It's Valentine's Day 2025, my 5,009th day on YouTube. I'm sure you'd really like to know: well, what did you do today, Jerry? I'll tell you. I made a spreadsheet today looking at the sponsorships I received last year, and then I came up with a plan, a little one-page proposal to work with some new projects on ICP. I'm asking for around $36,000, roughly $12,000 each from three different projects, to work together over six months. So I put a little marketing plan together. That was nice.
I also completed a sponsored video last night for a new crypto game. That was fun to record. And in my studio today I made a freestyle song and a little dance track. Then I went to lunch with my wife at the same spot where we had our first date, except there was a new Thai restaurant there now.
Exploring possibilities I never used to let myself imagine
Over lunch she brought up an idea: maybe we should buy the neighbor's house, sell our house, and move into the bigger place across the street. I was like, whoa, you're blowing my mind with this. So I messaged the neighbor. She's not living there anymore; she built a new house for herself in another section of town. I said, hey, do you want to talk about me buying your old house? It's been empty for a year or so. She'd been renovating it, but then it got flooded. So it was fun to even open that door.
One of the things I didn't do twenty years ago, especially, is explore these possibilities and really think about what could happen or what could be. I would fantasize back then, but always with the underlying thought that I couldn't actually have things. I'd fantasize about being rich, or about winning the lottery. Now it's fun to genuinely explore. Like, what if we sold our house and bought the neighbor's place across the street, a four bedroom, three bath instead of the three bedroom, two bath we've got? It would set us back a little financially, and it'd take a good bit of effort to pull off. At the same time, it's a fun possibility, and it's not something we could do by ourselves. The neighbor would obviously need to participate. But it's cool to explore options you'd never considered.
I hadn't really thought about moving out of this house at all. I've been living here seven years, the longest I've lived in any house. And I've lived in this neighborhood nine years, the longest I've ever lived in a neighborhood. So that was a cool, really fun lunch with my wife. I had a Buddha roll, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, cucumbers, avocado, and so on. It was good, though I think the spicy tuna roll probably would have been better. I eat mostly whole plant vegan, but I'm down for a little sushi occasionally.
Tennis with real people beats grinding for pointless rewards
I enjoyed doing some posts on X today, sharing the sponsorships. I enjoy promoting transparency online. And I played tennis this morning with the guys. There are four of us who play doubles, and we played three different sets. One of the guys won every single doubles team he was on, all of them. I lost except when I was on his team, and I think everybody else lost except when they were on his team too. He won every single time. There are a couple of old guys and a couple of us younger guys. The first game, the two of us were together and we beat the two old guys 6-0, but the other games were a bit more competitive.
Tennis is so funny and aggravating. How can it be this hard to just hit a ball over a net? But that's exactly why it's so fun. I'm so glad I'm playing tennis and hanging out with real people in person instead of playing video games one-on-one and grinding away for pointless rewards. In my experience, video games can be a real trap, not that they can't be fun. I'm really grateful to be focusing on making music and being a Twitch music streamer instead.
Finally focusing my Twitch on music
I did an hour-long Twitch music stream today. It's nice to finally narrow my Twitch in on music. When I'm live on Twitch, I'm making music, and I'll film the rest of my videos off stream because my crypto stuff doesn't need to be livestreamed and my vlogs don't need to be livestreamed either. I've come to believe that if you're going to livestream, it should be a show, not just you filming videos. A show that's actually worth watching live. My music is fun live. I gave away some ICP during the stream.
I'm feeling really good, really grateful, really clear, which is nice because I'd had a few days of feeling unclear and ungrateful. I'm glad that feeling clear and feeling grateful is what happens most of the time. And usually when I do have a period of feeling unclear and ungrateful, I learn something productive or I make some changes out of it, which is useful.
Feeling rich today for what I'll have tomorrow
I'm really excited for my time to come on ICP. Whenever the ICP price has a real nice pump, your boys can be rich. But here's the thing: if you had Bitcoin ten years ago, you were rich, like I did. I had 40 Bitcoin. You just had to wait for it. Sometimes you have the things today that will make you rich, you just have to wait. And what's cool is you can feel rich today. I feel rich having all the ICP I have, looking at the future. It'll be like, you are so rich to have thousands of ICP. I'm grateful for this life I get to live. My body's so healthy. I've got time with my wife, and I'm going to hang out with the kids and the family later today.
My son doesn't have soccer today. I played some soccer with him this morning while he was getting ready for school, and it looks like they went down the street. I'm wrapping up filming my YouTube videos, just cranking out some content, so when they get back I can hang out. I'm also going to eat some dinner. Wow, Jerry, your life's so fun. It's great.
I'm glad to see YouTube actually putting out some of my music in the algorithm a little bit on my main channel, which is really exciting. I'm convinced that if I crank out 1,000 or 2,000 songs with what I know about marketing, music is something I'll be able to do for money. But here's the thing: I love being in a position where I don't need money out of my music. I love having an audience watch me do something that's fun. And I don't ever want to do my music in a way where I feel like I have to make it just to pay the bills. Deadmau5 says he has to put a kick drum in his music if he wants to get paid. If he wants to get paid, it has to have a kick drum. I guess that's fine. I do crypto videos to get paid. If you want to see how I think through building this kind of life and business, I share a lot of that in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Wow, did I actually say everything in under ten minutes? I guess I'll just turn it off now.