These five posts are the start of a life diary I am now keeping on purpose. After months of second-guessing what kind of content to make, my answer is simple: a daily vlog, told plainly, is the most honest thing I can put out. I am not trying to make the most dramatic upload of the month. I am trying to show up every day and tell the truth about a real human life, because a viewer can recognize their own life in that, and that is the value I actually care about giving.
Here is where I have landed. I am going back to daily vlogs on my main Jerry Banfield channel. I am turning my older videos into blog posts so the work lives on my own site and not on someone else's terms. And I am asking whether the next step for me is talking with people one-on-one instead of performing for an audience. I do not have a final answer to that last question, and the posts below show me working it out in real time.
The oldest entries here are not from this summer at all. They are diary days from February and March 2025, part of the daily autobiography series I am still recording and turning into posts. In my entry for February 24, 2025, I decide to cut back on crypto videos, admit that live streaming had turned into a job I did not want, and find that about four hours of filming can produce eleven uploads. In the entry for February 25, I write about a silent massage, a hard conversation with my kids about swearing, and a meeting where I remind myself that I have been sober for more than 10 years and do not want to forget that I am an alcoholic.
The entry for March 3, 2025, Day 5026, is the one I would point to if you only read one. After months of letting a family disagreement sit, I sent a short apology text, and I wrote about why that felt like the right move. Step 10 of Alcoholics Anonymous says to promptly admit it when you are wrong. It took me three months, but as I put it in that entry, three months is better than a whole lifetime.
Then came June. In my June 20, 2026 vlog, I explained what had changed. I had run 220 of my old videos through an AI workflow, I had 506 blog posts up on the new site, and I realized that the daily vlogs I used to make were the thing I most wished I had kept doing. So I decided the Jerry Banfield channel should be a daily life channel, while my topic channels keep dating, crypto, money and games. The same vlog covers a night of performing at a community event, a tennis match that lasted two and a half hours, a frustrating pickup with my ex-wife, and a talk with my AA sponsor about making amends. It also admits that I felt sad and lonely afterward, which I think belongs in a diary too.
By July 14, 2026, in my July 14 vlog, the question had sharpened. Walking in a park after a massage, I said I still enjoy YouTube but feel it rewards junk, and that I deleted more than a decade of old work last year because I did not want to be one more creator saying anything for money. I also reported 1.2 million impressions in 90 days on channels only about 110 days old, and then said that views feel temporary next to something more enduring. For me, that is talking with people. I wondered whether my best version is talking with 20 to 100 people a week for 25 minutes each, and whether this channel should simply become blogs.
Below this opening you will find the five posts in full, newest first. The two summer 2026 vlogs come first, then the three 2025 diary days in the order they happened. Each keeps the date of the day it describes, so a February 2025 entry stays a February 2025 entry even though it went up in June 2026. I have not tidied up the contradictions. Some days I am sure about the plan and some days I am not, and I think an honest record includes both.
If you want more of the same life, the A Day in My Life collection and my sobriety milestones page cover the same ground from other years, and the October 2026 vlogs have their own page.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- July 14, 2026 Vlog (July 14, 2026)
- June 20, 2026 Vlog: Sacred City, Adding Value, Community, Amends (June 20, 2026)
- A Rainy Day in St. Petersburg: My 5,019th Day on YouTube (June 17, 2026)
- Day 5,020: Sobriety, Baseboards, and Talking to My Kids (June 17, 2026)
- Day 5026: A Healing Day, a Massage, and a Three-Month Apology (June 17, 2026)
July 14, 2026 Vlog
From my video published July 14, 2026.
Time to get out in real life today. We'll do a vlog, just talk off the top of my head, and I'll probably send all this to ChatGPT afterward and see what it thinks. It's July 14th, 2026 as I'm filming this, and I'm really grateful because it's a lovely day. I'm Jerry Banfield, just trying to get paid to exist, super relaxed after I just had a massage, walking at the park next to my house. We'll put out whatever title is the most clickbait out of everything I end up saying here, which I have no idea what that will be. I'm just trying to be authentic and get out of my usual routines today.
I'm really wondering: is there anything better than being this content creator? I swear I've been having the same thought for years, but I watched a Bobby O video today that got me going, because there's just so much to think about. I know a lot of you really enjoy my content, and then I start wondering about what I could possibly offer. I'm grateful that three people actually scheduled calls within the last 24 hours, so that's some validation. Then I'm like, oh, I hope I can make enough money by the end of the year to make this work. I don't know what I'm going to do if I can't, but I also have a history of making amazing things happen, of getting a lot of people to help me and being supported. I think most of us do. Most of us have a history of being supported, and life's on our side. If you want to be one of those people I talk to, you can schedule a call and join the Jerry Banfield Family.
I got a massage which was really relaxing, and I had a fantastic conversation during it. She asked what the best part of the massage was last week, and I said it was the conversation. The body work is beautiful, but the connection is its own thing that comes along in life. Suddenly I've met someone who seems to have so much compatibility with me, and we've got a date planned in a couple of days. More about that on Jerry Banfield Dating. It feels really good. I'm just navigating the emotions, focusing on gratitude.
Why I'm Still On YouTube
I really enjoy doing YouTube. I love YouTube. Sometimes it's hard to see how much crap there is on there, though, and it feels like having someone who's just real and authentic doesn't matter on YouTube. I was just talking to someone who's starting out, someone who quit doing everything to be a content creator. A lot of what I want to say is how bad it is out there. That's why I deleted everything last year. I deleted over a decade of work, because if I was just one of the people who would say anything to get paid, I could have more views and more money, but no soul. I'm not on YouTube to just make money. I'm on YouTube because I want to make a difference in someone's life.
I tried shooting this in 3K too, which I'm hoping is not a mistake, but we're going to experiment with that and see how it works out for all of us. Here's the question I keep circling: if I'm just going to base my business on talking to people, couldn't I just go around and offer people in person the same basic thing? I fooled around for nine months seeing if there was anything I could do locally. But I love creating content, I'm so good at it, and maybe someday it seems like authentic content is doing better than it used to. I'm grateful. I just did the statistics: I've gotten 1.2 million impressions, all for free on YouTube, in the last 90 days, with channels that are only 110 days old. That's pretty amazing, that YouTube is delivering that. Meanwhile the people making the nastiest titles they can think of about me, I'm not watching those. I don't care what you have to say about me. I'm very proud and happy where I am, and I'm excited for where I'm going.
I had a conversation today with a person who was talking about grieving the future they wanted to have, because they felt like they couldn't have it. I said there's no need to grieve something before it's completely impossible. Even so, I remember kind of doing that with my marriage a bit a couple of years ago, starting to grieve and think, this isn't going to be forever. But really, nothing's forever except me and you and who we really are underneath all this. That's forever, I guess. I swear, if I was just doing a prompt to ChatGPT, this would be more coherent, but it is cool to get out and film this outside.
Parenting, Video Games, And Time To Work
The kids are in the house playing video games right now. They love just playing video games at my house ever since they got them back. I asked them, is this all you want to do? Is this what you want out of hanging out at dad's house, just playing Roblox and Minecraft? Because I could sell the Xbox and the PlayStation 5, or I could just tell them they couldn't play. But to me, parenting is about helping your kids do what they want to do within reason. If the kids want to play video games, otherwise they'd be reading board games or comic books. I miss that, before we had all the video games, when we did more stuff together. The advantage is it gives me more time to work when they're here.
Turning A Decade Of Videos Into A Permanent Record
I took about 150 of my old videos from a few years ago, threw them into a folder, and let Claude run through all of them. It's going to turn all of those into blog posts on my website. That'll put me over a thousand blog posts. Google's now got 500 of them indexed. Now I'm getting like 500 impressions a day on Google search, and only about 10 clicks a day to my website, but what's nice is that it's a bit more evergreen. If anything, it may grow over time. And I really like having a more permanent record of all the videos I've done.
I did look back, and there's an amazing amount of videos I made that weren't relevant in crypto today. I don't want to make content that's so irrelevant over the long term. Real human experiences will always be relevant. A video like today's will be relevant as just a diary entry from my life, a real human experience among seven or eight billion other real human experiences. And what's cool is I'm even training a custom model on all my videos. So all these old videos, all the transcripts, will get added to that. You can have a model that's got all the old videos in it.
I looked back at some of my crypto reviews, and man, those were accurate. Some things are down, like people have talked junk about ICP, and I guess ICP is down a good bit too. But most of the other cryptos I reviewed just got destroyed from when I reviewed them to now. Still, I'm wondering: is there anything better I can offer than making videos, being available to call and text, and building a community? Or, as some people would say, being a cult leader. On my dating channel, one woman said that Gen Z girls only care if you're a YouTuber who's moderately or very successful. Well, I've got over a billion impressions, or views, whatever you want to call it, on my content online. I've been viral. I've got all the accolades: top 10 Udemy instructor, top 20 gaming, Facebook gaming partner. That's pretty successful. But all that stuff is so temporary. Do you remember who the most popular people were from 50 years ago? You probably don't know any of them. It's amazing how fast all this stuff fades, how quickly it's all just slipping through our fingers.
What Actually Endures
I want to make something a lot more enduring, and one of the most enduring things I've found in my life is talking to people. I feel like if I spent 25, 30, 40 hours a week talking to people, that's real value that's not replaceable by AI. Bobby O's video really got me thinking about the future. The plan seems to be, at some point, to get everybody just talking with AI, to cut the influencers out of the middle and shift everything over to AI, where people aren't even watching YouTube videos anymore. They're just talking straight to AI about everything. And AI is incredibly effective. If you use ChatGPT Pro, I've paid $200 a month for that, it's incredible what it can do. I'm going to start putting some of my videos like this through it and see what it thinks, because it sometimes comes up with unique angles. It's just got a lot of data to pull from.
I do find it frustrating showing up on YouTube a lot of the time, because it seems like junk gets rewarded massively. MrBeast's videos are just junk food for your mind. What do you learn from his videos, that people do anything for money? They are fun, they are laughter and entertainment. But I look through my feed and I swear, 10 years ago the YouTube feed was so much better. Now it's just junk video after junk video from professional junk people. Everything is over the top, clickbait, garbage. When you search for something now, it's hard to even find what you're searching for a lot of the time, because there's just so much sensational garbage piled on top of it.
So I ask, where can I show up, and where can I be useful in this? I'm so good at this environment. It seems like this is the best thing for me to do. And the haters never have ideas that are productive. These podcasters, is there any useful idea you have besides something dumb like "just get a job and give up on your life and your dating and your dreams"? One thing that motivates me every time people are criticizing is that it just makes me that much happier, that much more excited to see what's possible and to come out on the other side of it. What's funny is that whenever you're up and everybody wants your attention, everybody always wants things, and praises you, and attacks you too. But it's really amazing to see who's there when things are challenging. That's what's truly beautiful in life.
Proving what I'm capable of
I remember when I was a police officer back in 2009, and they were talking a bunch of junk about me. They were making fun of the idea that I couldn't get an attractive woman. And then I managed to hook up with one of the dispatchers, who was an absolute perfect 10 in my opinion. I couldn't imagine anything that could have been better about her appearance, at least. Personality, well, that's another story. But everybody was blown away. A lot of them didn't even believe it. Like, no, that didn't happen. I wrote a whole book, Officer Banfield, about that. And I remember all of them talking junk, and I thought, I'm going to show all of you what I can do. And I hope I inspire each of you to wonder what else you're capable of. Because the people who think I have limited capabilities, who want to criticize, only motivate me to show off even more.
I'm thinking that should turn into the best business I've ever had. My business in the past wasn't based on giving real value to real people. It was based on positioning myself as an authority and getting people in the door. I did good coaching in some areas, but it wasn't giving people the most value that could really transform your life. I've never bought a course from somebody that transformed my life. What did transform me was a few audiobooks, and they transformed my life because I put them into practice and found that they worked, like the book How Not to Die. I only found that one because it was recommended by my uncle, who's a doctor.
The truth is often very simple
The haters are just nuts on my carnivore diet trash video, which is another example of how the truth is often very simple. I loved what Bobby O said in his recent video: the truth is often very simple. And yet the strategy on YouTube and these other platforms is to bury the truth in a mountain of garbage. So finding someone like Bobby O, someone who's authentic and makes worthwhile content, is an absolute diamond in the rough. Most of the top content on YouTube is junk. Most of the top creators are totally compromised. I know because I've been high enough up to get the secret terms and conditions, the non-disclosure agreements, the things you can't talk about, and the extra reach.
That's one thing that makes doing YouTube a bit hard. If you're going to be raw and authentic and actually care about people, the algorithm and everything is stacked against you. Not completely, not 100%. But maybe that's just a story I'm telling myself. Maybe there's a perfect opportunity for me to be authentic, to monetize full time, and to have everything I want. Maybe something else will happen too. Who knows what'll happen.
What if it doesn't work out
I am afraid sometimes. What if this doesn't work out? I'm borrowing money and betting everything on YouTube, which has worked out well before. But what if it doesn't this time? Honestly, I hardly even consider the what-if-things-don't-work-out scenarios. Because the way I look at it, if it doesn't work out, you're going to be surprised, and that's going to be interesting. And sometimes things not working out in the short term work out better in the long term.
I had this experience when I was a police officer. I was getting really tired of it and burnt out, getting bored, but I could hardly see outside of it. I had so much fear. What if I quit? What if they fire me? What am I going to do if I'm not a police officer? And I had things I wanted to do, like go to grad school, which I ended up doing. I got my master's. I quit my Ph.D. when I found YouTube. It was funny. I was so stressed and afraid about the idea that being a police officer might not be what I do forever. And then the day after I quit was the biggest relief I think I've ever had in my whole life. All that stress fell away, all the court cases I had to go to for the people I arrested. Where I was, you basically prosecute the case yourself if it's a minor one, like a traffic ticket or a DUI, something the district attorney wasn't going to handle themselves, which was most of the things. Most arrests aren't things the district attorney gets involved in, only the bigger ones. For the regular misdemeanors, you're in court yourself against the defendant and potentially their attorney, with the judge. Man, I didn't realize how much stress I was carrying from all that, and the night shifts, until it all fell away.
So the way I look at it today is, sometimes the what-if-it-doesn't-work-out scenario is going to be interesting. It's going to be fine. You don't need to worry about it. But at the same time, I focus all my energy and effort on doing everything I can to make it work out. Then I know I've left nothing on the table. If I put out five videos a day on my channels, except for Jerry Banfield games, where I think just live streaming is the way to go, and it still doesn't work because none of the lonely people who follow me online are interested in paying to be less lonely and connect with me, then I'll figure something out.
Is there a better way than just videos?
I'm also wondering, is there a better way than just doing YouTube videos? I got one to two million impressions in the last 28 days. That's pretty good, about forty-something thousand impressions for free a day. But I could crank in a bunch more if I paid for Google ads. I could build specific landing pages and try all kinds of niche terms, broader terms, display ads, search ads, YouTube ad videos. Maybe it'd be better to advertise directly. I could just advertise for my membership and try to get out there. Somebody might be searching for a connection coach. I could do the research, and AI could help figure out what niche terms people are searching for, make a landing page quickly with my voice and AI, and potentially convert people off a cold ad straight into the membership.
With all the people already watching my videos, you'd think that would be more effective. But sometimes you don't know until you try. Sometimes somebody with a very specific search intent can come straight in. So I'm wondering if it'd be worthwhile to test that. I've been thinking about it, but it involves spending more money and more time that's not on creating content. At least with creating content, I know people spent five thousand hours, almost six thousand, watching my content in the last 28 days. That's a lot of time. I guess I'm pretty good at this, and that's only about 110 days on brand new YouTube channels.
The best version of me
I think the best version of my content in the future would be if I'm spending 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 hours a week talking to people who are in my group. The membership price is really just an intro offer to get the initial people in, and it will go up as more people join. But then I could be working 20 to 50 hours a week on calls, and that would be a real job too. That would add a massive amount of value to people's lives, and I imagine my content could take it up to the highest notch. If I'm talking to 20 to 100 people every week for 25 minutes each, I'm going to have some amazing insights. I'm going to know so many people's stories. I think that'd be the best version of me. If you want to be part of that, you can join the Jerry Banfield Family and have a real, two-way relationship with me through these conversations.
I am relentless about going toward the best version of me. I think the best version of me is the one that's talking with as many people a week as possible, so that all of you could have two-way relationships with me in these videos. Then my content will really be at the best it could possibly be. And whoever watches it, watches it. I don't need to be concerned with who's not watching or who's watching other stuff. You can follow along with everything in my my Life playlist.
So that's where I'm at today. Maybe the Jerry Banfield channel will just be straight-up blogs like this from now on. I'd love to hear if that'd be better. I'm a little more relaxed walking around outside, it's a bit more interesting with a real background, and I'd love to hear from you directly. Appreciate you being here. See you tomorrow.
June 20, 2026 Vlog: Sacred City, Adding Value, Community, Amends
From my video published June 20, 2026.
I went to Sacred City last night and had a member showcase event at Solely Therapeutic Massage. It was awesome, and I had such a nice time there connecting with the community. It was like an all-natural high. I actually performed there, kind of an educational stand-up comedy routine, talking about death and dying and rebirth and living other lives, astral travel, all of that. It was awesome. There were people there who played music, did a magic show, a comedy routine, danced, and taught us how to do some dancing. There was a woman there, Courtney, who did some health consulting and coaching. It was amazing. Angela and Lindsay put on just a beautiful performance.
Turning 220 Old Videos Into Blog Posts
Looking at this event, and then looking back through yesterday, I realized something. I was also working on my website, jerrybanfield.com, where I went through and ran 220 of my old videos. I now have 506 blog posts on my brand new website that I put up in the last week, and I went through and ran all 220 of these posts through there yesterday — all my old crypto reviews.
So I realized that one of the best things I did in the past was do daily vlogs, where I would just talk about, "Hey, this is what's going on in my life today." I loved doing that. If I had to go back in time and ask what I wish I'd created every single day, I wish I'd just done a vlog every day. So I realized my main Jerry Banfield channel — this life channel — needs to be just like a vlog. I already have a channel to talk dating, YouTube, crypto, money, and games, and I can always make a seventh channel if I need to. But when I look back and take inventory, which is a principle in AA, I went back and took inventory of all of this, and it was awesome.
If you want to see all these old deleted videos, they're now turned into blog posts. I may upload some of them as unlisted and then put them inside my membership. If you'd like to get closer with me and see all of this, that's what the Jerry Banfield Family at jerrybanfield.com is for. Here's October 25th, 2024 — I looked back through here, and it's talking about playing tennis and daily entries, AA, going to my AA meeting, and what I was going through with my wife, my now ex-wife at the time. This vlog is awesome. This post reminds me that I now take for granted that I'm the best at shooting three-pointers I've ever been in my whole life. But it was the end of December 2024 when I started shooting three-pointers, and for my whole life before that I thought I sucked at shooting three-pointers. I had to be down in the middle of the court. I mean, I'm 5'11", so at least in a pickup game I've got decent height for a basic white dude. But I'm really grateful — taking inventory yesterday helped me see I need to do vlogs.
Every day when I wasn't making YouTube videos, I did this daily autobiography series. I'm going to go through there with the AI and turn all of those into blog posts on my website too, so that my website is my code, my content, my permanent record of all the stuff I've created — something that can't be censored, can't be taken down, and doesn't have terms and conditions it's subject to. So I did that yesterday. It was the main thing I did earlier in the day, and it helped me realize I need to get back to daily vlogs. All this Jerry Banfield channel should be for is daily vlogs. So that's what I'm doing now. If you enjoy these life updates, you can watch my newest videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYdzdbaAV2ZlkL_ScTpiwbKJlkcvIihQe.
Tennis, Footwork, and the Joy of Playing
So the highlight of my day yesterday — I mean, I saw my kids, too. I picked my kids up from camp yesterday, and they had a little award ceremony. But the day began by playing tennis. I went and played tennis with my friend Jason, who I've talked a lot about in the books and the autobiographies, and those will be up on the website and blog soon. I played tennis with him, and he started off beating me like five to nothing in the first set. I came back, and we've probably played 60 times by now, and he's probably won 55 of them. He probably won the first 20 or 30 matches we played, and then there was quite a while where I didn't win much again. But I've actually won the last two matches against him, which has been amazingly satisfying.
The biggest thing I did is I leaned into just learning and studying the game, instead of demanding that I win and focusing on the outcome. I focused on the joy of playing, the joy of being there with him, and learning and studying right now. Lately I've been focusing on my footwork a lot — where are my feet, where are my feet, move my feet. Because I play a lot of video games, looking at and hitting the ball is actually much more natural for me in tennis. I'm used to what my eyes are doing, but my feet have just felt like this alien thing where I have to almost always be focusing. I'm paying so much attention to my footwork lately. Where is this foot stepping? Where's that foot stepping? Where's my momentum when he goes to hit the ball — am I mid-step, or am I grounded so I can be ready to move? Where are my feet positioned so I can move to where I need to go? In the second set, he ended up whooping me 6–2, but then I won the tiebreaker. We played two and a half hours, nice and sweaty, got my shirt off, and I got some sun.
Picking My Kids Up From Camp
Then I went to pick my kids up. They were at a marine camp at Eckerd College, and I had such a beautiful time just watching them get their rewards and being around the other kids and parents. Then I brought them home, and all of us showered — I showered last. They were like, "We've been in the saltwater, we need to shower first." Then they played video games for like four hours while I worked on all these blog posts. Really the AI worked on them, but I copied all the videos — hundreds of videos — over from my archive. I'm so grateful I've got all these videos now. I dropped 666 videos exactly that I made in 2024 into the folder, averaging a little less than two videos a day.
Looking back at these videos, I had limited my videos to like five minutes, but really some of these 10, 15, 20-minute videos make a much better blog post. If you're going to watch one of my videos, there's no reason I have to limit it specifically to five minutes. Some of these blog posts are amazing. This one is from April 10, 2021, which was in the 2024 re-upload folder — it's an incredible blog post with a ton of information from an hour-and-a-half discussion we had on a livestream. I just love that this is now there indefinitely. My Jerry Banfield custom AI is now trained on all of these posts and videos too. So if you go ask it what I think about mind over medicine, it will just crank out a response based on a video I already did about it. I love this.
I took a lot of time working on making my website, packing my website with value. I probably have 500 or 1,000 more videos that I've filmed over the years, and I'm going to get all of that on this website. Now all my new videos automatically go through this workflow and are added to my website. It's taken me a while to set all this up, but I built something now that is there indefinitely. Some of the posts are getting immediate clicks in Google search, which is awesome.
Making Amends to My Ex-Wife
So I did that while the kids were there. My ex came over to pick them up, and I said, "Look, yesterday I was a bit frustrated." I'd gotten a little frustrated with her the day before because the kids were there like an hour later than I thought we'd all agreed they were going to be. So I told her, "Look, yesterday I got a little frustrated." And then I thought about it. As soon as we decided to get separated, I made amends to her for the things I did in the marriage. I wrote out a two-page thing saying, "Look, this was wrong that I did in the marriage" — getting crushes on other women, that was wrong, and so on. I made a two-page letter, and I think I actually wrote about that, so it will be on the blog soon, probably from mid-October 2025.
She's never done any such thing for me. But then again, she has done a lot of other things. She's helped me, she's believed in me, she's helped me set up my life, she's given me a bunch of furniture and stuff that I have in my house now. She's been super cooperative, helping with the kids. She's never gone through and admitted her wrongs in the marriage, but there are things she's done that have made amends. So I criticized her a couple of days ago — "You've never looked at me and said, here's what I did that was wrong in the marriage." I told her I'd be the most important, most affected person to do that with. But then I got frustrated, because, of course, trying to tell somebody what they're doing wrong is often not the way to get them to do what you'd like them to do. So I was more frustrated after that.
A Call to My AA Sponsor
I called a guy in AA who's like my backup sponsor. He explained his experience. He said his ex-wife did much worse stuff than mine, and he laid it out in detail. He said, "You think she's ever made amends for any of that stuff? Thirty years — has she made any of it? No, none of it." But, he said, it's not about her, because he is the one who needs to take care of himself and be a decent human being. Same thing with me. In my experience, I'm the one working the program in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm the one who needs to take care of my life and make amends.
Yoga, Crying It Out, and Feeling Restored
So I did that, and I felt a lot better after. I went to a yoga class at 4 p.m. and cried my heart out. Coming into yesterday, I felt so much better. I felt restored to sanity. That put me in a position where I had a nice time with my kids, and I made amends to my ex. If I'd been doing daily vlogs, I would have covered this stuff before. After the kids — my ex picked them up perfectly on time — I went to Sacred City.
Performing at Sacred City
I was so excited to go to this, because my friends Angela Hutchinson and Lindsay Dorio, who I did the roast with on my channel previously, were hosting. It was so funny. Lindsay made me laugh — she was saying some random thing, like "type shit," or whatever y'all are saying, and I was just cracking up about the way she said it. She had this outfit on, dressed up like a man. It was hilarious. Well, she had a dress on, but then she had like a trucker mustache look on her head. It was so funny.
I got up there, and I was the first one to perform. I performed an awesome opening set — and opening is often the hardest thing to do. People were laughing, people were feeling deep truths, and I got a lot of compliments and feedback. I really enjoyed watching everybody else perform, too. There was one woman who came up and sang — she just freestyle sang over a random instrumental, and it was so beautiful. One woman had us all up there dancing. There was a woman there that I'd asked if she was going to go, and I met her there, and we sat next to each other and had a nice time.
Community, Dopamine, and Real Life
At the end of the night, the one thing I've learned doing events like at Sacred City is that sometimes the event is so nourishing, so fulfilling, that you get all-naturally high from it. All your dopamine fires off. This, to me, is what's really healthy — that we should be having fun in community and firing our dopamine off with each other in real life, instead of doing it at home watching videos. There's a place to watch videos. There's a place to watch and read blog posts. That's why I create content. I'm not saying you should never do it. But it matters so much to have a community you vibe with and real people in real life. Last night was so nourishing.
Afterwards, I kept talking to this woman, and I'd gotten a little excited about her before. But then I thought, you know, I don't know if this is quite the right connection. There was also a woman I went out with a few weeks ago, and it didn't seem like it went very well. I texted her, and it sent as a green text instead of a blue one, and she didn't respond the rest of the day. Okay. Then I went over to a guy's house that I'd had dinner with afterward from Sacred City, and we were stacking rocks. The guy's a millionaire with a house with murals on it and nice cars in the driveway. It's actually just down the street from my ex's house, a few blocks away. I had fun there, but it got to be after 11 o'clock, and that's my bedtime. I go to bed after 11, I don't care what's going on. They were ordering food too — burgers — and I don't eat at night, and I don't eat meat or animal products, and it was after 11, so I was out. It was really nice to see his house and hang out with some of the people there.
Feeling Sad and Lonely After a Great Night
I came home, and I felt kind of sad and lonely. But I thought, you know what? That's okay. Remember, you just had a hell of a lot of fun. Sometimes after you have a hell of a lot of fun, you're going to feel a little sad and lonely. It's not anybody's fault. There's nothing wrong. That's just okay. That's just normal. That's just life. So I went to bed. My Claude was working through finishing up these blog posts, so I helped it continue progressing and used all the token limit overnight.
Then I woke up this morning, and I was still sad. I thought, well, remember, you had so much fun last night. Your brain just might not have all the dopamine in it. It's reloading. Don't worry about it.
Adding Value by Sharing My Honest Life
I also got up and really focused on this: I need to make sure I'm giving value. One thing I realized I can do to make sure I'm giving value is to share my honest life experience. Because one way I can give value is to let you know you're not alone with your experiences — the kinds of things you're thinking are the same kinds of things I might be thinking and going through. That's what I love. The vlog videos are really great for giving people the value of a real, authentic, raw human experience, so that you can relate, see that you're not alone, and learn some different points of view kind of naturally.
So I woke up this morning and went straight to my AA meeting. The woman who texted me yesterday and didn't respond blew me up with like 20 or 30 texts this morning, little short ones. She invited me to do three different things with her today, so I'm going to go meet her in like 20 minutes and see her again. I'd had a huge, positive emotional reaction when I first met her. Then a week of being excited, but when we went out on what I thought was a date, she seemed totally closed off and not interested — but she was there. After that, I invited her to something else, she didn't respond, and I lost enthusiasm. I don't know what I was thinking, not sure what that was. A few weeks went by, and all of a sudden I'm so interested to just see what's going on with her. My focus is: Can I have fun with her today? Can I have a good time with her? Can I add value to her life? Can I be honest? And then see — is there any potential that we'd want to build a life together, or not?
My Morning AA Meeting and Delivering Value First
After my AA meeting today — I was so sad when I went in, but after it, I left feeling cheered up. I left with clear guidance: you need to always deliver value. Make sure you deliver value to people. Make sure you help give to others first and foremost. Don't be like those YouTubers tricking people into watching their video that doesn't give you anything useful. Make sure you give as much value as you can every day, and stick to that, and life is going to go really well. I do that well in Alcoholics Anonymous — I show up, I'm trying to help somebody else more than I'm trying to get anything for me. So I'm applying that in my business today.
I'm really grateful that I've remembered I've got to do daily vlogs. When I first started out on YouTube again this year, I was doing daily vlogs, but the way I was titling them was off. Now I've got this new AI workflow to generate great titles out of my videos. And it's not about how many people watch. It's about this being good for me — a way for me to give value. This is absolutely something I just need to do: talk about my real life every day. For anyone who watches my other channels, I think that'll be some of the best I can offer.
Building a Life You Don't Have to Escape From
So thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this and you'd like to get closer with me — if you'd like to build a life you don't have to escape from, but a life you've got to be a part of — then I'd love to hear from you. If you've got wealth and health and relationships, and you're on the cutting edge with things like technology, AI, and crypto, I'm here. That's what the Jerry Banfield Family is for. I'm super grateful — somebody just joined yesterday, and I invited Joe Parys, Blockchain Pill, and a couple of other close friends to be in there as a foundation. We're setting up weekly group calls, and my AI is trained on all of these blog posts and videos, so you can just ask it questions and get instant answers. You can also watch my newest life vlogs here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYdzdbaAV2ZlkL_ScTpiwbKJlkcvIihQe. Hope to see you again soon.
A Rainy Day in St. Petersburg: My 5,019th Day on YouTube
From my video published June 17, 2026.
My 5,019th day on YouTube, February 24th, 2025. It's a rainy day in St. Petersburg, Florida today. I've got the kids going back to school, and I'm going to take them this morning since Laura's going to pick them up to go to the dentist later. We get out the door, and I fine them a dollar a minute if they're not ready on time. It's amazing how effective money is as a control mechanism, but they both earn $20 an hour working, so it's not a bad deal for anybody. I enjoy taking them to school.
I have my two Lara Bars and a banana for breakfast as usual, along with my matcha green tea. We get the kids ready and we're off to school, drop them off, and I'm glad I've got yoga this morning, a power flow, because with the rain my tennis game that I usually have ends up getting rained out. It looks like it's going to be rained out, so I get to the power flow about 30 minutes early, catch up on my open chat messages, and then get to do the power flow. I'm a little off balance, and I wonder if it seems like yoga was easier when I was doing it five to seven days a week instead of three to four. But I've also been playing tennis and exercising my muscles in new ways. I hope I can get a run in. It's rainy, but we'll see about that.
Lunch and a crypto video
I get home and I plan to go to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at noon that I haven't been able to go to lately because I've been playing tennis. I really like the group there. On the way home I stop at Whole Foods. I'm imagining some bean nachos, so I buy a few different kinds of chips and I get some spicy salsa. I guess technically it'd be a hot sauce because it's not very chunky, but whatever you call it. I get an avocado. I get home, and I have a carton of beans, like a little can but it's in a carton, about a dollar fifty. So I dump the beans all over the nacho chips and then throw down some avocado, with some salsa and some onions I cut up the other day, and that's my lunch.
I then crank out a video about how crypto is a game and I figured out how to win, trying some different titles. I'm so glad to be back to doing one crypto video a day on my main channel and then one a day on my crypto reviews channel. I'm happy to see the crypto reviews channel thriving, and even my gaming channel is getting some views as well, which is awesome. So I get the crypto video cranked out.
What sobriety gave back to me
I end up getting to the meeting about 10 minutes late, which is fine. I miss the readings they do every meeting, but I've heard them thousands and thousands of times. I get down there, and there's a new girl at the meeting today. So I share about how my life's been awesome since I got sober. When I first went to AA when I was 21, I didn't want to grow up. I went straight home and drank afterwards. Eight years later, I hadn't grown up at all. I was basically the same level of maturity. Eight years had passed and I was just as immature as I was eight years before. Except this time I saw that my situation was desperate and I couldn't just stop drinking.
My life has been so good since then. It was a little bit of an adjustment getting used to being sober, to say the least, but man, it's been so good. My life's been so good being sober. I share this constantly because it sucks when you feel like you need something outside you just to live with yourself. In my experience, that's what it's like being an alcoholic or another kind of addict, and I'm glad I don't need that today. I'm glad I have food and water, good relationships, work I love, and a healthy body. I'm glad I don't need alcohol, drugs, or medication. I don't need any of that crap to get through the day. In fact, I just sail through most days. Rarely is there a day where I'm just trying to get to bed. I'm really enjoying each part of my day.
Leaning into YouTube and letting go of the grind
I get home after this meeting, and I've got hours and hours to work on my own, which is great because I've got six YouTube channels. I talk to my wife about gaming. I'm telling her I'm thinking about doing a little gaming. I'm not sure what kind of gaming I want to do. I definitely don't want to get into addictive playing of a whole bunch of games, tons of gaming and streaming. She asks, well, what are you going to give up? I'm going to cut back on putting so much time into crypto. I don't need to put much time into crypto. I've been trying so hard in crypto, and for what? If I'm right with my crypto videos, I don't need to do anything except make an ICP hype every day and review a crypto every day. So I'm going to cut back on the crypto videos I'm doing.
My music is coming along very quickly. It only takes me about 20 minutes to make a song, have a music video, upload it, and master it. So I don't need to be putting a whole bunch of time into it. I don't actually enjoy the process of making music that much. I enjoy the output. I enjoy hearing the different sounds. I enjoy playing around, but I don't enjoy taking hours and hours in a digital audio workstation and grinding out some song. I enjoy listening to songs I made and playing with new sounds.
So I crank out two songs, two crypto reviews, another crypto video, and a vlog for yesterday. I upload two gaming videos and two of my other old videos. So I upload 11 videos, four of which were re-uploads, and seven I newly filmed, all in about four hours. That's a pretty sweet workflow. It probably took a little over three hours to film seven videos. What an amazing workflow today. I'm glad I'm enjoying just leaning into YouTube.
Live streaming in the past was fun. It was cool having an audience, but it was also extremely limiting. I had to live stream things like Call of Duty Warzone solos or retro games, and I can't get locked into having to stream something like that all the time. YouTube videos give me the most freedom I have, and I do YouTube for freedom. Streaming ends up turning into a job, and I don't want to have a job.
Evening with the family
After that, I check Laura's location. She takes the kids to the dentist, then to Steak 'n Shake, and then stops by to drop off some milkshakes at her parents' house. I see she's at her parents' house, so I shut all my equipment off in the studio and I'm right there out front when she gets home with the kids. Laura appreciates that. I say hi to the kids. Madeline's mouth is numb because she got some fillings at the dentist. I hang out with them and help feed them dinner.
I have a really random dinner myself. I have some of their fries and milkshake that they got from Steak 'n Shake. Even though I eat mostly whole plant vegan, a little bit is not a big deal to me. What matters is the bulk of what you eat, and the bulk of what I eat is whole plant foods. So I have another chocolate bar to fill in a gap on a snack. I have some kale with tahini, just a random little dinner. That fills me up though. I have a package of dry oatmeal with sugar.
Then I play Monopoly, the Harry Potter edition, with the kids. That game ends up going long. Madeline ends up going out. She got Dumbledore's office and I got the Room of Requirement, and I got a card to steal Dumbledore's office from her. So she was pretty sad when that happened. My son gets a nice collection of properties though, and gets some house crests on the orange ones. It's a long game. I end up rolling the dice and playing the game for both of us. Finally, it's like an hour and a half plus after we started, and he has accumulated so much money. But I end up getting Madeline's properties, unmortgaging them, and then getting house crests on over half the board, all the expensive properties too.
So it was actually kind of sad. I enjoyed seeing my son have all this money and winning. It was actually kind of sad rolling the dice for both of us as he's getting ready for bed and he's in bed, and it's like, yeah, I won. But the joy was in playing the game with my kids, and that's a big life lesson. The joy is in spending the time and playing together. The joy is not in the result. The joy is in having time together. I feel empty winning, but I felt full sitting there rolling the dice, playing the game with them, not knowing what the outcome would be. So now I've won twice, my son's won twice, and my daughter's won once playing.
I also take my little mile run. It had been raining all day, and I finally get to do my little mile run in about nine and a half minutes. I commit to going to tennis on Friday. I'll miss one of my favorite yoga classes to go play tennis, but the guys at tennis are funny on Friday, so I enjoy all the laughs. I call my mom on the phone and talk for about six minutes. It's a big difference versus nothing. I take both dogs for a walk tonight because they've been cooped up inside. Melanie just eats everything, so I need to keep her off it. She eats anything, dirt, bird poop. She picked up a piece of glass and was carrying it around the other day, a big piece of glass too. So I want to keep her under more control. Less freedom, more control. If you enjoy these daily journals, you can follow along with my Life playlist. I get to bed at 10:40 with Laura and get a great night of sleep. We'll do it again tomorrow.
Day 5,020: Sobriety, Baseboards, and Talking to My Kids
From my video published June 17, 2026.
This is my 5,020th day on YouTube, and I'm filming this vlog for February 25th, 2025. I woke up today at about 7 a.m., as usual. I got up and had my Lara bars for breakfast, and Laura took the kids to school this morning. I got a couple of music videos filmed, and I'm wondering if I can slightly improve my workflow. But I really love it. I can crank a song out in like 10 minutes. I just play with some presets, and it's awesome. I also recorded yesterday's vlog, and I recorded one crypto video. Then I had some hummus for lunch at like 10:30 in the morning, really early.
My Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting
Then I went to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I meet my sponsor there, and I got called on to share in the meeting today. The topic was on staying sober and living sober. It's hard to even remember the precise topic or what I shared right now, but I sat next to my sponsor, and he shared about how, for an alcoholic, it's an accomplishment just not to take a drink every day. And I shared that I don't want to forget that I'm an alcoholic, because I've been sober over 10 years now. It'd be easy to forget that just having a drink is not a good idea for me. I also love helping other people. I love helping other people stay sober.
A Quiet Massage and the Trouble With Silence
I then went for a massage with a therapist that I had one with a couple of weeks ago. She did a silent massage. She talked during the beginning of the massage, some relaxing stuff, but otherwise it was quiet. I didn't hardly get to know her during that last massage. The therapist I went to just last week, by contrast, I had a great conversation with her, as well as a really deep massage. So I'm wondering if anything will be different this time, and I'm thinking I want to make sure to give this therapist a chance. And we have another quiet massage. It seems to be really effective. I feel very relaxed. At the same time, though, I feel just like a client, a transactable client. I really appreciate the human connection that's possible in a massage, going deeper conversationally too. I have a lot of time to relax and go within throughout my life.
After the end of the massage, I give her a couple hundred in cash, which works out to like a $35 tip or so. It's her business too, which is great, so she gets all of it, instead of getting scraped for like $100, the way it worked at the last studio I went to. She asked if I want to schedule another massage, and I'm like, no, I already have something scheduled with another provider. She tells me about some of what she offers, like the Ashiatsu foot massage where they walk on you, and a really gentle, nerve-tingly massage, in addition to the regular Swedish massage. I can tell she'd really like me to come back, and she kind of doesn't understand, or wishes that there wasn't a therapist I'd rather see than her. And I'm thinking, should I give her the feedback that a silent massage isn't as much my thing, that I'd rather not just lay there? I decide, nah, why bother? But maybe I could have given her some feedback, and I think maybe it would have been nice and helpful to say, hey, I would have preferred to talk. Now, she has a thing on her website that she doesn't initiate conversation during a massage, so maybe it was up to me. But I want to see the other therapist more, so I don't want to schedule another appointment with this therapist. I already was wishing I had scheduled with the other one from last week instead of scheduling with this one right away a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad my life's so good that these are the challenges or problems I have. Like, oh, which massage therapist am I going to see?
Errands, Baseboards, and the Cost of Doing It Myself
So I go to the library to donate some books that Laura wants to get rid of, and I got my library card updated, and I dropped some stuff off at the Salvation Army. I came back home, and I was really happy to see the kids home from school. Also, my friend from yoga came to start working on getting our new baseboards in. It's amazing how you can get used to living with things like no baseboards, and that's just normal. Well, why spend any money? We haven't had any baseboards since September, and it's February. So that's five or so months that we've been living without baseboards, which is the only time I've ever done that in a house.
I'm happy my friend from yoga is coming over. He brings the baseboards and gets to work on them. I told Laura I could do them myself, but they're not going to come out as well, and it's going to take a significant amount of time. My friend's quote looks like maybe 40 hours to do all the baseboards and stuff. In 40 hours, I could probably film 80 or 90 videos. So is it worth giving up 80 or 90 videos to do the baseboards myself? And I guarantee you, they look nicer when he does them. They're cut more precisely. So I'm glad he's starting the baseboards.
A Monopoly Game and a Little Abuse of Power
The kids ask if we can play Monopoly again, so we fire up another game. In this game, I feel like I'm subtly negotiating the trades a little bit in my favor. The other games, I felt like I was being pretty objective, but today I felt like there might have been a slight abuse of power, where I encouraged, not outright bad trades or anything, but, let me buy this from you before you get bankrupt so that the other person can't have it. We had fun playing the game though, even though I did get all the blues and greens again and cleaned both kids out. So I enjoyed the time.
Hip Hop Class and Putting the Devices Away
Then I went to hip hop. I take my son to this hip hop dance class, and I've been telling everybody that I wished I could have had some more time to talk to the parents there. There's two of the moms I've talked with before and had good conversations with. But the last few weeks, everybody's been on their laptops, iPads, phones. We just all sit there on our phones. So this week I went to grab my iPad and I put it down before I left the house, and we get there and I realize I left my iPad at home. Well, we're just going to go all in on this talking now. So I'm going to be super friendly as everybody walks in. And it worked out great. The two moms I'd talked with before were very friendly. One mom actually sat right next to me. There's maybe a row of 10 or 12 chairs, and sometimes they both sit way away from me and talk with each other, or sit away and get on their devices. The one mom sat right next to me today. There weren't a lot of open seats, but she sat next to me, and she forgot her laptop to do work on. The third mom capitulated and put her phone away, and we had a really nice conversation.
One mom bought a sauna, a four-person sauna, for like $7,000 and put it in her garage. She was talking about how great doing a sauna is for you. The other mom is building a pool at her house. I have nothing cool at my house, except maybe my filming studio. Some of you, if you came to my house, you'd probably really be like, oh, it's Jerry Banfield's filming studio. But it was great. I told them about a whole-plant-based diet, and we talked about a lot of stuff, especially health. We're all very interested in health and longevity and taking care of ourselves. I told them how I've been running a mile every day. To me, it's like I want to always be able to run a mile. I have no interest in living in this body if it can't run a mile every day. And the ideal way to do that is to run a mile every day. More than likely, I'll be able to run a mile every day for the rest of this body's existence.
A Cold Plunge of My Own
One of the things they're talking about is the sauna and then an ice bath or cold plunge. So I went for my one-mile run at night, then I took a cold shower afterwards. I never take long showers when they're cold showers. It's amazing how much faster you can go when the water's cold. But it's also cool how after a minute or two, it seems like the water warms up, but really your body adjusts to the coldness. The water doesn't warm up that much after the first minute or two; your body adjusts to the water being cold pretty quickly. And I think that's really healthy. Before the run, I came home from hip hop dance and dropped my daughter off with my mom across the street, then I dropped my son off there too, and went to do my one-mile run. Afterward, I went back to pick the kids up from my mom's house and spent like 30 minutes hanging out with my mom and the kids.
The Conversation About Words
Then I take the kids back, and at my mom's house they started talking about swearing and cursing, and they went nuts swearing when they got home. I'm okay with them swearing. I'd rather hear what kind of words they're using, and I'd rather them be able to express themselves that way if they want to around me. Laura prefers that they don't do that. But last night they went to a whole new level. They're saying the B word. Then Madeline, who's in fourth grade, tells Jack about the F word. I had never heard her say the F word before. So then Jack's calling the dog an F and a B, and they're screaming the F word and cursing each other out at a level I've never heard before.
Then Madeline asked me, Dad, what's the N word? Well, I guess this is the time to explain that, isn't it? We go back to the country named Nigeria, and how back then, if you were from Nigeria, you would say you were a Niger, the same way that if you're from the USA, you'd say you're an American. And eventually that's how that word started. So I had that whole conversation, although I drew the line with my son, who wanted to know too. My daughter asked while he was in the shower, and I'm like, let me talk to your mom about this. You're in first grade, I don't know. In fourth grade, my daughter understands discretion and watching her mouth based on who she's around. But my wife said it's fine, we can tell him about all the words and explain to him that some of these words you could get in a fight using with kids at school, or you could get kicked out of school for using. So you need to be careful about what you say and around whom.
A Hard Evening, and a Mature Relationship
Then Laura gets home from her Pilates class. Her friend who was supposed to meet her at the gym stood her up again. She went to Pilates and stopped at Chick-fil-A afterwards, which was two days in a row of fast food. Then I told her about the kids swearing, and all of it together kind of got her at a low point. She felt bad for getting the fast food. She felt hurt that her friend stood her up at the last minute again. And it was a loss of innocence hearing the kids screaming the F word at each other. On a related note, I uploaded a video today where I'm MFing this and that on my gaming channel, so I'm excited for that to publish in a couple of days. Laura and I had a really nice conversation. I'm grateful I could appreciate how she was feeling and get through that without having a fight or anything. I'm really grateful for how mature our relationship is today, and you can follow more days like this one over on my Life playlist.
Day 5026: A Healing Day, a Massage, and a Three-Month Apology
From my video published June 17, 2026.
I'm a full-time YouTuber, and it's day 5,026 on YouTube. This is March 3rd, and this vlog is part of my autobiography, my life story told 10 minutes at a time, one day at a time. I really wish everybody had something like this, so I'm going to lead by example. I'm narrating it the next day, so I have the whole day to tell you about. March 3rd, a Monday, was a very full day.
A $5 Fine to Start the Morning
It started with getting the kids ready and taking them to school. The first thing that happened was I got out of bed and Madeline was trying to feed the dog. She yanked the door and ripped the handle clean off while Jack had his hands on it, and he started crying. I said, "Five dollar fine, Madeline. Five dollar fine to start the day off. Good morning, that'll be $5 off your balance." In my experience, money is such an effective mechanism for punishment and rewards. It works. As a parent, you don't really need anything besides money to help your kids learn right and wrong, so to speak.
Power Flow Yoga and a Few Honest Words
Then I went to a Power Flow yoga class. The instructor is very pregnant and going to have her baby soon. She led a nice flow, and I told her, "Pregnancy has really looked beautiful on you." What I didn't say to her was what I was actually thinking: some women go downhill while pregnant, putting on a ton of weight, their whole body starting to look a mess and stressed. But this yoga instructor really enjoyed being pregnant. Yes, there are pains and challenges, but she enjoyed it, and I thought being pregnant made her look even prettier than when she wasn't. I often don't say things like that because I don't want to be vulnerable or have a woman think I'm coming on to her. But this instructor has known me for years. She's not going to think I'm coming on to her, and she's pregnant. I always appreciate it when people tell me things like that too, so it felt good to tell her.
There was another girl in class I'd seen for quite a while but never talked to, and I was wondering, is she pregnant now too? She was telling somebody else she was pregnant, and I was glad to hear it because I wanted to ask. During the first trimester or two, you're really rolling the dice asking a woman you don't know whether she's pregnant as the first thing you say to her. So that was cool. I met some new people at yoga.
Tennis With a Man Who Could Be My Dad
Then I went to play tennis with a guy at the racquet club whose oldest son was born the same year as me. So I kind of feel like I'm playing tennis with another version of my dad, or six other people's dads, actually. The first set, he won 7-5. This is a guy who I think hadn't played singles in years. The first time I played him, I think I won by a little bit, or maybe he did. The second or third time we played, I whooped him, won something like 6-1, 6-2. Then the last several times, he's won. This time the first set was 7-5, but the second set he was playing great and I was playing badly, and he won 6-0.
I started to spiral a little at the end of it, thinking, "My tennis game is so bad, I suck so much." But I'm also so inspired by this guy. He came out there and beat me 6-0, and he could be my dad. I find that so inspiring. He told me he's a doctor and a dentist, and I thought, God, that's a lot of education. He said he was going to go fix somebody's face later that day and then go see his son in Orlando. I sent him an ICP video afterward. In all the time I'd hung out with him, I'd never asked what he did. I generally try to avoid asking people what they do because it's such a boring question, and I'd rather it come up naturally. But Laura wanted to know. She asked, "What does this guy do? He's a member at the Racquet Club, a member at the Vinoy." So I told him my wife wanted me to ask. Now it makes sense, a doctor and a dentist, that's a lot of education and should be a good income.
An Affordable Lunch and a Single Video
Then I went home and got one single autobiography video done. I'd filmed so many videos on Sunday, which is technically two days ago now, that I only needed one more before I took a shower. I also went to lunch with Laura, even though we'd just gone to lunch on Friday, so it felt luxurious to go again on Monday. We went to Fresh Kitchen. It was busy, but I got a seat right away and she ordered. It was pretty affordable, only $31 for lunch, and Laura took a lot of hers to go. Then she took a nap while I showered and picked the kids up. Laura was originally going to pick them up, but in exchange for her time going out on a date, I disrupted her nap plan and picked them up myself. That was great, because as soon as I got home with the kids, I was off to my massage at 4 p.m., so I wouldn't see them much the rest of the night.
The Massage, the Hemorrhoid, and an Epsom Salt Bath
This is a therapist I really like. I work with two therapists, and she's the one I prefer. I thought a lot about why, and it's mainly because she talks to me. I seem to like people better when they talk to me, because I feel like I get to know them better. But I'm also opening my mind to the idea that talking is not the only way to be comfortable with or get to know people. I had a great conversation with her and told her about my little hemorrhoid. She asked if there were any issues with my body, and this is the second time with her where I wanted to talk about my little hemorrhoid. She suggested, "I had a friend who had that issue, and she said soaking in an Epsom salt bath was really helpful." I asked her for advice because she's a massage therapist but also into all kinds of other healing, and she shared that soaking in an Epsom salt bath had really helped her friend.
It was nice that she went a little over on time too. I always appreciate a little extra, so I gave a good tip. It was $180 for 90 minutes, but she went almost two hours. I asked Laura what a good tip is and gave her $240 for the nearly two hours, though I'll probably give $240 for 90 minutes going forward, which is actually less. For perspective, I've scheduled an in-person ICP session to help a guy locally I've known for years, and he's going to give me $300 for an hour. So $240 for an almost two-hour massage is a fantastic deal for me, especially leaving with some clear things to do. I went straight to Rolling Oats afterward and bought some Epsom salts, then went to an AA meeting right after that. I came home around 7:45, said goodnight to the kids, dumped two cups of Epsom salt in the bath, and focused on being still and relaxing.
Letting Go of a Months-Long Family Issue
Out of this whole healing day, and a session two days before, came something bigger. I'd talked to Laura about fixing things with a family member. I had a good cry and realized the obvious thing to do was exactly what Laura said. I'd asked her what to do, and she said to apologize and to state that I'm going to move on with kindness and compassion in the relationship. So that's what I did. I had this big long thing in my head, so I took the time in the bath to simplify it. I thought about this family member and their personality and everything I know about them, and I asked myself, "What format would they prefer the apology in?" From their point of view, I figured I'd rather just get a text message, and it should be short and to the point, not some long thing. It should address what I did wrong, what I wish I'd done differently, how I feel about them, that I'm grateful for the relationship, and then ask if there's anything I can do to make things right. It was probably four sentences. It didn't even take up the whole text message screen.
I sent the message, cried, and thought, "Finally, after months of making this issue, I'm letting it go." It's really nice to realize that I made this issue for months. I hadn't talked to this person in months. It's my responsibility to send the message. It's not my responsibility to get a reply or anything else. I just need to do my part, and my part is to send the apology and make the amends. In Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 10 says that when I've been wrong, I promptly admit it. In this case, it took three months to promptly admit it, which is better than going a whole lifetime. I got it done.
I felt really relaxed after the bath. I went over to talk to my mom, then came back to share with Laura, who thought the message was just perfect, which left me feeling really good. I didn't get any reply that night, which is fine. If somebody has been ignoring you, upset with you, and telling everybody else about it for three months, yeah, you might want a few minutes to think about it. I also realized something. One reason I've been critical of this family member is that they like to keep things private and not talk about everything with everybody, and I've thought about the times in their life when, if they'd asked for help and talked a little more, they could have avoided some really difficult experiences.
The Things We Criticize in Others
But then I remembered during my massage that, yes, I've certainly avoided a lot of negative experiences. I've avoided dying an alcoholic death because I opened up and talked. But I've also gotten myself into trouble. I've lost what probably would be millions of dollars in followers because of running my mouth and not thinking before doing radical things, like changing my race, or criticizing the platform over and over until they banned me. I wasn't violating the terms. I was just irritating them because I wouldn't shut up, wouldn't stop criticizing them, and wouldn't just be quiet and take the money they were giving me.
So it's often the things that other people bother us about that turn out to be things we need to face within ourselves. If I'm being critical of someone who's different from me, I'm usually having my own version of the same trouble on the other end. It's really nice to appreciate that there are different ways to exist in the world, and each of those ways has validity. We don't all have to be the same, act the same, talk the same, or think the same. But in the end, we all end up having pretty similar ups and downs and experiences. I'm really grateful. This felt like a truly therapeutic, healing day. If you've been following along with my Life playlist wondering when this family member thing was going to end, I'm glad we could wrap it up today.