Two of my December 2024 diary vlogs are gathered on this page, and they cover one short stretch of my life at the end of that year. The first is my December 21 entry, where I wonder what I would actually do with my days if all my bills were paid off. The second is my New Year's Eve diary, which covers board games, tennis, a patio project and why I only touch ICP. If you are searching for what I was thinking in late December 2024, here is the short answer: I was content with a life that had enough money, enough routine and enough people in it, and I was working hard not to let the next call or the next dollar decide whether that life was good.
Looking back, what I think now is what I was saying then. By my own accounting I'm already wealthy. I talked about having 900-something liquid ICP and almost 4,000 stacked, and I still carry debt, which is fine. Money is not what fills my day. I do a maximum of two calls a day, or about ten a week, and I'm not raising that number just because I could pay someone to do my chores. In I'm Already Rich. So What Do I Do All Day? I make the same point from another side: when you feel wealthy, you bring wealth, and I'd rather spend the rest of my energy on physical projects I can do myself.
The way my view developed across these two entries is worth noting. On December 21 I was still asking whether any of this mattered. I said that after uploading more than 5,000 videos I often feel like I'm talking into the void, and I was glad when people in open chat told me a video had helped them. By December 31 the messages had become so constant that I could barely keep up with them. That shifted my question from whether anyone is listening to how I stay focused. My answer in the later entry was to hold the structure steady: the same number of calls, a men's clinic at the racket club once a week, and a standing morning with my family and my sponsor.
The December 31 entry is the one with the most ordinary detail. My family went kayaking while I played tennis, and I counted the shots I made rather than the ones that missed: over three hundred balls in an hour and a half. The kids, nine and six, were beating Hogwarts Battle through game four, and I was glad to be playing board games with them. I ate a bag of spicy cheddar popcorn in my car, and I loaded about 860 pounds of bagged material into my Toyota Corolla for a backyard brick patio. Read the full New Year's Eve Diary for the parts about my dad, my AA meeting and the guy with the Solana coin, where I told him that launching a coin outside the Internet Computer is a waste of his time.
I also make the case that community does more for your health than diet alone. In the December 21 entry I argue that many people on keto and carnivore diets will not get the long, healthy life they want, and that my own health comes from yoga, Alcoholics Anonymous, a regular massage and time with family. I'm not telling you to ignore food. I eat mostly whole-plant vegan, take a B12 supplement, and allow myself exceptions. The point I keep returning to is that isolation hurts your health more than most people expect.
That same entry is where I admit I forget about 90 percent of what I did yesterday after a single night of sleep, and that talking about the past is closer to recreating it than remembering it. I still think these diary videos are good for me to analyze, even though I know much of the detail will fade. If you are looking for what I was doing in the months before, the October 2024 vlogs and diary page is a good place to start, and A Day in My Life gathers more of the same daily format.
Both full posts appear below, newest first, so you can read the whole New Year's Eve entry or skip to the sections you care about. If you hold ICP or another coin and want my honest take on your own situation, you can get a personal video review from me at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- New Year's Eve Diary: Board Games, Tennis, and Why Only ICP Is Real (December 31, 2024)
- I'm Already Rich. So What Do I Do All Day? (December 21, 2024)
New Year's Eve Diary: Board Games, Tennis, and Why Only ICP Is Real
From my video published December 31, 2024.
On December 31, 2024, I sat down to write my little diary entry as a full-time YouTuber, a crypto guy, an ICP investor, and a dad and husband. It had been, as usual, an awesome twenty-four hours. The picture I had in the background is a Harry Potter board game I just played. It's called Hogwarts Battle. I first played it with my friend when I visited him in South Carolina in July, and it turned out I'd already bought the game before to play with my wife, but we never got around to it. Now I am teaching the kids how to play it.
We just beat the fourth game. There are seven different games in the box: it starts with a basic version on game one and levels up to game seven. We beat game four, and it cranks up the difficulty significantly going into game five. We've won every time playing one, two, three, and four, so now I'm interested to see where we fail, because the first time I played this with my friend, he threw us right into game five and they whooped us. So I'm really grateful that the kids, at nine and six years old — even though the box says eleven plus — are old enough to play board games with, because board games are something I love, right alongside the card games and video games I cover in my Games playlist.
The trick as a parent is sometimes finding what I want to do that my kids will also want to do. A lot of the stuff they've wanted to do before is either not really fun for me, or it's video games. They enjoyed playing video games with me, but is me playing video games the best way to hang out with them? My dad almost never played video games with me growing up. He didn't play board games that often either, but I remember when he did play Monopoly, and I remember when he showed me how to play poker. Maybe that's why I got really into poker — because on some level it brought back memories of one of the only games my dad ever showed me how to play.
A talk with Laura about reaching higher
It had been a really nice twenty-four hours. The day before, I'd talked about realizing I could reach a higher potential in terms of the romance and the relationship, and I had a really good talk with Laura before bed about that. That talk went fantastic. Laura was really moved, even though she didn't say as much. In some ways she's a little debatey — she's a lawyer, so she's often debatey and sassy — but she was clearly moved by my desire to see if I could reach higher levels of romantic potential. I'm interested in thinking about this and talking about it each day, so that was a really nice conversation, and everything was good going to bed. If there's a part of your own life you've been wanting to reach higher on, talking it through out loud can change everything — you can schedule a private call with me and we'll look at your situation together on our call.
Counting the tennis balls I actually hit
I got up this morning, and the family went on a kayaking trip a couple hours north of where we live in St. Pete. Laura took her mom and the kids. I had tennis to play. I meet a guy at the racket club down the street from me — it's only about six or seven blocks from my house, which is awesome. I still drive so I can bring all my tennis stuff, but maybe I'll walk or bike someday. We've been meeting up every couple of weeks to hit in the morning.
What I did today is I counted how many balls I actually hit on the singles court. I hit over three hundred balls in an hour and a half. Instead of sweating the ones that go into the net or out, basically the same thing I've been doing with my basketball three-pointers, I don't worry about why it went out or what happened. Anytime it goes in, I take note of that and feel free to take shots. I play around, try to hit harder shots or weirder shots, and see if they go in. We played some ground games — first to eleven, where you have to hit two or three balls in back and forth first and then it's alive. He said maybe we can rotate in a little singles next time, which is great. This is the same idea I keep coming back to: I'd rather be counting the shots I make, not the ones I miss.
Then I'm out there thinking: I want to find more people to play tennis with. Should I get a coach? Should I play in the USTA? Should I pay people twenty bucks to play with me? Should I leave the racket club and do these other things? And I'm like, this is completely irrational right now. I'm literally playing tennis, and all I'm thinking about is how I can play more tennis. That's a good sign for sure, but I already have a men's clinic I go to once a week at the racket club. Even if you just looked at that as the membership, you could consider it a fifty-dollar-per-clinic membership, which is cheaper than straight-up tennis coaching, and I get the benefit of being able to play at the racket club. The whole family can come — Laura can go, the kids can go. It's definitely worth the membership. It's $240 a month, but if you've got it, you'd better flaunt it, right? I've got $240 a month I can spend on something that's that much fun.
I mean, I spent plenty playing Marvel Snap earlier this year on a stinking online card game. The screwed-up thing is that even talking about it right now, I'd love to just sign on and play some Marvel Snap, even though I know I'd feel like crap afterwards. I still get euphoric recall thinking about playing Marvel Snap and streaming games — that pull is exactly why I had to walk away from Marvel Snap after spending $2,000 on it. And then there's the tennis membership, and I'm thinking about how I can play more tennis. Aren't I playing enough tennis this second? I have the men's clinic, I have a guy I practice with every couple of weeks, and I have a guy who's better than me who plays with me every week. How much more tennis do you need? I'm also trying to get in basketball once or twice a week, yoga three or four times a week, and I walk the dog for thirty-plus minutes every night. Bro, you've got lots of stuff you're doing. I think I'm getting plenty of physical activity. The body's looking good, it's feeling good.
After the family went off this morning, around eight o'clock for the two-hour drive each way plus a few hours of kayaking, I figured I had the day to myself. And I'll let my ego have this: I won all three ground games against a guy who was born thirty years before me. Aren't you proud of me? This guy was competitive at tennis before I was even born, and I'm proud that he can still play and that he's helped me get better at my game.
Hot honey hummus and an AA meeting
I came home and had some hot honey hummus — organic, and so good — and put that down with some carrots and a mini organic cucumber. I threw down some Triscuits with it, then stuffed down some of those sweet stripe candies, and went to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and met my sponsor there. Nobody called on me. It's nice when I don't need to share, and at the same time I'm like, screw y'all for not calling on me — I guess you don't want any of this wisdom. But honestly, don't enough people listen to me talk when you consider all my online videos? I often try to listen and take stuff in more when I'm out, because plenty of people are already listening to me talk. I get so many messages in open chat that I can barely keep up, just in the paid channel — I sometimes don't even get to the free channel, which is ironic because I'm obsessed with growing, but clearly I've got enough going on already. If you want that kind of direct access to me, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and bring your questions to our call.
Kyle from Dfinity told me today that if I wanted a guest, I should let him know, which is great, because I have such an easy setup where somebody from Dfinity could just pop into a Zoom call with me, I'll record it, and I'll upload the video super easily. I want to get in contact with the people at Dfinity and more actively collaborate. I've got three people at Dfinity whose emails I have, and I've been meaning to email them for a couple of weeks. That's a priority — let me email them, connect, give them coupons, and schedule calls.
Why I told a guy his Solana coin was worthless
After my AA meeting, a guy who talks to me about crypto outside the meeting was telling me he wants to launch his coin. He asked if I could help. I asked, is it on Internet Computer? He said no, it's on Solana. I told him: all I can tell you is that launching coins on Solana is worthless. The coins are worthless. They have no legal control. It's nothing except speculation. There's no control over any assets by code. It's utterly useless, and I would not talk about, think about, take any money from, or do anything with a coin outside the Internet Computer at all.
And I'm not interested in being involved even in Internet Computer projects, besides maybe working with Dfinity directly or with OpenChat. I don't want to be the growth officer at OpenChat either. You all see what I do — I make videos, I do my own thing. I've got an office. I'm not trying to have some kind of a job. This is a job, but it's also not a job, because I'm the boss of this job, and I really like that. So I left him with this: if you want to launch a coin, launch it on Internet Computer. If it's on Solana, you're wasting your time. If you want the full version of why I keep landing there, it's all in my ICP Crypto playlist.
Eating a whole bag of popcorn in a parking lot
Then I went to Sunshine City popcorn to buy my wife some popcorn, because we're talking about romance, and if she actually tells me something she wants — like some key lime pie popcorn — then I'm definitely going to go get it. I get there and they're out of it. That's okay, just don't blow my buzz. I'm looking at the list for a minute and I ask for a sample of the lucky charm popcorn — my favorite cereal is Lucky Charms — and they're out of that too. The one thing I wanted, they don't have. So I told them, just give me whatever's cheap or free, whatever you want. If I can't have what I want, then I'll just stuff my face. I got two things of popcorn for twenty bucks — it's expensive popcorn, that was about half off — and I gave a five-dollar tip, because to me you can't not at least give a good tip. I don't know how everyone's tipping out here, but I feel cheap if I don't. Don't be cheap, especially when a lot of money people give you.
I went out to my car, and one of them was caramel popcorn, so I ate a few handfuls of that. The other was spicy cheddar, and even though I eat mostly whole-plant vegan, that spicy cheddar was like crack. I was in my car going, caramel, you need to get out of the way right now, because I'm eating this whole bag of spicy cheddar. And I did. Then it started to rain. I was going to go to Home Depot afterwards, but back in my car it's raining, I'm in my Toyota Corolla, the rain is dumping down, and I'm sitting here eating popcorn. Two people parked next to me, went in, bought their popcorn, and left, and I'm still in the parking lot like an addict. I ate an entire bag of popcorn before I got home, between the parking lot on Central Avenue and finishing the rest off in the Home Depot parking lot.
What's silly is that because I'm in shape and I'm eating during the day, I don't need to lose weight. And ironically, if my kids were overweight, I'd try to control what they ate, but because they're in shape, I don't worry about it. There's definitely a connection there. I really enjoyed just eating that popcorn. My general thought is that I eat mostly whole-plant vegan — I nourish my body with fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and beans, minimally processed, take a B12 supplement, and that's it. Then I'll make exceptions, like today. There's not going to be any weight I put on, it's going to taste delicious, it gave my body energy, and I enjoyed it. There's a nice dopamine hit.
Eight hundred pounds of patio in a Toyota Corolla
Then I got home, after buying close to a thousand pounds of stuff at Home Depot. I bought ten fifty-pound sacks — my wife hates that word, "sacks," but she doesn't watch the vlog — and six sixty-pound sandbags, so call it 860 pounds to be exact. I also bought a heavy steel tamper, kind of like a butter churner but with a flat steel plate on the bottom so you can pound down your dirt and gravel. I'm trying to make a brick patio in the backyard, so I need a base layer according to YouTube and according to the Sakrete bag: a weed barrier, then gravel, then a little sand on top, flattened and banged down. Then I bought these plastic rubbery things to stack the bricks on top of, and I need to put an edge in.
Now, I realize I could pay somebody a few thousand dollars to put a brick patio in the backyard that probably looks nicer than what I'm going to do myself. But I have a neighbor in his eighties who is still doing all this stuff for his house — gardening in the summertime, doing his grass, sweating his butt off, getting sunburned. I noticed my dad went downhill when he stopped doing simple stuff like mowing his own lawn and started paying people to do things he ought to have been doing himself. He got lazy, sat on the couch more, and did less of those physical things. To me, if it's something physical I can do myself, I'd rather do it.
My house flooded with the hurricane. If somebody's going to put drywall in, I'll do it. I've never put drywall in, and it might sound bad to say, but how hard can it be? I'll cut the old drywall out, stick the new one in, caulk, glue, paint, measure it. I fixed my own fence — my wife's parents said it would have cost several thousand dollars to fix their fence, and my father-in-law and I bought five hundred dollars of material and did it ourselves. It was only about ten hours for the two of us, about twenty hours of labor, where you're looking at a hundred dollars an hour to pay someone.
Now, some of the logic would say, Jerry, you get $300 an hour for a call on ICP, so you should just pay somebody to do that stuff and do more calls. But no — I'm going to take the same number of calls I do. I'm not going to increase them. I do a max of two calls a day, or about ten a week. I feel good doing stuff like cutting my lawn, putting in a patio, and fixing my fence. I wanted to do the roof, but my wife drew the line there. The materials for a metal roof would only be about $6,000, but the labor to rip the old roof off and put the new metal on comes out to around $14,000. My wife said the fence is one thing — if it falls down, it's not a big deal — but if you foul up our roof, we have leaks and water coming in all over the house. Plus it would have been hundreds of hours of me on a roof, and you'd have to dump all the trash and pay for that. So some things make sense to have someone help with. I need to get a plumber to fix the garden hose thing out in the front yard, because if you foul that up, you have to turn the water off for the whole house. Anything I can do myself, though, I'd like to do myself.
Man, I can really talk — I spent eighteen minutes and hadn't even gotten through the day yet. But I enjoy doing these, so that's what counts. I bought close to a thousand pounds of stuff and my Toyota Corolla was definitely sagging in the back. I filled the back seats and the front seat, which is probably a better weight distribution than dumping it all in the trunk. I got home and unloaded it all while listening to Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. I'm deep into this now — we're two-thirds of the way through, listening at double speed, and I went through a couple of hours of that book today. He's got me hooked. We're going down the Brandon Sanderson vortex, and there goes fifty or a hundred hours of my life, because there's a lot of his stuff out there. I tried not to get in multiple times, but now we're past the event horizon.
The family came home early and I wasn't ready
Right after I'd unloaded everything and was planning stuff out, about to eat, my daughter walks in. All of a sudden — wait, the heck are you doing here? My wife didn't text me that they were going to make the two-hour drive back, and I felt stunned. I thought I had two more hours to film videos. I was disoriented for like thirty minutes after they got home. My wife was a little put off — she gets home and I'm like, hi, I thought you were going to text first, I was enjoying my time at home. I'm happy you're back, but I'm honestly not happy you're back at the same time. After about thirty minutes I settled down and realized I'm just going to have to wait, which is fine.
Before that, I hung out with the kids, washed a bunch of dishes, took the dogs for a walk, and then we played that Harry Potter board game. Now they're down the street doing fireworks with Laura's family, which is great, because I never got to do fireworks growing up. My dad was in Vietnam, and he didn't think fireworks were fun — they were also illegal a lot of the places we lived. We'd go watch fireworks, but he didn't let us do fireworks ourselves, so I still kind of feel like that. Laura and her family do whatever, and I hope the kids come back with all their fingers. I'm sure they will. You hear about those firework accidents, but that doesn't happen that often. One of the things you have to do is approach the world knowing that, sure, you hear about these outliers, and you don't want them to happen, but most of the time they don't, and often you won't even know which outlier is going to come for you. Maybe not — well, that sounds good to me.
Songs stuck in my head and the ambient music I'd rather make
So I hope I have time to make some music today and maybe film another crypto video. I sold another $300 call for tomorrow, and I made at least $3,000 on the day. There's this song that gets stuck in your head: "I hate how stupid I am, I hate how stupid I am." All songs get stuck in your head like that, and then I go around seeing what songs I can make to try to get stuck in somebody else's head — and I'm like, no, I'm just going to make ambient music that people don't even really listen to. That's nicer, isn't it? That's more considerate.
Thanks for listening — I appreciate you being one of the few to go all the way through this. I made somebody a Cameo today as well; someone sent me thirty dollars in open chat and I made them a little video for their friend. If you want to keep up with the day-to-day, I write a new one of these most days, and they tend to run together like this one and my day of family time, board games, and charging for crypto videos. If you enjoyed this diary, you can watch my newest ones in my Life playlist.
I'm Already Rich. So What Do I Do All Day?
From my video published December 21, 2024.
On December 17, 2024, I woke up and kind of didn't know what to do with myself. I'm Jerry Banfield, full-time YouTuber, crypto person, whatever, and this is my daily diary. The wife and kids are down the street hanging out with Laura's family. I just recorded a short crypto video about crypto and AI. And it's funny how, according to all my own research, I'm already so rich. All I need to do is just hang around and wait. Wait, but what am I supposed to do on a daily basis? Is there, what would I do if I actually had all my bills paid off? Would I just show up and keep doing crypto videos anyway? This is what I'm thinking about this morning.
I was thinking, should I do a live stream? Should I just do a regular video? The live streams are such a big time and energy commitment. Videos are so easy, and it seems y'all like videos better. The title I did before was fine on this other video, and I tried to make a better one yesterday. So a lot of times I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels on YouTube. After uploading over 5,000 videos to YouTube — most of them are deleted today because I deleted the channels or deleted the videos — it's like, well, is there other stuff I want to do in my life that's more important? Or that gives me more joy?
Watering the garden with my shirt off
This morning I watered the garden with my shirt off and got some sun. It feels good. It feels like getting sun really helps me have energy and feel good. And that's easy to do in Florida. It was a little cold, but I still wanted to get the sun, so I was just cold. I watered my garden in the front yard, in the backyard. I have a bunch of trees.
I'm picturing somebody going, God, how is his life so boring? Well, I'm a full-time YouTuber. What do I do? I stay home. I go to yoga and I go to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I get a massage like once a week or so. I have two kids, they go to school. It's pretty straightforward. There's not that much drama or hyper excitement in my life, for better or worse. And I'm glad — compared to some YouTubers, I have a very thriving real life.
I'm thinking today, maybe I'll do the patio in my backyard, because I feel it's really rewarding to do stuff. Like I fixed the fence after the hurricane myself, and it was very rewarding to do a project like that. Because with things like these YouTube videos, I feel like I'm just talking into the void. I'm glad people on OpenChat come through and say that my videos were helpful. A guy messaged me. He said, oh, I cried after watching your video, that was really good. And I said, thank you. I don't really know if these are doing any good or not. At least these diary videos, I know it's good for me to analyze. If you ever want that kind of direct line, that's exactly why you can join Jerry Banfield Family — so the conversation isn't just me talking into the void.
There's definitely a balance, where one end is total narcissism and all you do is think about yourself all day, and then there's the opposite end, where you just kind of go around and never consider your actions at all. I'm probably on the narcissism end — I analyze what I'm doing and how it's useful for people.
I really don't want to go to Home Depot right now
I really don't want to go to Home Depot right now. This is when it's the most busy, but I swear, the main time I'm ready to go to Home Depot is always like noon, when everybody else goes too. But maybe I'll do it. I need to get some gravel to make a patio in my backyard, then put sand down, then put bricks down on top of it, then fill in between the bricks to make a patio.
I don't want to pay somebody else to do it. I could just pay somebody a few thousand dollars to do it, but I'm healthy, I'm active. I can dig dirt up and dump bags of gravel down and then smooth it out, pound it down, lay the stones on top of it. And yes, it might not come up as nice looking as if a professional does it. But I'll have the satisfaction of being like, I did that. Yeah, that's me. Yep, I did that.
Why I made a trap song to review a garbage coin
I had a lot of fun last night making this song. People want me to review these cryptos, and I love how creative I am. People asked me to review this dumpster fire coin called Hyperliquid. I don't want to put that on my main crypto channel, because my main crypto channel is at 43,000 subs and most videos get thousands of views. They go out to tens of thousands of people. I don't want to promote some garbage coin, even if it is with a negative review. I don't even want to talk about it.
So I'm like, where do I have a channel where the algorithm is just dead and I can afford to go for search traffic and just put out whatever? I realized I could just make a little trap song about how much this crypto sucks, and that'll serve as a review. Most of my songs don't have that much organic traffic — there's no search traffic. One of the hardest things in music is that you have to have a lot of organic traffic, and music seems to get search traffic because people don't really know how to describe music well enough. Unless it's some ultra niche thing that only musicians look for, like you want some exact chord or progression, or a certain type of music in a certain key with this, this, and that, most people don't even know how to look for music intelligently.
I make music and I still struggle to. I'm like, I want some instrumental dance music. And I search for it, and it's got words in it. I'm like, I want no words, dance music. And I search for it, and it's got words in it. I'm like, ugh, I just want dance music with no stupid lyrics in it. And then it sounds boring and AI generated. So then I'm like, okay, I want dance music that sounds more like Deadmau5. That's more fun, that's not so dull. So then I'm like, screw it, I'll just make some myself.
So I had fun making that. It took a while last night, though. I used ChatGPT to generate like 30 verses, picked out the ones I liked the best. It took me five, ten minutes just to give ChatGPT the prompt — in which case I could have recorded a stinking review video in that amount of time. But then I don't want to just record a review, I have my music channel. So that's what it's been like on YouTube. This whole way I think about channels and titles is the kind of thing I keep digging into in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Sleeping in, Laura bars, and throwing out the baklava
This morning I took the morning to actually sleep in a little bit, which was nice. I got out of bed and had a couple of Laura bars first thing in the morning. And what else did I have? I had a couple of pieces of baklava my mom gave me, but they weren't that good, so I threw the whole box out.
Since I've read books about people escaping North Korea and stuff, I'm like, if this was North Korea, we all would have been like, ah, I don't know, we would have eaten that baklava box — that would have been our food for the whole week. But instead I'm just going to throw that out, because I have so much.
I could do nothing and still be wealthy off ICP
I also listened to some ICP videos last night, and sometimes things are so easy. I think I could literally just do nothing and I'm going to be extremely wealthy off of ICP. But I'd like to help a few other people see that, before it's too late. I helped a lot of people find Bitcoin before it was too late, but most of the people I helped find Bitcoin screwed it up in one way or another. So it's like, is there even a point in trying to help people?
I had a friend who was dating this guy, and she said, I think he might be gay. And I said, no, don't say that to him, you're just starting to date, that'll screw it up. So now she's divorced from him, and she describes his behavior to me, and I'm like, yeah, he's definitely gay. You should have just said what you thought you wanted to say. And if he didn't like you, or he was mad because you were right but he was in the closet or something, then you wouldn't have had this whole marriage for years. Well, great job. I'm glad you took my advice — and then it resulted in you getting married and moving away and having this whole long ordeal with a guy you maybe could have avoided by just telling him you thought he was gay, which now I think he is.
So I'm by myself, you know — I'm in a monogamous relationship with a woman, so it doesn't really matter what the rest of my sexuality is, but I'm by myself. And I've tried a whole lot of different stuff. I mean, disclosure and extraterrestrials — I was thinking, there's some beings on other planets, they have like cat heads with humanish bodies. Yeah, I'd give that a shot. So this vlog was so random today. It's awesome. I realized, why am I trying to narrate the day before? It's crazy how you forget stuff so fast.
It's crazy how fast you forget
I did a vlog less than 24 hours ago, and I've already forgotten stuff about yesterday. It's crazy how fast you forget stuff. I'm like, why am I doing the date like this? This should just be a vlog for today, and I can talk about yesterday or the whole rest of eternity if I feel like it. Why is it rigid? I'm amazed how rigid I get sometimes. The last video I put up was called "Flexible Versus Rigid Thinking," and that thing bombed. I mean, it bombed as much as you can bomb on a tiny little YouTube channel.
It's funny having different channels. I have a channel with hundreds of thousands of subs that gets like a hundred views a video, then I have one with 43,000 subs that gets thousands of views per video, and then this one with a few hundred subs gets anywhere from 10 to 100 or so views per video. It's funny what bombing looks like on different channels. On my crypto channel, if you get under a thousand views, that was like the worst video I made all year — which a few of my music videos turned out to be the worst videos I made all year on that channel. I should have just put those on my music channel, where they would have been better than usual.
I love my life
Being a YouTuber, I'm really grateful I get to do this today. I love my life. I love that there's a little, just enough drama to make it interesting, there's lots of stability, there's so much wealth and abundance. I have 900-something liquid ICP, almost 4,000 stacked. I'm going to be so rich. I am so rich now. I didn't realize with Bitcoin how rich I was when I was sitting there with like 40 of them in my wallet, and I sold them in cash to this guy for like $200 each in 2014. I didn't realize how wealthy I was. But I know how wealthy I am today. If you want to follow that side of my thinking, I keep it all going in my ICP Crypto playlist.
To me, when you feel wealthy, you bring wealth. When you feel healthy, you bring health. When you feel loving, you bring love. When you feel hateful, you bring more hate. In my experience, it's like God gives you everything you ask for, except whatever you're focusing on is what you're asking for.
Would a wealthy person pray for money?
I've come to believe this more after reading a little more of this Conversations with God book last night. It's so good, because it says things like: you think your prayers aren't answered, but I'm answering your prayers all the time. When you pray to me and say, I'm so broke, God, please make me rich, what I'm hearing is that you are suffering and you've chosen to suffer. You've chosen to make yourself broke. You've chosen to feel like your identity is, I am broke — and that even your prayer asking for money is just an affirmation of how broke you are. Because would a wealthy person pray for money?
Yeah, that really gets me good, doesn't it? I don't go praying, God, please give me a million dollars. Although I did set an intention. I imagine millions of dollars coming in. I set up things to make money, and to help people, and to collaborate with people. But I expect money to come in. I don't need to pray to God, because I'm already wealthy. Even though I do have debt — many of the wealthiest people in the world are just people who know how to have debt. I'm wealthy. I don't pray to God and say, oh, please, God, give me more money. It's like, I've got plenty today. I can go wherever I want, do whatever I want.
Which is funny, because all I seem to want to do is stand here in my studio and talk about myself, and then water my garden and hang out with my family. Which I guess is fine, isn't it? It's fine. I don't know if I'll go to an AA meeting, I'll see. Maybe I'll go to the men's meeting today. This is the kind of faith I keep circling back to — I've written before about how my mind went to fear, but I chose faith.
Leading by example instead of just teaching
I've wondered a lot about what to do with my titles. On this channel, with teaching and preaching — I talked about this a bit in a video yesterday — there are so many videos out there that tell you what to do. But how many videos lead by example? Hey, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm thinking about. I want more videos like that. So I'm aiming for my videos to be like that. Hey, this is what I'm doing, I'm living what I'm teaching.
Because there are so many of us who know stuff. First of all, a lot of the stuff we think we know is not producing the results we think it should.
Health is more about community than diet
In my experience, so many of you eating these keto and carnivore diets — that's not going to work out very well for you in the long term. If your goal is to live a long, healthy life, I don't think that's going to work most of the time. I mean, maybe you can, but I might be wrong about that. There are a lot of other things in play besides just your diet.
There's too much emphasis on diet sometimes, and too little emphasis on community and connection. Community and connection, being loved and being with people. Think of people in the '60s and '70s who would have, say, a big Italian family, where they'd all go to work together and be in a store hollering and having fun and working together and talking junk, and then they'd come home and have the whole neighborhood over for dinner. A lot of those people smoked and drank and ate a bunch of meat, and they still lived longer, healthier lives than a lot of people today who don't smoke, who don't drink like me and eat a whole plant diet.
Because being isolated is so negative for your health that a lot of being healthy comes naturally when you're in a group of people, when you're in a whole community — not just a family with four people, but a community of hundreds of people. For me, my communities are yoga, Alcoholics Anonymous, the place I go for my massage. Then I've got my mom across the street, my wife's family down the street. I've got hundreds of people in my life, and I'm planning to get to know more people better. This is the same thread I pulled on when I wrote about calorie tracking versus plant-based eating — the numbers miss most of what actually keeps you well. If community is the real medicine, that's also why I'd rather you join Jerry Banfield Family than hand you another course.
How quickly you forget people
I want to take time, like I went out with this girl from yoga for juice yesterday afterwards. It took like 30 minutes to talk to each other, and it's really nice. Now I know her more, and all the times I see her afterwards, now I know her better. Although it's amazing how quickly you forget people too. There are people I've talked with, had long conversations with, and then you don't see them for a few years and you start to barely remember them. I had a massage therapist I worked with a whole bunch over the last few years, and she's moved away, and I'm already forgetting stuff about her and her life experiences.
Obviously there's a lot of material, but I forget what I did yesterday. It seems like after you go to sleep and wake up, I forget 90% of what I did yesterday after a single night of sleep. And then I try to talk about stuff from years ago, and at this point I'm just making it up. You think your past is so solid? I go back to years ago, and I'm literally just making stuff up.
Talking about the past is a creative endeavor
I don't know what happened on September 5th, 2009. I have no idea. I was a police officer back then. I might've worked, I might not have. I think I had the day off. I don't know, what did I do that day? If I had the day off, I probably drank, but I might not have. I can only guess at the smallest details.
So when they say things like "this too shall pass," and "now is all you really have" — I don't know. You're going to forget almost everything very quickly. And even going back and talking about the past is essentially recreating the past. Talking about the past is a creative endeavor. You don't know what the past really included. It's gone.
All right. I've hypnotized myself with my own voice for 17 minutes. This was a day in the life of a full-time YouTuber, and if that's your thing, I've shared more of it like a day in my life as a full-time YouTuber and single dad in St. Pete. I'll see y'all tomorrow.