This is my journal entry from March 2, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I was supposed to have a date this morning, but the girl didn't respond at all yesterday to the message I sent. And now she sends me a message first thing in the morning saying that she's not feeling the chemistry and wants to cancel. I completely agree. I'm relieved. I'm like, good. I wasn't planning on going to Sarasota today. And I send her a message back saying, agreed, you know, thanks for your time and good luck. And I'm amazed how nice that feels to just acknowledge. I knew as soon as I met her it wasn't aligned, but I just wanted to try and ride things out anyway, and we've done that now. With that time freed up, I'm looking at going to my recovery meeting instead of missing it today, and then I'll have the kids this afternoon and do basketball practice.
With a sudden stroke of inspiration, I realize I need to get this letter done today. For my business. And it needs to be no more than a front and back page. And it's time to get it done. So I go through. I ask ChatGPT after putting in the like 16 page version. I ask it what are the most important concepts. And to draft a shorter version. ChatGPT drafts a couple of shorter versions. And it just doesn't quite have it the way I'd like it. But I use the versions it drafts to then dictate my own two page letter that hits real hard and to the point. And this one feels awesome. It starts off talking about imagining the power of your book. It goes into writing a book as a legacy and preserving your stories for your family. It talks about how sharing your story with someone is incredibly transformational to break things like addictions and patterns in your life. And it talks about how in an age of loneliness, it's a great opportunity to connect, to have someone listen to your full life story. I put all that in there and then just have people go to jerrybanfield.com to schedule the first appointment with me, which is awesome. No fooling around on the phone with people like, hey, if you want to work with me, schedule that appointment, pay that $300. I don't say the price in there. I do leave my phone number and this feels good. I'm so grateful. Like I just cranked the whole letter out before I'm going to the recovery meeting in about two hours. Then again, there's a lot of background it took to like prepare for that and generate all the material and get the idea. But I'm like, now this feels just right.
After I get the letter done, I head to my recovery meeting and it's turned into a different format. It's a big book discussion now, which fucking sucks. I'm tired of these stupid ass reading a book like it's a Bible meeting and then everybody giving their own interpretation of it. So I share that. I'm not happy they changed the meeting to this format, and I will not be coming back to the meeting at this time anymore, because the way I did it, I read the book at home, and then when I had questions, I asked people in and after meetings. I called my sponsor. I read the book when I wasn't at meetings. To me, reading the book is just a waste of time in a fucking meeting. But I also acknowledge that I realize other people feel differently, that some people like reading the book together in a group. And that kicks off a series of emotional shares. Some people double dip and, you know, one guy talks about sniper sharing and somebody else sounds like they're sniper sharing, saying it'd be arrogant to reinvent this thing and the book's so valuable. The show was interesting. I'm like, well, I feel something, so that's good. One of the guys shares that he voted against it at the business meeting, but that he's here to support it because that's what the group decided on. The girl next to me is there trying to make all this work, and I hear she's just broke up with her boyfriend. I then end up finishing the meeting up and my sponsor is there. He ends up walking out early along with several other people who are tired of the big book discussion format as well.
I head from the meeting. I've got more time and I decide I'm going to take a bit of a rest day today. Like I'm not going to go super hard and just, you know, go crazy working out. I'm going to take a day off today. All right. You know, just maybe play some basketball tonight. So I go back to my house. And I grind out printing out hundreds of letters to see how long it'll take. And I'm really impressed. I've got 250 letters done in two hours. That's so much faster than the last ones were. I end up printing all the envelopes. I print those on the front and manually inserting each of those to a couple of paper jams. Then I print out all the letters front and back using up collectively over 700 pages from my print queue with my printer, and I've got rollover pages. Let's get into them, baby. I text the guy from my recovery group saying that I've got the letters ready, and he says he should be able to start delivering them tomorrow, which is nice when you get to testing this.
My ex-wife's picking up the kids from school today, so I've got plenty of time to get all these letters ready. She comes over and drops them off, and the kids are eager to play Settlers of Catan again. So we crank out another Settlers of Catan game right away and they have fun. And I'm so grateful the kids love playing this so much. We also go to a health food store to have a smoothie and get a whole bunch of shit for like $130. The organic strawberries are $7 a package there. I'm like, ah, fuck it. You know, I'm made of money, right? Go all out. Yeah, throw that on a credit card. Let's go. We get the Settlers of Catan played real quick. And then we go to a gym where I get to shoot around while the kids play basketball. I hit 42 three-pointers, and that's with only being able to shoot at probably less than 50% capacity, where I'm taking time to watch the kids. I'm not shooting probably half as much as I would if I had the court to myself. But there's two groups of kids with coaches on either side. And I'm trying to use this rim in the middle of them. I'm like, this is so incredible that I can hit 42 three-pointers in an hour while kids are playing basketball all around me. I'm also entertaining my son. My mother shows up as well and I stop by and say hi. I'm like, this is amazing. My elbow hurts a little bit and I'm like, well, let's try not to overextend it or anything, but I'm grateful it functions.
My mother comes home with us, after stopping at the vending machine for like 10 minutes to buy shit. But my mother pays for it and the kids have a little money, something like whatever. We get home and I get a shower and I got a nice workout and broke a nice sweat shooting all these baskets too. So I finally end up with my mother there and taking pictures with the kids and stuff. We finally end up getting in bed at like 10 o'clock. But it's just a regular school day. We don't have to like be in early or anything tomorrow. But maybe we will have a little bit earlier bedtime tomorrow. I lay in bed and I'm grateful for the chance to, you know, have so much time to sleep. And then to me, this is my best quality meditation time is laying in bed between sleep or first thing in the morning or before I fall asleep. That's quality meditation time. And I'm grateful I've got that today. I'm so grateful to have the kids back after four nights being here by myself. It's really nice to have them here. And they're in there winning the poo jammies for my mother.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.