling us how he found me and how he found ICP and all about his life. So I thought it'd be funny, like, this guy made a video that I'm watching on the crapper. I had a great call with that first guy, and then I got on open chat. I talk about ICP every day, and these little human moments around it are honestly my favorite part. If you want the crypto side of all this, I keep it going in my ICP Crypto playlist, and the conversations themselves happen inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
Why I don't answer "hello"
I get so many direct messages. I try and send people to the VIP chat or the free chat to minimize my direct messages. Some of the direct messages I just ignore because they message me and it says like, "hello." Like, what am I supposed to do with that? If you're going to message me, and I get a lot of messages, you should have a clear, "hey, here's why I'm messaging you." So don't just start a conversation with "hello," unless you're walking on the street, in which case it might be appropriate to just say hello. But I'm not going to respond to "hello" in my inbox. Just a general tip there. I'm surprised people don't know that. Y'all just message random people "hello" and they start texting you back or replying to you back. I don't respond to random hello messages.
The race car, a garden salad, and calling my brother
After that, the family came back home and Laura wanted a nap for Christmas. So I took Jack out in the front street and he drove his race car around and he let me drive it around a little bit, and it was fun.
And I had lunch, a salad from my garden. I took some of the kale from the hydroponic garden inside the house. And then I cut some of the amaranth, which just volunteered near the compost bin, and some of the kale off in the backyard. And I made a homemade dressing with olive oil, tahini, vinegar, Frank's Red Hot, soy sauce, and a whole bunch of spices, just a ton of spices. Ground garlic powder, onion powder, turmeric, a whole bunch of spices. Threw all that in there, dumped it all over the lettuce, put some nuts on there, some of these nuts and those nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, threw that on there, put the dressing on, had a delicious salad. Eating out of the garden like this is a big part of how I live now, and I got into why in calorie tracking vs plant-based eating.
And then I called my brother for Christmas. In an unusual move, I just laid down in the bed to talk to him. I'm big on being standing and active and moving around. But I also try and let my body rest when it feels like it. So I talked to my brother laying in the bed after Laura got up from her nap. I laid next to her and talked to my brother for a while, for about an hour. I'm so grateful that I've got a brother that I can talk to on Christmas day. And he shared about what he's doing. I told him what I was doing. And then I got out of the bed and made my son's bed, cleaned up a little bit.
I had three Ghirardelli peppermint barks and one Lindor chocolate. I had a bag of popcorn this morning at my mom's house for a second breakfast. And I'm done eating for the day now. It's 4:56 p.m. as I sit down to share this. I had enough food. And now I'm doing my work. I film these day-in-the-life videos for my Life playlist, and I'm going to see if I can film a crypto video too. I've got two hours before my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, so I'm going to try and sneak in the ball machine at the tennis club down the street, see if I can get a little exercise, hit some tennis balls, and then go to my AA meeting.
Skipping dinner at the in-laws
I'm not going to dinner at Laura's parents' house tonight, because there's a family member I'd rather not be around there. I'm grateful my wife's still understanding. I went to have dinner there last night because they weren't there the night before for Christmas, so I went down and had a nice dinner with them. And Laura had talked to her parents already. They both asked me, "we're going to see you tomorrow night?" And I'm not usually awkward, but I was a little awkward. I'm like, "no, now I'm not going to be there." And they're like, "what, you're going out of town?" I'm like, "no." Then I talked to Laura and she's like, "I already talked to them." No one listens to me.
What my massage therapist taught me about being coached
I had a great massage with my massage therapist yesterday. I love how she is able to share so much of her life with me, and we have so much in common. And I was a little concerned. You know, I take tennis coaching lessons sometimes, and I feel like the coach just stopped telling me how to play tennis so much, just let me play. The coach, for an hour, telling me how to swing and how to hit and hold your racket and stand here. And I'm like, oh, just let me run around the court and play how I want to play. And then I hit balls and I'm like, why, why do I hit like this?
And I thought about it, like, man, the last time I saw my massage therapist, I really life coached her all over the place, in every aspect of her life, and all the sensitive topic areas. And afterwards I'm like, good God, man, could I have taken that much life coaching on myself? But I asked her, and she's like, you know, it was great. I was happy. We talked about me so much. She said with a lot of her other clients, they mostly talk about the client. So she was very happy that I wanted to talk about her and wanted to talk about her life. And she appreciated the things I said, and she started doing this and this and this from what I said last week. So thank you.
So it's always great to talk to other people and hear somebody else's experience. Because sometimes what you think is not what they're thinking. But other times it is. That's why you've got to talk about it.
Banging on the keys like a child: my Massive X sound demos
I also started the last two days doing some Massive X sound demos, and those were so fun. I just take a different preset in my studio and play around. I've got the red and green shirt thing going on for Christmas today. It's my little Christmas outfit. And I just love literally just banging on the keys like a child.
I went on a walk last night with the dog, and there are all these audiobooks and stuff I can listen to.
What I really want to listen to is you
But really what I want to listen to is videos where you help me get to know you. There are all these random people in the world. I could hear their life stories, but you're watching my videos. You know a lot about me. I'd like to get to know you better. So you can share videos in open chat with me to help me get to know you better. That's it. I'd really like to watch some of those. It's amazingly hard to actually find stuff you want to watch sometimes. I kind of have an idea of what I want to watch, but sometimes it can be hard to find it. Giving value to people and actually getting to know them is the whole thing for me, which is the same reason I built the Jerry Banfield Family and why I keep coming back to the idea that when the world feels hopeless, you give value to people.
And with my music, I'm thinking there are definitely some people who would love this. I was listening to the ambient music I made on my original Jerry Banfield channel, my music channel, and I was like, man, this is so good. I'm just playing these different synth sounds and playing with all the different high pass, low pass filters and the modulation on everything. It's so cool to hear so many different sounds, it's just so much different than listening to regular music. And I'm like, I'd love to hear more of this, but I'm not even sure how to look for something like this, something that's just drastically different, all kinds of different sounds, not just music theory crap. I'm so burnt out on listening to the kind of music that most people listen to, the drum beats and the predictable chords. It's boring. I want something unusual.
So I'm thinking of a crypto video I can film today, but I've been wondering, what the heck am I going to film? I talk about ICP every day. But the calls I have, I try and film videos about the stuff I talk about with people, because I know that's what other people are dealing with. So I love listening to the music I make, I had a nice walk last night with the dog, and I'm really grateful for such a nice holiday season with the family. And I'm grateful for the chance to share that with you today. I hope I'll get a chance to know you better.