I tell my whole life story, including the embarrassing parts and the choices that make me look bad, because I have come to believe that honesty is what keeps people from repeating the worst of their lives, and in 2026 I would go further: hiding our weaknesses is what makes us lonely. Almost everything difficult in our lives traces back to someone not telling the truth, usually to ourselves. Seven years of writing about my drinking, my police career, my marriage and my divorce brought me there.
The newest section answers a question a viewer asked me on a live stream. In a viewer asked why I show my weaknesses, and I told him about Ryan's last podcast, I explain that the strengths we show off are conditioned by authority, that most of us carry a public face and a private shame, and I own the men's circle where I once felt superior to guys struggling with porn. I tell the story of Ryan, a man with a pickup-artist past and a body count over 500 who recorded a podcast with me shortly before he took his own life, and why, having met him, I was not surprised. Owen Cook's advice to project strength because people hate weakness is true only when wallets are open. Being honest about my debt costs me sales and I do it anyway, because the world optimizes for open wallets and my goal is open hearts.
The section before it takes honesty to the people at the top. In what I saw as a cop convinced me the powerful need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, also from a live stream, I explain that by the end of my police career I felt like muscle for the elites, that the higher levels hold dirt on everyone below them so nobody can leave, and that the cure is rigorous honesty from people with nothing left to hide, a process like post-apartheid South Africa for people in power, followed by forgiveness. Speaker Meeting 2017, my full fifth step in graphic detail, is coming to the site as video and audio.
Radical honesty, for me, means telling what actually happened in enough detail that it is useful to someone else, and owning my part without cleaning it up. I learned it in Alcoholics Anonymous, hearing people tell the truth, including the ugly parts.
The oldest posts here, from February 2019, are excerpts from my memoir Officer Banfield, about my years as a corrections and police officer and my drinking. In why I refused to sweep my story under the rug I admit I thought my stories were too bad to share until I decided someone had to set the example. In what honesty really means to me now I argue that leaving out the critical details is a form of lying. If you want the police material on its own, the police career stories hub gathers that side of it.
Honesty got more practical when I started publishing my days as journal entries from my daily autobiography, The Kind Divorce. In why I refuse to hide the messy parts I argue that people hide the unflattering details because they fear judgment. In why I refuse to stop asking hard questions I apply the same rule to my own thinking and refuse to accept answers on autopilot. In done pretending I'm all good I wrote that rejection stings. In the year I stopped carrying shame I wrote about being fresh out of a 15-year marriage and the old shame I carried about my body and my desire.
I forgive her, I forgive myself is about moving a couch out of my ex-wife's house and feeling the pull of other women while still working through the divorce. In why the truth feels bad before it sets you free I look back at my active drinking, when everyone was telling me to stop and I was too angry to hear it; telling someone a hard truth once can be loving, but repeating it every day is harassment. That brings me to why I'm telling you my whole life story, an excerpt from my full-life memoir covering 1984 to 2026, written partly so my kids might one day recognize the traps I fell into and see that there is a way out.
Where I have landed: honesty is not the same as oversharing, and it is not the same as cruelty. I stopped asking whether my story was too bad to tell and started asking whether telling it would help someone else. If there is something in your own life you have never felt safe saying out loud, you can get a personal video review from me at 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.
- A Viewer Asked Why I Show My Weaknesses. I Told Him About Ryan's Last Podcast. (October 18, 2026)
- What I Saw as a Cop Convinced Me the Powerful Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (October 6, 2026)
- Why I'm Telling You My Whole Life Story (June 21, 2026)
- Why the Truth Feels Bad Before It Sets You Free (June 15, 2026)
- I Forgive Her, I Forgive Myself (February 4, 2026)
- Done Pretending I'm All Good (January 11, 2026)
- The Year I Stopped Carrying Shame (January 1, 2026)
- Why I Refuse to Hide the Messy Parts (September 24, 2025)
- Why I Refuse to Stop Asking Hard Questions (September 15, 2025)
- Why I Refused to Sweep My Story Under the Rug (February 9, 2019)
- What Honesty Really Means to Me Now (February 9, 2019)
A Viewer Asked Why I Show My Weaknesses. I Told Him About Ryan's Last Podcast.
From my live stream on October 18, 2026.
A viewer on my live stream asked me to go over the benefits of showing my weaknesses, and my honest answer ran through a men's circle, a podcast that may have been the last thing a man ever recorded, and the difference between an open wallet and an open heart. Here is what I told him.
Start with where our idea of strength comes from. The strengths we focus on are conditioned by authority. Our system teaches us that having money is a strength, that having big muscles is a strength, that sleeping with lots of women is a strength, and if you are a woman, that landing a man who makes a lot of money is a strength. Society conditions us to see certain things as positive and certain things as negative, and so we become people who only present certain sides of ourselves. We have a public face we show everybody, and then we have a private life we hide and feel bad about. We carry shame about it, and the strange part is that we come to believe the hidden person is the real one.
If all of us would stop lying and hiding and presenting what we think everyone wants to see, if we got honest about the good, the bad and the ugly, I believe most of us would connect with each other far better than we do. What blocks connection, in my experience, is all that public-facing effort to look as beautiful, as powerful, as rich and as in shape as possible while hiding the things we do that everybody else also does.
The Men's Circle
I went to a men's circle once, and most of the guys there were struggling with watching porn. I felt pretty aloof about it. At the time I was married and having sex every other day, and I had no need, no desire and no time for porn. I sat there thinking, look at these baby men struggling with porn.
The honest update, now that I am single, is that I am grateful I do not struggle with it either. Weeks go by where I feel no urge at all. The last stretch where I did was when I went to VidSummit. For some reason, being there, I felt like watching, so I watched for a few days while I was at the conference. Then I just got tired of it. It is the same stuff every time, and I was not in the mood for it anymore. It is nice to be able to say that plainly instead of pretending I have never been tempted or pretending it is a daily war.
That plainness is what Alcoholics Anonymous gave me. In those rooms people present the best and the worst of themselves, and it leaves you feeling like a human being. I think a lot of us feel so lonely precisely because so many of us go around desperately trying to hide our liabilities. Most people in my position, with what I know about building an audience, would have set up an authority channel, done anything to push that authority, hidden the debt completely, played the expert, sold a coaching program with limited spots, and never once said anything that made them look dumb or like they did not know what they were doing.
Look around dating YouTube and coaching YouTube and you will see what that produces. There are so many people out there who are such obvious disasters that they would make you wish for somebody like me. They are selling garbage. There are guys selling men programs that cost thousands of dollars on how to cold approach women. I did plenty of cold approaching myself, and my current view, in 2026, is that it is not the time for it unless you want the police called on you, women yelling at you, or to consistently feel and be treated like a loser. Imagine paying a guy thousands of dollars to coach you on this, and he rigs you up with a camera and sends you out to talk to strangers. Maybe it works occasionally. But what does it say about you when you walk up to a woman leading with that intent? If those guys were fully honest with you, you would never buy anything they were selling. And if all of us were more honest with each other, we would feel more connected.
Ryan's Last Podcast
Angela, whose show is called Traumedy, told me it was inspired by a man named Ryan. I did a podcast with him. I think it may have been the last content he ever created, because I recorded it with him shortly before he took his own life.
Outwardly, in many ways, Ryan had everything our culture calls strength. He had a body count of more than 500 women. He had come up in the pickup artist community. He had made lots of money at lots of points in his life. And yet he hit a point so low that he ended his life, and a great many people were upset and surprised when he did.
I was not surprised, because I had met him in person. I saw him and thought, this makes sense. He was struggling to connect with people. His financial situation was desperate. He was in a lawsuit with a business partner and getting wrecked by it. And he had a hard time connecting with women because he had slept with so many of them. Statistically, the higher your body count, the less likely you are to be satisfied in a relationship, and I can relate to that from my own life. My now ex-wife was the nineteenth woman I had sex with, and the longer I was with her, the more attractive women I collected as friends. I did not worship her and appreciate her the way I would have if she had been the first or the second. The first woman I was with had been attractive until she put on a lot of weight. The second was a hookup in a club. The third was a birthday present I bought myself out of the phone book when I turned 21. That is my history, and I can see how a history of 500 would make a single real connection almost impossible to feel.
I only met Ryan once, for that one podcast, and that was it. But one reason people get so lonely and so frustrated that they end things is that they feel nobody else understands them. And why do they feel that way? Because so many people are hiding and lying. So many people are hiding their weaknesses.
Open Wallets and Open Hearts
I remember Owen Cook saying, yeah, bro, you have to project strength all the time, people hate weakness. No. People do not hate weakness. If you are trying to sell people something and make money off them, then yes, unfortunately a lot of people with their wallet open will close it the moment they spot weakness. But when people are deciding whether they want to live or not, and they learn that other people are going through the same struggles, honesty about weakness makes a huge difference.
Our world is set up to prioritize getting people to open their wallets instead of getting people to open their hearts. My goal is to help people open their hearts, because an open wallet will get you paid, but it will not make you want to live, appreciate life or enjoy it. On the money side, I remember a survey discussed in a book I believe was called Happy Money. The people who tended to be happiest were making an amount that, adjusted to now, is probably around $100,000 a year, enough to be comfortable but not enough to seriously stress over. Ironically, many of the people making more than that were less happy than the people at $100,000, because of what they were doing to make the money and the stress that came with the amount.
So I think I am a courageous person. My book Speaker Meeting 2017 tells my entire history, which is something most people would never do. But if we want a better world, we need to start getting real with each other. We need to start getting honest, start telling the truth and stop hiding. In my experience, the people out there criticizing and talking trash about others are very often hiding and lying more than anybody else, and they need healing and help more than anybody else. A good portion of the people who show up to heckle me seem to be there for exactly that reason. I hope I am leading by example. If what I share here has been worth something to you, you can leave a tip at jerrybanfield.com/tip/.
What I Saw as a Cop Convinced Me the Powerful Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
From my live stream on October 6, 2026.
This is from my live stream, and the idea underneath the whole hour was simple: almost everything that is difficult in our lives is there because people will not tell the truth. Most of the time it is not even a lie to someone else. We deceive ourselves, and we keep deceiving ourselves right up until the moment we say the thing out loud. That is how I lived for years, and it is the reason so much of my life is already in writing.
Officer Banfield is on jerrybanfield.com now, and I am putting Speaker Meeting 2017 up alongside it. Speaker Meeting 2017 is my life in addiction and recovery. It has graphic details, and it is a full fifth step of my entire life, the kind where nothing gets left out. It will go on the site as video, and there will also be a single audio file so you can download the whole thing and listen straight through.
Muscle for the Elites
When you go to the top of almost anything these days, you are going to find the same kind of thing. What I saw firsthand as a police officer was that by the end of my time on the job I felt like I was just muscle for the elites. The elites do not answer to the police. At the highest level they do not really answer to the federal government either. The only way you have criminal problems at that altitude is if you are attacked by another elite.
A small version of it plays out on the side of the road. If someone with a federal government badge gets pulled over by a local police officer, they can usually whip out that badge and, in effect, give the officer the finger. At most, and not always, the most the officer is going to do is try to call that person's supervisor. Now scale that up. When you get really rich, you can afford to pay armies of lawyers to silence anybody who stands against you, and your opponents cannot afford to pay armies of lawyers back.
At the highest levels I think most people would be shocked to see what goes on. If you saw the private lives of the people at the top of the power structure, I think you would be pretty disgusted most of the time. A lot of the things that are illegal for the public, some of the people up there are doing as much as possible, and in most cases they are completely getting away with it. In some cases they are profiting from it. I have heard people say they were stuck in human trafficking circumstances from the time they were kids and had to recruit others, because if they tried to get out their bosses would report them to the police.
That is the system we seem to have. At the highest levels of power they hold all kinds of dirt on the minions below them. Anything accused of the people at the top gets fought off by enough attorneys that it does not matter what was said. It gets dismissed, and nobody is going to go after them anyway. Meanwhile the minions stay stuck doing what they are supposed to do, because if they stop, somebody higher up sends them to prison. My own years inside that machine are in my police officer stories.
The Cure Is Rigorous Honesty
To me the cure is rigorous honesty. The cure is people doing what I am doing, sharing their lives authentically. I am in a position to do that because of how my life went, and honestly it is pretty easy for me now. I make it interesting in titles, but if you watched my life day to day it is pretty boring. I make videos. I parent my kids, and parenting my kids is generally drama free. I do not have any drama with my ex. Even my dating life, as many titles as I have written that people clicked on, is mostly women not responding to me, or at least half the time me not responding to them anymore.
What we need in order to transform anything is honesty, and we need people who do not have a pile of dirty secrets, people like me who can put out an entire book covering their whole life. Speaker Meeting 2017 and Officer Banfield are me at my worst, and I need them to be out there, because there are people whose pasts would be very hard to hear about. Most, though not all, of the people in power at any level and in any situation have had to do things they would not want to tell you about in order to get where they are. At some point we are going to need a way for them to fess up. They need to be able to say, look, this is what I have done.
I think we need what South Africa had at the end of apartheid under Nelson Mandela, a Truth and Reconciliation process, but for the people in power. That, to me, is what we should demand collectively: that the people in power get honest about what they did to get there, what they are doing now, and everything they are involved in. And then comes the irony. We would have to forgive them, generally for things far worse than the vast majority of anyone else has ever done. If you knew what the people in power had done, you would probably agree to empty the prisons. Most people would let everybody out. I know from forgiving my father how hard even one forgiveness is.
I would run for office. But if I ran for office, what would I have to do to get support? What would I have to agree to in order to get the backing to run?
The Spock Problem
My mom likes to celebrate Spock from Star Trek as this amazing being, and logic is great. But to me we need heartfelt connections with other people, because the problem with logic is that you can rationalize anything with it. Without heartfelt connections, care and empathy for other human beings, logic alone is what some of the most horrible governments in history ran on. They rationalized the worst possible treatment of people, and the way they presented it made perfect sense. In a perfectly logical sense, it all added up.
Why I May Be Too Early
What I have heard, and a little bit of what I have seen, suggests that there is a certain level where this changes. Right now I am not getting enough attention for almost anybody in power to care. They would look at me and see a guy talking to a few people on YouTube, not a big deal. Imagine instead that I had millions of subscribers and tens of thousands of people in the live chat. If anything I was saying was out of line with what they wanted said, even if it was just promoting people being honest and heartfelt, which might be fine, then what other people have described is that you get an offer. Somebody tries to buy your channel or sponsor you, and the offer comes with specific terms: you need to stop talking about this and that, or you need to start saying this and that. If you do not accept the positive offer, the attorneys come after you, and then the cancellation comes after you.
So I may be a bit too early to be in a very visible position. But I would like to think the world is going in a direction where someone like me could have an authentic audience at a much larger scale and share like this without being bought out or compromised. In the meantime I keep showing up as myself, and if you want to talk about dating with me, that lives at jerrybanfield.com/date/.
One more thought that came up as I talked about my kids. Some people think I raised them too soft, and I was raised a lot harder than that. That is how subjective everything is. One thing that makes life much better, in my experience, is realizing there is no God point of view. There is no objective point of view that sees right and wrong clearly. Every single point of view is relative and subjective. There is nothing that is objective.
Why I'm Telling You My Whole Life Story
Originally published June 21, 2026.
This is an excerpt from my full-life memoir, Un Fn Myself — my real story of addiction, recovery, fatherhood, and everything in between from 1984 to 2026, including the parts most people would cut out.
You are about to experience my life in insanity, addiction, and recovery from 1984 to 2026. This is a raw, unfiltered account of what actually happened. I tell you how chaotic my life was, how messed up I became at times, the stupid choices I made, the trauma I carried, how deep my alcoholism went, and how much I tried to escape from myself. You will hear about my childhood, my college years, my time as a police officer, graduate school, meeting my ex-wife, getting sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, spiraling again in different ways, circling the drain, and eventually building a massive online following that reached over a billion views before I deleted everything to write books like this.
You are going to enjoy this journey because I leave in the things most reasonable people would cut out. I include the embarrassing parts. The moments that make me look bad. The stories that are uncomfortable to admit out loud. I also reflect deeply on all of it, sharing how I learned to live with more love and how I navigated some of the hardest parts of life while still finding joy. Writing this book has been incredibly therapeutic for me. If there is one thing I hope you take from it, it is that this book is an example of what you can do too. I hope it encourages you to write your own full life story. You can dictate it into your phone, turn those voice memos into transcripts, and use AI to help shape them into written form. Having a record of your life is powerful. If you want help turning your own story into something real, that’s exactly the kind of project we can take on together when you schedule a private call with me, where I share exactly how I do all of this on our call.
Working through this book helped me see something clearly. I am the creator of my reality. One decision at a time, over forty-one years, I built this life day by day. The first half of this book is largely about how I wrecked myself through addiction and constant escape, first through video games, then alcohol, and later other distractions. The second half is about trying to unravel all of that. If you have struggled with being overweight, addicted to screens, abusing substances, drinking too much, feeling out of control, or wondering what the point of life even is, I have been there. I share what it was like to be eighty pounds overweight, to feel hopeless, to try extreme diets, lose weight, give up, and gain it all back. I share what it was like to drink compulsively. I share what it was like to have a marriage that felt beautiful and then slowly fall apart and end in divorce.
My hope is that you recognize yourself somewhere in these pages. Sometimes this book serves as a bad example, a clear illustration of what not to do. Other times, it shows how getting sober through Alcoholics Anonymous became one of the most positive changes of my life. More recently, quitting video creation and walking away from being an influencer to focus on writing books like this has been another profound and positive shift. I love doing this work. I love showing up every day to write.
This book also serves as a prequel to my Daily Autobiography series, where the lens zooms in much closer and the details become even more granular. If I have one regret in my life, it is that I did not spend five, ten, or fifteen minutes a day writing about what happened that day, either that night or the next morning. I wish this book had been assembled from forty years of daily journal entries instead of memory alone. Going forward, that is exactly what I am doing. In my Daily Autobiography series, I dictate daily diary entries about what happened and what I was thinking, then I publish them. I leave in the parts that make me look bad, which is what makes them honest, real, and worth reading.
I believe deeply in being the change I want to see in the world. This book shows the changes I have lived through. I hope my kids one day read or listen to this and recognize some of the traps I fell into, like alcoholism and video game addiction, and see that there is a way out. I am truly grateful that you are here, reading this with me. I am honored by the time and attention you are giving to this story. I love you as a reader, and I hope this becomes a meaningful journey for both of us. Thank you for starting it with me.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Why the Truth Feels Bad Before It Sets You Free
From my video published June 15, 2026.
The Advice That Makes You Mad
Truth feels like pain before it feels like freedom. Often the exact advice that makes you mad, the person that offends you, the lesson that you don't want is the path forward. Often your ego will fight the truth that will save you. We often need the exact things in our lives that we're fighting and pushing away to transform us into what exactly we want to become. Let me give you a clear example of this.
When Everyone Was Pissing Me Off
When I was in the middle of my active alcoholism a little over 12 years ago, people consistently told me, you need to stop drinking, that you need to find God, you need to change your life. I remember this one girl I was dating yelling at me while she was sitting on the bed, she's like, you need to stop drinking. I remember my father telling me that I abused alcohol. My ex, now ex, but at the time wife said she wasn't going to keep staying around the house while I drank anymore. My Xbox friends started showing offline. And at the time, everybody was fucking pissing me off so bad.
I'm like, come on, man. Why won't my wife tolerate my drinking? I'm not that bad. I don't go out to the bars. I just sit at home and drink and yell at the TV and play video games. I, what the fuck's up with my friends? Like what assholes that they're hiding offline, trying to, all playing in secret without me. Like at the time, everybody was offending me and pissing me off. But. Then it finally sunk in. It's like, maybe they're right. Maybe I do need to change. Maybe I should stop drinking. Maybe my life would be better. And on some level, I knew that. And today I'm often the one that's delivering that kind of offense to people.
I dig into a lot more of these turning points across my Life playlist.
And I'm grateful that I know this today. And what's crazy is our world. We often tell each other what we think the person wants to hear, what will be the least amount of friction in the short term. But often what's most loving is to tell someone that which they don't want to hear, that which they are offended by. I'll give you another example.
The Bullying That Built My Trainer
A recent personal trainer I had, he get big jacked shoulders, little thin waist, the kind of body like women are just like picking him up at the gym. He said, do you picture me being fat in like great, middle school? I'm like, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't have thought that. He's like, oh yeah, I used to be fat. And I'm like, what happened? He's like, kids bullied me. Kids walked up to me and like, you're a fucking fat ass. And he's like, that happened over and over again. And it motivated me to change. It motivated me to say, fuck those kids. I'm going to start working out.
I'm going to get in shape. And nobody's going to call me a fat ass again. It motivated him. Now, yes, I'm not in favor of bullying or harassing or being nasty to people, which to me is repeatedly bludgeoning someone with the truth. If I tell someone they're fat once, that could be loving and truthful and honest. I tell someone they're fat every day. That's nasty. That's harassment.
Why Dishonesty Sells
But we need truth in life. And the challenges were in this ecosystem of capitalism, where often profits and dishonesty go together. That if you can stay fucked up and broken and fat and sick and nearly dead, it can be easy to sell you a whole bunch of shit. But when you get ultra healthy, like me, when you're loving and proud of your body, then you're not going to sell me plastic surgery. You're not going to sell me a diet program because I eat whole plant based, buying organic fucking fruits and vegetables in the grocery aisle of the store and eating beans. I take great care of myself.
So I don't need, I don't carry health insurance because I'm not paying into that shit when I take care of myself. Instead, I'm going to massage in 30 minutes. I'll pay for a massage to take care of my body. There's a whole lot of things you can't sell me because I'm not going to sell you a whole bunch of shit. I'm healthy and strong, but I had to look at the truth. You can't handle the truth. I had to look at the truth that when I got sober, I then faced the truth that I'm a fucking fat ass. I was 250 pounds at five foot 11 when I got sober and getting sober only lost like 20 or 30 pounds.
Facing that number was the start of a much bigger transformation, which I tell the whole story of in How I Lost 80 Pounds and Transformed My Health (Full Story).
I'm like, damn it. Like I faced the truth and it's nice when you can figure it out yourself. Sometimes we need other people to help tell us the truth and sometimes it's the people who offend us that drive us crazy. That are pointing at something we need to look at inside and I'm often the person now that offends other people at AA meetings. I often offend people with the shit I say because I'm too direct and the truth is scary. If there's a truth you've been circling but can't quite say out loud yet, you can book a private call with me and we'll talk through it honestly together on our call.
Being Rigorously Honest About My Marriage
Part of the reason I got divorced last year is because I was honest with my wife's family about the exact nature of our marriage at that time and they helped support her getting a divorce. Back when I was drinking into that, in 2014, they encouraged her to stay with me and don't give up on him because they couldn't see how bad it really was. But when I wrote letters to my now ex's family members and was rigorously honest about the state of our marriage and from a lot of people's point of view, our marriage wasn't that bad. We were still having sex. We were still mostly cooperative.
We were still, from the outside, you'd have thought our life was going just fine, if not fantastic. I remember the week before, we decided to get divorced. I told my then wife that I thought we had the best relationship on anybody we know. And she offended me when she said, no, I think my sister and her boyfriend have the best relationship. I'm like, that's fucking bullshit. Like, no way. But now I see it. They had the kind of relationship she was looking for. Something, more lighthearted. More, she wants a guy more like her sister's boy. Then like me, a guy with the regular ass job that's not fucking full of energy like this and famous online and doing his own business and talking about a shelf and wearing shirts with his fucking name on it and wanting more kids.
And my wife pissed me off when she said that. And she pissed me off when she said my book sucked. I've written 35 books on Amazon. My wife and her sister are both like, I used to sell, I gave a book to a friend of my wife's, my ex's sister. And she's like, you should throw that book out. And that pissed me off too. And everybody was just pissing me off for a while. But then I realized I need to do what I'm good at. Like writing is not what I'm good at. I've written books that have drawn reactions from people that have been rigorously honest, that have helped people.
But I'm really good at videos. Like lots of people can write. Not many people can do the level of videos that I can do. That's why I've gotten over a billion views online with my videos. It might not look good. It might not look like it based on these new channels and me having deleted all my shit last year. But the truth, the things other people say, if it offends you, there's something to investigate. Because here's the thing. When people come along and say, you fucking suck at doing videos. That doesn't offend me. Because I know I'm awesome at doing videos. It takes a special person or a person with a lot of experience to be able to come up to a microphone in a house by myself and bring this level of performance.
In a room by myself to three to six videos every day. Seven days a week. That is not something most people can do. But I can do it. So when someone comes along like, your videos suck. I'm not offended. Because first, I recognize that my videos aren't for everybody. I get that. But second, I know how good my videos are. I know I've made millions of dollars. Millions of dollars on my videos. I know my videos are amazing. Because I have people that are nuts for my videos. That'll watch me fucking play video games on Jerry Banfield Gaming. They will just watch me play as many video games I want to play.
And I love that. If you want to watch and hang out live, come pop in on Jerry Banfield Gaming. This is the fifth gaming channel. This is my final answer for a gaming channel. All right? Okay? I know my videos are amazing. So when somebody comes along and criticizes my videos, it bores me. It bounces off me. I'm like, thanks for your opinion. Not that I fucking asked for it. But I don't care if you don't like my videos. Because I love my videos.
Why Criticism of My Videos Bounces Off
What offends us is usually the things we're not looking at. When people used to criticize my videos, I did get offended. Because somewhere deep down, I'm like, oh, you're right. My videos aren't that good. Other people make better videos. Like, no. For Jerry Banfield people, for people who need to hear the truth, my videos, there's just no substitute for my videos. Like, the best part about being me is I get to watch all my own videos. And I get to be here for the creation of them. I have fans that, like, if I don't create videos, like, they don't hardly have anybody else they watch.
I love that. That is special. Let me give you another example of when the truth was.. This is.. All right.
The Catfish and Leading With the Truth
So I did a video about this on my Jerry Banfield channel earlier. But I have a new dating channel. So I have a new dating channel where I'm putting up my dating content now. But I did a video before that on this channel talking about.. Where this girl catfished me. Where she didn't look like her profile picture. So it's called.. She didn't look like her profile.. Dating profile and it really hurt. And this girl, she said she knew me in real life. But I couldn't hardly remember where from. But then.. And she told me where from and I still couldn't remember. But she had these beautiful pictures.
I'm like, I don't know this girl. And my brain kept giving me this face that, like, looked like she'd put on, like, 30, 40, 50 pounds since these pictures and had, a rough time. In her life. Like, it wasn't just weight. It was also, mileage, if you will. I'm just being real and honest here. I'm not trying to put anybody down. This is my experience. And this is not objective. This is my experience. So I met her in person. And I told her the truth. I'm like, this is fucked up what you did. She's like, no. My friends made this profile. I put on, like, 10 pounds.
I'm like, no. What you presented in that dating profile was dishonest. Who you are now, what you look like now, versus a dating profile you put up are drastically different. And she's like, is everything okay? Because I was just trying not to say it. Can you picture me trying not to say this when this is how I talk? Can you picture me trying not to say this? And then I said it. And I unloaded on it. You know what's fucked up? She's, I was, so I deleted my Hinge profile after getting catfished by her. And then going out with a girl who didn't like my YouTube channel.
So now, so I deleted my profile. I'm like, ah, fuck online dating. But then, but then I put it, then I put my profile back up. I'm like what I need to do? I need to be brutally and rigorously honest on my dating profile. So this last video, I just went through my Hinge profile. And you'll see exactly how rigorously honest I am on my real Hinge profile. So I deleted my old profile, waited, I don't know, maybe a month. And I put up a new Hinge profile. Guess who's, guess who's still out there tricking on her Hinge profile. And she is active today. It's still active today.
She's still tricking on this profile. She is still, still tricking on this Hinge profile. She still has the same pictures up. She still is tricking guys with this Hinge profile. But you know what? I feel good that I told her the truth. And I appreciate when women tell me their truth, even if it is like, hey, I don't want to, I don't want to be a part of your next dating video. I don't want to go out with you and be a part of your next dating video. I'm like, good. Don't go out with me because my life is public. I've, I've been famous online.
I've went viral. People have talked about me. Celebrities talked about me. Big streamers, all that. I've been there. I've got, millions of people listening to my fucking music, which, my music is just wild. I, I was famous on Facebook gaming. I was a top partner. Like, I'm not going to go away. I'm not going to hide myself because you don't like that I'm a YouTuber. So I lead with the truth now. And when people are repulsed by it, good. Because I want to be surrounded by people who love what I've got to offer. And when you respect who you are, you won't be offended.
Laughing in the Face of Offense
People are, as somebody who's, several people were offended at my last Alcoholics Anonymous speaker meeting. I went and delivered. So the first two people, and I love both of them. I'm so grateful they're sober, but their talks, I'm a good listener. That's why I could listen to them. In other people's words, they were boring. They were putting people to sleep. There wasn't much activity. And that's okay. That's a lot of AA speakers. That's normal. Now your boy stands up and then drops 15 minutes in this style. But I swore more than this. I told stories of like how I almost cheated with this girl at yoga and talked to my sponsor about it and how he was concerned that if I cheated, I might drink.
So these were very raw, real deep sobriety stories. And I had that room fucked up. There were people belly laughing, like bending over. And one girl though, got all triggered and walked out of the room. And then some dude that I could have told you he was going to leave, he got up and left too to try and talk to her to get attention from her. And then she bitches to people that I was swearing too much. He was cursing too much and he offended me and I'm sensitive. Oh really? You're an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. You're sensitive. What the fuck were you doing before you came in?
And then, so I, my language, according to her and other people, offended her. And other people came to me. This woman came to me saying that, well, you need to change your language. You need to think about newcomers. You know what I did? I laughed in her fucking face. It felt so good. She's like, and this girl's offended. I'm like, ha, ha. Dude, I fucking, I fucking belly laughed in her face. She's like, it's not funny. I'm like, it's so funny. You're telling me this new girl who was doing God knows what before she came into AA. Now she's offended because I cursed a little bit.
Bullshit. Look, she should be asking her sponsor to do her fucking steps and take her inventory. And then another guy came to me with the same shit and it bounced off me. I wasn't offended. I thought this shit was hilarious. Like, please, you're not going to tell me how to share because I know how to share. I know how to pull from the depths from my fucking balls and yank the energy up and blast it out of my mouth. God damn, that was graphic. I know how to pull from the root chakra and take that energy up and blast it out my mouth. I feel energy coming when I know I'm going to share.
Staying this grounded takes people around you who keep you honest, and if you want that kind of honesty, you can set up a call with me and bring it to our call.
The whole body lights up. And boom, it comes out of my mouth. And you're not going to fucking tell me how to share. See, when you are owning and comfortable in yourself, you will not let other people offend you. In fact, you will bounce their, whatever they're saying will bounce off and go right back to them. I'm not very easily offended today. And I love the attention. Like, please get upset. Please get upset at what I said and tell somebody about it. I love that shit. I love it. I wish more people to call me a fucking fat ass when I was 240 pounds. I knew it.
And the scale, the scale told me it. But I was able to go along with this delusion for years that I wasn't that fat because people didn't come right up and be like what? I don't want to go out there because you're fucking fat. But now I like it. I like the feedback because then from there, I get the truth. A lot of people are confused these days because so many people are being dishonest. You don't know what's real and what's not. I love when women are like, I don't want to go out with you because you're a YouTuber. Good. I know I shouldn't change that.
And then women are like, I don't want to go out with you because you're too honest. You're too direct. Good. I shouldn't change that. But then, if women are like, I don't want to go out with you because your hair is too short. It's like, well, fuck it. I can grow my hair out. Like by people being honest, then you can see like what things are really me that I'm going to keep no matter what. And like with alcoholism, like, I'm not going to play Xbox with you because you suck when you're drunk. It's like what? I'll get sober and then I'll carry the team when I get drunk.
I'll get sober. And that feels good. So I'm all about a world. Let's be honest with each other. Let's stop lying. Let's stop being indirect. Let's be as honest as we possibly can. I'll lead by example. I'll try and make it funny. So I hope the next time somebody offends you, you're like, oh, what am I insecure about? And instead of blaming them, you'll be like, thank you. Thank you for carrying the message to me. Because if you can be offended on a certain subject, there's something you could learn. Like politics doesn't offend me. It makes perfect sense to me. It makes perfect sense how people with a shitload of money are just doing whatever the fuck they want, saying whatever they want to, doing anything to get elected and get power.
Like seriously, I'm not offended with whatever the Republicans or Democrats are doing. This shit makes perfect sense. And if you're offended, it's because you're not understanding the world. You could level up and expand your mind to a point where it all makes perfect sense. And when it makes perfect sense, I'm not saying you'll think everything's okay. Because yeah, there's lots of fucked up things going on in this world. But how that should be channeled is you should get motivated to do something about it. So what I'm doing is I grind out videos. I make videos. And I educate. And I share. That's what I do.
Because there's a lot of dishonesty in this world. So I lead by example being rigorously honest. And I'm willing to go offend people for the purpose of helping you slash them level up, enlighten, expand, and see where you can do better. If you appreciate it, do this. This is Jerry Banfield. I make lots more videos like this for you. I moved my dating videos over onto a separate dating channel. And I've got several other channels. book a one-on-one call with me. Imagine getting to talk to me on the weekly live calls where I actually listen instead of talk. You can talk to me there.
You can even film a video if you want to go back and forth on something. You could book two or three of these in a row. Film a long format podcast with me. Post it on yours. Post it. I'll post it on mine if it's compliant with terms. And we can have a great time together. Ask any questions you got in the comments. Any feedback. If you fucking hate my video, feel free to let me know in the comments.
I Forgive Her, I Forgive Myself
Originally published February 4, 2026.
This is my journal entry from February 4, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
Wake up with the kids today and we get them off to school for their early arrival. My son and I play in the back seat for like 20 minutes. Then I head out back home to get to work. I was thinking I might go to an 830 yoga, but I thought I'm a little more sore today. And I had a funny dream last night. I had a dream that I was like with the kids. And this velociraptor is like stalking us. So I jump on top of this velociraptor and choke it out, trying to kill it. And I succeed. And I wake up like, that's a funny ass dream. I then get to work. I'm like, today is the day to dictate I'm Seeking a Wife. I dictate my book, I'm Seeking a Wife. It comes out to be about two hours long. And it's very honest, very raw, very vulnerable. And afterwards, I'm so glad that I got it done.
At the same time, though, I'm like, it's two hours and 19 minutes dictated, three chapters. At the same time, I'm like, I don't know if this makes me look very good. I talk about my ex-wife way too much in it. I repeat things a lot that I want at least two kids. And sometimes I sound a little bitter or defensive. I'm like, man, maybe I should rerecord this. But I don't think that's the right thing to do. I think this book honestly captures where I'm at and what I'm looking for right now. And it'll filter nicely. And I realize sometimes I'm in a position to help girls with certain things in their lives. And perhaps a girl might listen to this and be like, you know what, I really love this part of him and I could really help him with being nicer to people and more compassionate, at least in my mind, and not judging people so much. If you've got something this honest and vulnerable you want to put out into the world but you're scared of how it makes you look, you can book a one-on-one call with me and we'll talk it through.
After I wrap up, I was going to go to noon yoga today, but for some reason, they don't have noon yoga at my yoga studio today. I don't know what happened with that. And I could have went to another yoga studio, but I didn't think in time, so I ended up going to an AA meeting at noon instead. At least there is one attractive girl I haven't seen there, which means if I'm seeing attractive girls I haven't seen before, that often means I'm out going to meetings. I'm doing good getting some different meetings. I went to a different meeting I don't usually go to today. I didn't get called on in this meeting either, which is fine. I could have raised my hand if I really wanted to share. But I talked to some guy. I met a new guy there. I really like his slicked back hair. I think he's in his late 50s. And he has this long, slicked back hair. And it looks great. I'm like, man, I need to do my hair like that. But my hair is kind of curly, which makes it difficult to slick it back like that. And now that I'm thinking more about it, I don't know if that's the solution. I also saw a guy that was bald earlier, like shaved down to the skin. And I'm like, you know, I could rock that look too, like Wayne Dyer did, but I haven't went bald like they did. I then see there's a guy there. He's like so high or drunk or whatever he's on. He was talking to himself. Then he threw up outside the meeting. I'm like, damn, this is keeping it real. I don't approach the girl who's attractive. I'm like, I'm not generally going to do that. She didn't sound like she was fully on my wavelength anyway. And that's all right.
I head back home, grateful to have time to have lunch. And then a friend who helped me move into this house a little less than a month ago, I've enlisted his help today because my ex-wife says she's going to give me the couch. She sees at my house that I could really use a couch. And this gives her space to get herself something new if she wants it also. She says she's not really using the couch. It's old. She's kind of tired of it. She's slowly kind of remaking the inside of her old house, replacing the old thing she's tired of. And the couch, I could definitely use it. And she's happy to get rid of it. So it's perfect. I rent a U-Haul for like 30 bucks. Drive over to her house. She's also giving me the window unit and the $2,000 battery I bought as a battery backup for us. And I start trying to work on getting the window unit out. But I went so hard with the spray foam, I can't get it out of the window right away without some more work.
I then knock over this piece of glass that the kids had put like a rock farm in or something behind the couch. And I kind of, you know, irritably ask my ex-wife to please clean it up because I'm so busy trying to get the window unit out, even though she's working and she has a call. She cleans it up and I feel the tension. And before I go to pick my friend up, I ask, you know, if she's doing OK, because sometimes I can feel these like sad feelings coming off her while she has a happy face, you know, which is, I'm not so good at putting on a happy face when I feel bad, but I also am good at detecting people. You know, I am good at bypassing people's happy faces when they actually feel bad. So I then leave my ex-wife's house wishing that I could have kind of done that a little better or something. I pick my friend up. My ex-wife goes into a work meeting.
My friend and I break the sectional up, as he puts it. I told him we were moving a couch. He said, Jerry, this is not a couch. This is a sectional. It has six different pieces. And that's a lot different than moving a couch. Like, OK, thank you. I'll keep that in mind. So we load the sectional into the U-Haul. Then I drive down to my house. I park. My friend has me park up on the like drive up into the yard a little bit, so that I'm not so far in the road. I work with my friend to unload the sectional into my house. And I have him dropped off back at his house at 5 p.m. It was a very smooth operation. I'm so happy to have the couch. And I give my friend $80 as a thank you for helping me, as to me that's a fair rate. He took an hour of his time helping me move a couch and his expertise made it very easy. And I really appreciate it. Last time I gave him $200. He's happy with 80 bucks for an hour of work. I mean, shit, I'm happy for 80 bucks for an hour of work that I enjoy and I'm good at. That's why I charge 200, because I'm really happy with 200.
After I drop my friend off, I take the truck back to U-Haul and return it. I ride a little dirty without refueling it, but I only drove 11 miles in it. And last time I overfilled it by like a quarter of a tank, which ended up being like, I don't know, $10, $15 overfilling it because I was just autopilot going to refill the whole thing. So I'm hoping that karma will balance out there. I drive back to my house and I want to grab that window unit out of there. I like half got it. So I asked my ex-wife if I can come over and grab that window unit and the battery because I didn't want to bother adding that to my friend's to-do list since he wanted to get back home.
Then I get to my ex-wife's house. My ex-wife's preparing dinner for her and the kids. I get some tools out like an exacto knife and like a paint, the thing you'd use to open a paint bucket. I get that out and I start scraping the spray foam off everywhere. I get outside and start thrusting into the window unit and I crack the spray foam finally. And then I spend like 20 minutes at least scraping spray foam just so my ex-wife can close her window. I aired on the side of sticking that thing in there real sturdy so it wouldn't blow down in a hurricane and the air wouldn't leak. And that means there's still spray foam on the outside right now. My ex-wife's kind enough to invite me to dinner. And she made steak, potatoes, and mushrooms and Brussels sprouts. I actually have like five, six pieces of steak. The steak's tasty. It's a meal the family likes. That's the time if I'm going to eat meat to have a little meat. I felt like it tonight. I ate it. It tasted great. And the kids and my ex-wife were happy to have me there.
It is an interesting feeling at the dinner table, like a nostalgia that we're all really grateful to be together eating here again. But like a grief that this is not normal anymore. This is a special occasion that dad's here having dinner. It's nice to recognize that shared experience for all of us, as we're all happy, and at the same time, there's a sadness. But I think, too, this is good for the kids. It teaches them flexibility, sacredness of life, and I'm so proud of how they're doing with this big change in their life. They've been amazing. And my ex-wife, too. My ex-wife's been amazing. I mean, I have all the beds in my house, my ex-wife gave me. The couch my ex-wife gave me. The dining room table, my ex-wife told me about a garage sale where I got that for $80. I mean, my ex-wife's taking real good care of me. She bought the stuff for the kids. My ex-wife's made this transition so easy. And I'd love to pick up now. All I need to do is pick up on the income. And everything's going to go great. And I trust that my intuition has guided me to the right place.
I started listening to this book today called The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav with a preface by Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou. And at first I'm listening to it. He's going into this karma and stuff. I'm like, yeah, I'm not really feeling this. I don't see that every little thing you do creates this practically infinite karma loop. I think things are much more flexible and giving than that. Like that you could be a mass murderer in one life and you could have a really happy marriage and a nice life in the next one. I don't see that there's this constant, almost like pendulum swing of karma all the time where everything you're doing is, it's funny because he's talking about not judging people, but then there's this clear framework of judgment that everything's surrounded in about what's good or bad or you create this karma and that karma. Fortunately, I'm thinking about not listening to it anymore, but I get through that section. Then some of it's really helpful about listening to the intuition and dealing with the feelings because I have a lot of intuition. To me, my feelings guide me when I've hit intuition. My feeling that I want to write this book, that I'm seeking my second wife, the feeling, the excitement behind that, that's intuition.
Sometimes, though, the feelings are going different directions. Like after I dictated the book, I've kind of had a vulnerability hangover and been kind of down the rest of the day. It was a sharp contrast to dictate a book called I'm Seeking a Wife and to talk about exactly what I want in a woman and mention my ex probably a hundred times in it. And then I go over to my ex's house and see how loving and nice she is. And my mind tries to throw up these things like, here's what you lost, here's what you gave up, here's a marriage you ruined. It's like, no, I enjoyed that marriage. And yet, we both chose to get divorced because it'd be more of an adventure. It'd give us more room to grow, to replant ourselves, for me to have a wife with more kids, for her to have space. And I practice my gratitude. Thank you. I forgive you. I forgive her for wanting to divorce me. I forgive myself for wanting another woman. And I go through all that, and I listen to Gary's book, and I put the couch together, and I vacuum, and the space heater comes in the mail a day early, and I say, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you're carrying that same kind of grief after a divorce and trying to forgive both your ex and yourself, you don't have to walk through it alone, and you can schedule a private call with me to talk it through with me on the call.
I walk around Crescent Lake, and a woman I'd been talking to sent me an audio message today. And her message is so nice. It leaves me wanting to be such a nicer person. You know, her message really is honest and discusses the things I said in my message. She said she's available to be a friend and said she doesn't have time to really be a good friend with what's going on in her life and that she likes to move slow with romance. And she acknowledges that the kind of woman I want to be with, you know, may be OK with moving at the speed I want to move at. And I agree. I picture some woman reading my book, you know, that I'm seeking a wife, and paying to talk to me and then paying to come meet me in person and being ready to move fast, like, hey, I already read your book. I picture seeing her and she's very attractive and it's like I'm ready to move. I don't need to do a whole bunch of research when it feels right. I got a couple of days behind on these diary entries and I'm super grateful I could catch up today. And I'm super grateful I did the work. And I'm looking forward to getting this book published. I got ads set up for my book. I created 55 courses online and for my Twitch book. And I tried some ads for my 42 Influencer Secrets book. And I'm just interested to test these out. Just playing around with all these, seeing what they do.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Done Pretending I'm All Good
Originally published January 11, 2026.
This is my journal entry from January 11, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I absolutely loved waking up with the kids here this morning. It was such a nice morning. We all woke up and got up a little after 7. Everything went just perfectly last night. I went to bed with the kids. I got lots of time to relax, meditate, sleep. So much rest. It was so good. We all laughed and were happy to be here. And I'm like, man, this is what I've been missing in my life. Man, I missed my kids so much and having these times overnight with them. God, it felt good. And that was one reason I was getting desperate in my dating. It's like the kids took up a huge space in my life that for three months I had a lot less of it. And it was so nice to have them here. I felt so loved and cried myself to sleep. It was so good.
We got up this morning, and they wanted to go straight to the park. I made them each a burrito and gave my daughter strawberries and my son cantaloupe. They were so excited to go straight to the park. We took the car and the drone and my son's plane-launching gun, and we did all of it. We flew the drone, drove the car around, launched the planes. Then we went into the park and did the swings. We had the most fun on the big, huge double swing. When I got on it with my son, my son went so high in the air because whoever's smaller goes higher. And same thing. He went really high with my daughter and him on it with me pushing them. We had such a great time. It was funny to notice how at the top of the peak, I could feel like my stomach was going up and feeling weird a bit. My son was on it for so long because he went with me and with my daughter. We played with some kids at the park.
There was a mom there who didn't have a wedding ring on who was attractive. I said hi to her. Like, wouldn't it be cool if I ran into a single mom that was beautiful and wanted more kids just right at Crescent Lake Park? That would be awesome, wouldn't it? I hope that happens. And I guess as much as I'm showing up, it might. We got back at 9:30. And what's been really cool is the kids. I was hardly ever going to the park with them for years. I used to when they were little, like babies, and up until my son started preschool, I used to go to the park with him a lot especially. And I hadn't been in the park much with them lately. It's been awesome with them back at the park again. There were some teenagers this morning, and my daughter was a bit put off by them, but they left.
We got back at 9:30 and met my ex-wife here. She brought the dog, and she was really happy to see us and that we all had such a good night together. And she mentioned a comment about her sister in the book, which I ended up recording yesterday's journal entry right after that, so I was freshly hot again from it. I brought it up, of course, but then she confirmed that that's what she heard. And I'm like, yeah, is it a good look for me that I said some really ugly things about her sister five times yesterday? Probably not. That said, technically, it was this morning when I recorded this. So not like a lot of time has passed. But, you know, I think it's ideal in a world if we're just honest, because, yeah, sometimes people do things that hurt our feelings. And can we just stop lying about that? Can we stop acting like we're not destroying people in our heads? Can we just be honest about our experience and not, you know, try and act like everything is all positive and all good all the time. If you're done pretending you're all good and want to just be honest alongside people who get it, I'd love for you to book a one-on-one call with me and be real about it with me.
I was thinking today in the shower, like one thing that's really important for being powerful is to be able to use the positive, the negative, the dark and the light. It's silly when you have things like Star Wars framing the light side of the force and the dark side of the force and having this arbitrary division. Like to me, to be most powerful, you use both. Like if I can hit the tennis ball and make it do some evil shit and win the point, I'm down with that. And we don't want to dichotomize ourselves into I'm just this good person. Because every good person has certain qualities that make them an asshole. And every bad person has some redeeming qualities.
I was listening to this book about the Cleveland kidnapper. A couple of books. One written by, I get all their names confused, who wrote what. Obviously, that guy's hard to even comprehend, how you could kidnap three different girls and have everybody living in abject poverty and be bringing them fast food to eat. That's hard to comprehend the level of disgusting. At the same time, though, this guy has some character virtues. Like a lot of people are so scared to even ask a girl out or ask their boss for a raise or quit a shitty job. And this guy kidnapped three girls and held them there for a decade. And he was trying to pick up women at the bar and asking them out and stuff. Even with three at home, I'm like, bro, you've got three women at home that you kidnapped. Do you really need another one right now? Like, this is so predictable, actually. I was trying to think of where I could do a stand-up comedy set with some jokes like that. And I guess these books are the place. Well, you've got three women you can have at home. How are you trying to pick up a girl at the bar now, for fuck's sake?
But yes, I certainly see how that guy's a monster, and he died in prison. At the same time, this guy did have character virtues. You know, you can't look at him and say every single part of him is bad. Like he'd show up and have dinner with his mother and then bring his mom's leftovers home and feed it to the women in his house. So it's really nice to not just think in terms of people are good or bad, black or white. You know, like I look white, but I'm a little black on the inside. And it's really nice to not think of people as just good or bad, and not to think of myself that way, to think, you know what? In certain ways, I'm a fucking asshole. I'm the kind of asshole that'd call his former sister-in-law something vicious five times over a comment about these books, which I thought ironically kind of, you know, when you hear how I react, it certainly makes sense that you would say to just throw this shit away, right?
But at the same time, some people think this is amazing. Like how stand-up comedians, some people think Bill Burr and Louis C.K. or, you know, Jim Jefferies are just these monsters. Dave Chappelle. I fucking love those guys. They're funny as shit. They put a lot of work into their craft and being funny as shit. And I appreciate them. And they use a lot of foul language and dark examples and piss people off with their comedy. But I love it. It's funny as hell. Dave Chappelle's The Closer was incredible. Like that pedophile priest joke he made killed me. I did not see that one coming. I'm like, holy shit. The trans stuff, I didn't even think about that. I'm proud of who I am today. That's what matters. It's okay if people think I'm an asshole and you should just throw my books away. That's a valid way of looking at my art. Same as if I painted. Some people think my art was a masterpiece and Mona Lisa's a shitty painting. Like some simple woman from way back in Italy. There's nothing special here. Don't tell me it's great because it's in a fucking museum. It's a painting of a simple woman from way back when in Italy. Like, all right, not really inspiring me here. So that's where we're at today.
After my ex-wife took the dogs to the dog park and then said goodbye here, I went to my yoga studio. And right before I get there, I put all the laundry in, like the kids' stuff, the yoga towels. And in the last washer I had, that was like $600. It was a, you know, front loader. You could just throw all that shit in there and then wash it. Sometimes the little kids' sleeves would get tangled up with shit. Not in this motherfucker. This is an old school top loader with an agitator in the middle. Shit was wrapped up there. It took me like 10 minutes to untangle the shit. And then there's my old Michelangelo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles towel from my childhood that I used to go to the beach with 30 years ago. That towel was stuck underneath the agitator. I finally realized I had to unwrap it around it to pull it out after yanking and nearly ripping the towel. I'm like, let's not use any more Superman ceramic shattering strength today. I'm thinking like, you know what? I'll drop $1,200 and buy a new washer and dryer up in this bitch. For real. But let me try and make the most out of these. Then the clothes came out so soaked that I threw them in the dryer instead of just using the spin cycle. And yeah, it's 10:24 p.m. Those clothes have been drying off and on all day. Still not dry. We're getting close, though. Shit.
My yoga studio was nice, but I did not succeed in making a connection with any girl today, which is fine because I got a good workout and I got a good sweat and I enjoyed the show. This girl that was hot as fuck put her mat right next to this other guy who was there with what looked like his girlfriend. I'm like, that's nice, isn't it? I need to put my mat next to the hottest girl I can next time because I've been being too conservative in regards to that. But I want to put my mat next to the hot single women who want the attention. Then I came home from yoga, had a nice salad, filled myself up.
Then I got to work organizing this house and working on my letter. I got some great feedback, some more feedback in my letter. My sister messaged me. We didn't get to have a call today. I went to work organizing the house, which felt great. One of my boys from AA called me. We talked for an hour and a half on the phone. It was actually awesome. Again, something I would not have normally done back in my happily married life, because I wouldn't have time for that. And back when I was doing videos, especially, when I had time for that, but it was so cool. I had time to talk to him for an hour and a half and he drilled in about my events. He's like, what is going to be the point of your events? Who are these events for? What are you going to do at them? It was so great. And we talked about girls a lot and stuff too. I saw him at the meeting tonight and we went in on more of the girls and stuff. And we laughed a lot, you know, just lots of laughing. This guy's like in his early twenties. It's just so good to talk to him. Nice to have made a friend at AA.
After wrapping up everything around the house, I then went to the AA meeting. I ended up getting there a minute after it started because I was wrapping the letter up. I ran the entire letter back through ChatGPT using some of the feedback people gave me. I cut half the words in the letter, but it's still eight pages because it's more spaced out now. I might see if I can make it less spaced out so it wouldn't take as many pages to print on. Like if maybe I could get it down from like eight pages to six, that would save a significant amount in printing costs. And at the same time, though, it seems like the more spread out paragraphs can be a bit easier to read. You know, longer, denser paragraphs can be a bit intimidating. But these paragraphs kind of break it up and leave you, you know, feeling like it's easier to digest.
And some people, most people said I should shorten my letter, but I don't see how somebody's going to want to pay $20 to come to my house and really get my message with a shortened letter. My one friend actually was kind enough to shorten my entire letter for me to two pages. And I felt like she wanted to make the letter more businesslike. And I'm like, this letter is dead. Like this takes out all the substance and the emotions of the original letter I read, which is what people teach you to do with business. If I'm going to get somebody to come pay $20 to come to my house or do coaching with me, I'm going to need an emotional reaction, even if it's a negative one, like my former sister-in-law.
After the meeting, I stayed and talked to the boys for an hour and a half afterwards, which was great. Didn't talk to any girls, but I am looking forward to all the girls I'm going to talk to and whoever the next woman is that I'm going to connect with and really enjoy and have a great time with. At the same time, though, having the kids over, and I'm going to have them tomorrow and Tuesday, too, for overnights, it really makes it obvious, like, how much time do I actually have for a hardcore girlfriend right now? And would I have to give up some time with the kids to have a hardcore girlfriend? Because, you know, that could change things. If you're weighing how to make room for a relationship without losing the time that matters most, I'd be glad to talk it through with you when you schedule a private call with me.
I didn't hear from any of the women I messaged yesterday. None of them. You know, I messaged a woman I'd been dating about breaking up. She didn't answer. I messaged a girl from yoga I met. Messaged a girl from AA. Not one fucking reply. That was cold-blooded. But you know what? I'm still standing strong, and I'll keep going until the day I die. The guy I was talking to at AA and talking about girls, he's like, yeah, it's just hard. I don't want to get rejected. I showed him my phone. I'm like, look at my fucking text messages. All right, here's a message from a girl I asked to date. She said no. Like, top message on my phone. Scroll down. Here's a message from my ex-wife who just divorced me. Here's a message from my massage therapist who, I think it was in the book nine hours later, I talked about asking her if she wanted to date me. Scroll down a couple more. Here's a girl from AA who likes me and waves and is enthusiastic. Didn't respond to my message. Here, next one. Girl from yoga. Didn't respond. Massage therapist. Didn't respond. A woman I'd been talking to. You know, didn't respond to my voicemail memo. A woman I had been seeing, you know, I sent a cold last message to her, but you know, she could have responded if she wanted to with any warmth or something, not expecting that she necessarily should. But it's like, look at all that rejection. Like my messages are just getting destroyed with rejection. So don't worry about rejection.
A friend gave me some really nice feedback on the letter, which I appreciated. I sent her $88.88 on Zelle as a thank you for reading my letter. And I think that's about it because the one I recorded earlier was like 35 minutes. So I definitely don't want to go over 20 minutes on average because I have to edit all these. And I'm like at least a month behind on editing them. So it's time to wrap up.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
The Year I Stopped Carrying Shame
Originally published January 1, 2026.
This is my journal entry from January 1, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I slept in today. It was really nice. I didn't even get out of bed till like nine. So I'm like, shit, I literally have nothing on the calendar today. And it's cold as a bitch in here. The heat went all the way. I put it on 64 because that's what I felt like putting it on. And it actually got down there and was running last night. I was like, wow. This is cold as shit in this bitch. Did what I could to warm up a little bit. And then I started to try and figure what I'm going to do with my day. Step one, let's take a look at a yoga class. I've had so many people tell me about a new yoga studio today. My usual yoga studio doesn't have shit going on, and today's the day to try the new one. I go and donate $15 for a class there, and I commit to doing their noon class. I like how many classes they have, and I got to try it, especially since my usual studio, both locations are full wait-listed today.
I think this is the perfect time to work on my book. This morning, after I get up and have a couple of Larabars for breakfast, then I jump into my book, which tentatively is called How I Finally Got Healthy, but we might need to change the title of that. I dictate the chapter that I'm calling Caterpillar today, which is right before I get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, so 2011 to 2014. It takes an hour of dictation, and the book's up to like 40-some-thousand words already off of the transcript, so I guess this is going to be a big one, which is fine, because this is a memoir of my whole life, basically, before I started doing the Daily Autobiography. Maybe I'll put that on as a prequel to the Daily Autobiography series or something.
After doing that, I head over to the new yoga studio. My attitude's in the shitter for some reason, too. I'm feeling like it's New Year's. Maybe I'm kind of missing my old life. It's a new year. It's like, whatever. I go to the studio. The girl checking me in is so attractive I can barely talk to her. She says she's a yoga instructor. She's got these pink pants on. And she's checking me in. I'm like, Jesus Christ, she's gorgeous. But I am giving her nothing but, like, sad face. I'm like, whatever. Thanks. Where can I put my shit? So I get my mat, and I look around. I'm like, how the fuck are there so many people here, and I don't know any of them? I look around. Nobody I know. I go to the bathroom. I got there early because I had to park two blocks away, which is normal. They said their parking lot is small. Holy shit, was that an understatement? There's like eight parking spots. And this studio looks like it can handle like maybe 60, 80, 90 people in it. Yeah, if you could just come in Saturday, that'd be great. Fuck. So I put my mat all the way in the front right corner of the class, right next to the big ass garage that this warehouse used to have on it, which is nice because it's a heated class, but the air is seeping in through this garage and there's not a heater overhead. So this is kind of like a lukewarm yoga, which I'm fine with because the teacher's got it set, I think, at like 92. And it's good I can't look at her very easily, like, wow. That girl next to me, it looks like she came with a guy. So I've got a really neutral kind of boring environment to do yoga in, so I can really just focus on my own practice, which leaves me sounding kind of like a silly boy. Silly boy. Like, okay, fine, whatever. I'll just do my own fucking practice here instead of checking girls out. But next time, I think I'm going to put my mat in the middle of the room. I'm appreciating the recommendation so far because there are a shitload of attractive women here. Very few wedding rings. Hardly any except this girl next to me came with a guy. I'm like, good God. There are a lot more attractive women here compared to my old yoga studio. So, you know, your boy will be getting an $88 a month membership and coming back soon. It's donation-based yoga too. Are some people like cheap and walk in and just give like $5 or some shit? I mean, I guess I gave $15 because I'm not a cheap fuck. So I go to finish the class up. I'm looking around. I'm like, I wonder if my second wife's in this class or not. Maybe there won't be a second wife, but I can look, right?
I walk out, and there's a couple of pretty girls walking in front of me, but I'm not starting shit today, fuck it. If someone didn't walk right up to me and make it obvious, I'm not even trying. I'm tired of this shit. I've got a lot to offer, and I just got out of a 15-year relationship. Is there any sense of urgency that I need to get some other woman over here and fuck up my vibe? I mean, no, there's no urgency, but yes. Some real intimacy would be nice. Haven't had that in a while. Really seems crazy how back when I was a married author in St. Petersburg I was complaining about how every other day didn't seem like enough. You're a dummy, bitch. Well, well, well. All right. We get home.
And I'll be honest about where my head's at coming out of this marriage. I spent a lot of my life, going all the way back to being a teenager in algebra class, feeling ashamed of my own body and my own desire and telling it to knock it off. These days I'm trying to do the opposite, make peace with being a man, feel alive in my own skin again, and stop beating myself up about being attracted to people. I'm a grown man fresh out of a 15-year marriage, and learning not to carry shame around that feels like part of getting healthy. If you are carrying old shame about your body, your desire, or just being who you are, that is something I have worked hard to put down myself and would gladly talk through with you when you schedule a one-on-one call with me.
So I get home. I finished listening to Tucker Max's Hilarity Ensues book. Man, I love this shit. It's so funny and I love laughing. I think laughing is so important. And I just love the guy, even though I seem to be swearing a lot more, I'm laughing so much. And I just feel like my life is going so much better because I'm laughing. I remember in college, we did a bunch of dumb shit, but we laughed a lot too. And it's really important to be able to laugh sober. So that's a non-negotiable in these books is that there's laughing, that we talk shit and get crazy. After I have my big ass salad,
Then my ex-wife walks the kids down here at 2.30, and I've got a plan for the kids. I'm like, all right, I got 150 books in my car ready, stuffed with notes from my neighbors. I'll give you all $20 an hour each. I'll drive down the middle of the block. You guys go put these books on people's doorstep. They're down. They're excited. So we drive to my new neighborhood in Crescent Lake, and these kids rip through the books. They both take three at a time first, and then my son starts taking five or six at a time. My son is, I love him, man. He's just sprinting from house to house, throwing books down on their steps. I love it. My daughter gets a little nervous and shy going up to some of the houses on her side, but we end up doing three blocks. We go down, maybe I guess technically it'd be like five, six blocks we did, and I'm driving the car in the middle of the road, which is barely enough for two cars to get by. I have to pull over sometimes because the car's parked on the side of the road, but these kids hand out two boxes of books. I'm so proud of them and thankful because it was just fun to watch them, and it went super fast. They did it at least two, if not three times faster than I could have done it myself, and it was fun to watch them have fun.
Then my daughter says we should go try giving books out at Crescent Lake Park because there's people all over. I was about to say it's Sunday, but it's fucking Thursday. I don't know what I've been thinking, but it's Sunday in this bitch. So we go walking over to Crescent Lake armed with like 20 plus books among the three of us. And I tell them to fan out. Y'all go get the playground. I'm going to go over here and get these people on a blanket. So I just start walking up to everybody. There's like this guy and a girl having some intimate conversation on a blanket. I just bust in. I'm like, here's a fucking book. Not really. But I'm like, hey, I'm a local author. I wrote a book I think you'll enjoy. Can I give you a copy? And I give them a copy. And then I walk off. I'm just giving, passing everybody copies. Most people say yes, but a couple say no. And that's good because these books cost $4 each to print. I'd rather get a few no's than give them to people or throw them on doorsteps that don't want them.
Then the kids come up to me, and my daughter's like, this is hard. I've only given away one book. People are mostly telling me no. And my son gave away a few more. But I'm like, all right, watch me work, guys. So the kids watch me go up to a few people, and most of them take a book. And I'm like, yeah, this is how you hustle, kids. Like, get up there, sell them on the book, real quick, confident, come on. My daughter's like, but I'm nervous. I'm like, I'm nervous too. I'll just fucking do it anyway, even though I'm nervous. Then I go on the playground. We got the whole playground rigged up with books. There's like four or five parents holding books. This one guy whips $10 out of his pocket. I'm like, goddamn, this motherfucker comes to the park with $10 just loose in his pocket. I'm like, this is my kind of dad right here. He was listening to some sports thing on his phone and whips it out and gives me a $10 bill for the books. I'm like, thank you. I can buy two more of these books to give away with that $10. Really appreciate it. And we have a little conversation. I tell the parents, too. I'm like, hey, this is a book talking about how I got my kids to get off screens and internet addiction and influencers and all that shit. So it felt really good. I actually ran into a girl I knew from a yoga studio there, not the woman who complained about me. I've almost said her name in here. It's probably going to get name dropped at some point. But this was one of the girls that was nice and had a nice talk with her at yoga. She was out with what I think was her man. And I give it to a gay guy and his partner, too, and then another couple. And then we've given away at least 10, maybe 15 books. And I'm like, y'all ready to go? They want to do some more door drops, but I only have one more box of these books left.
and it takes like a month to get more books. I'm like, let me just keep the rest of these. I'll go do these myself at the pier or public parks or coffee pot, shit like that, coffee pot park. I'll go give the rest of these books out myself, and I'll give you guys $40 each. Instead of $20 an hour, I'll give you a bonus $40. You guys made this so much fun, and what my kids showed me is a really great way I can distribute my books is to just go where people are, bring stack armfuls of books and just hand them out where people are already walking around and standing around. And that way I can at least get people to consent to taking my book instead of throwing it on their doorstep. So this was so much fun with the kids.
They're messing with each other in the back seat by the time I get home. My son's messing with my daughter's belly and she's using her foot to try and push him away and kick him gently. Meanwhile, they brought the dog down. We put her in the bathroom so she didn't chew anything. We're only gone an hour. I kind of wish we couldn't have taken her really for the book giveaways. I could take her to the dog park. We could have taken her to the dog park and give books away at the dog park or some shit. I'm really excited now. I got a plan to give my books away that feels organic, too, where magical things can happen, where I might run into somebody really cool or where people have met me and seen me face-to-face before they read my book, which I think makes a big difference. So I got a marketing plan going forward. We give books to people, find places to give books out, person-in-person, just cold approach people. Hey, can I give you this book? Hey, can I give you this book? Perfect.
Get home with the kids and we play the Harry Potter deck-building game where it's like Battle for Hogwarts or some shit. At first, they want to play game seven. So this is seven different deck-building games in one. They get progressively more difficult with characters and items and spells from the movies. We think about game seven, but game seven has significant difficulty, and game six is hard enough. You've got to really play it right, or you lose pretty easily. So I'm like, why don't we just take game six, play a little more lighthearted practice? Because once we go to game seven, that's as hard as the game gets. Then it's all downhill from there, basically. So we play game six, and I play Hermione, which she has the worst, dumbest-ass ability, where if you play four spells in a turn, I just realized now you probably should pair that with a card drawing. If you pair that with card drawing, it could work pretty good, but I didn't think of that. I put it with a spell for a coin and another coin. My whole strategy fucking sucked. I was a dead weight on the team, but my daughter, my son, and I all had fun. And we'd beat them by them. I mean, like Voldemort and his Death Eaters. We'd beat them the last couple of times, but they beat us this time. They just dumped on us and filled the location up. But we had fun, and I walked them back home to my ex-wife's house after making some popcorn. And we had so much laughter, and we all had a great time. It was so nice. I got the drone and the new monster truck coming in the mail Saturday, which they're excited about. Super grateful for all this today.
After walking them back home, I went straight to my AA meeting to meet a guy who's, he's not my sponsor, but he's kind of like my sponsor. And there were several other people I knew there, lots of other people I knew, which was great. Had a good talk with them. They're trying to tell me that I should put, I put $20 at once in the basket. And then the basket will pass me like 10, 15 times and I won't put anything in it. And then I'll drop another 20 in next time. I've put as much as $100 at once in a basket because I don't like carrying ones, fives, and tens. And this one dude who originally asked me, I think I captured this in a diary book back in the day. He originally asked me, you know, why I wasn't putting money in the basket. And I explained this to him and he said, oh, okay, that was fine at the time. But then this other guy that I came there to see, they both get on me about not putting money in the basket. And because it's like, yeah, it looks bad if you don't put money in the basket. But like, I don't give a fuck if it looks bad or not. I disengaged and moved on from that conversation as soon as I could. I don't give a fuck how it looks about the money I'm putting in the basket. If somebody's not going to fucking ask me why I'm not putting money in the basket like this guy did, or this other guy told me, you know, he sees me giving these homeless people $20, which they were doing the same shit back in the day in AA. One of the founders was talking about giving a homeless guy $5, which that was like a fucking $100 bill today with inflation. And then, like, not putting anything in the basket. Like, first off, the AA group does not need that much money. It gives to GSO and World Services, and I can send that shit myself. It's, like, not, like, they have plenty of money. It's not going to fail to pay the rent anytime soon. And second of all, I'm not carrying ones, fives, and tens just so I can put money in the basket so some other people think that's how it should be. I'm good. I'm a grown-ass man. I'm going to put money in the AA basket however the fuck I feel like it. But I appreciate their good intentions.
There was a woman there that I've known for a couple years. She'd been through her divorce, and I started talking to her, and she ends up talking about her diet. I'm like, what kind of diet do you eat? She's like, well, a lot of chicken and shit. And I'm real careful about what I eat. I'm like, why do you eat that diet? She's like, oh, I don't know. I just started doing it. I'm like, in my experience, if you want the best diet, whole plant is it. And she starts giving me reasons she can't do it. And I'm like, whatever. I can see she doesn't like me kind of confronting her. But, you know, I'm here to challenge people and hold space for that. I'm a guy that likes to bring stuff to people's attention and challenge people's beliefs and stuff, and that's why it doesn't work to have a wife who does the same shit. I'm the one that's supposed to do that, all right? I don't need that done to me all the time. No, but I'm fine having it done to me too, as long as it's not in my goddamn house every day all day. So I'm like, you know, it's nice. I'm not going around trying to win women's approval and, ooh, walk on eggshells. Like, I'm going to tell you whatever the fuck I feel like right now, and I'm not really concerned whether you want to date me later or not. Still, though, this woman's attractive, but no, no. Remember what I said last night? No. I don't want to just hook up with somebody. I want to have somebody that's like a real teammate who I enjoy spending time with. All right? If you'd value an honest, no-eggshells conversation about something you're facing, I'd be glad to talk with you when you book a private call with me.
Meanwhile, a friend connects me with one of her friends that she had told me about during her massage. I think her friend's a little older than me, maybe like a decade. She really likes this girl, and I think she's single. She says she's pretty. I'm like, I just hope we're a match, and I think we could see what happens. So I text this girl after my friend gives me her info. And about an hour later, she texts back and I'm like, oh, I got a warm lead. How about that? A warm lead. How nice. She says my friend's been saying all kinds of nice things about me and she sends me an audio message. And, you know, her picture on her little contact card on iPhone definitely looks pretty. I'm like, yeah, she definitely looks pretty there. I just hope we hit it off.
And, well, back to the AA meeting, though. So at the meeting, the guy that I'm sitting next to who was in the conversation referenced earlier that I went there to meet, he brings up a topic about a spiritual bypass where if you have an issue with somebody, you know, you should go talk to them directly, not talk a bunch of shit behind their back. I'm like, this guy should not read my fucking books. I'm like, these books are one series of backstabbing ass fucking people. I'll be watching you, but I was thinking the other day, I shouldn't do stupid-ass movie quotes like that, because if you haven't seen Full Metal Jacket, you'd have no idea what I was talking about. You'd be like, that was just weird, man. Like, what was that random comment? Like, fuck it. I don't know if anybody else is ever going to listen to this shit, so I'm going to have a good time making it, all right? Pure creativity. You know, I was picturing, in the future, if these got to be really popular, it'd kind of ruin it, because then maybe I'd start censoring myself. There's a line in Tucker Max's Hilarity Ensues that drops a racial slur so casually it stopped me cold. I was like, Jesus Christ, that's fucking crazy to have in a book. And here I am quoting it, getting it into my own book. It pulls me right into my whole thing about race, which I've talked about plenty: I identify as Black even though I look white, and to me it's just a word, and I love everybody. I feel like I have to defend myself to my own self just for quoting Tucker Max today. Don't be a bitch, Jerry, you're just scared they're going to come get you over a word. Like, fuck it.
I just hope ChatGPT won't be a little bitch and tell me I can't transcribe this, because after I get home tonight, I get to work transcribing my book, which I'm actually thinking about calling I Didn't Need Fixing. I Didn't Need Fixing might be the title, because after transcribing the first couple of chapters, I asked ChatGPT to tell me what it thought, plus I gave each chat window the context for the outlines for the rest of the chapters. And it said, you know, I don't think this actually sounds like it should be called I Finally Got Healthy. I think it should be called I Didn't Need Fixing. And I'm like, all right, that sounds cool. Chat GPT, though, kept getting hung up on the content policy. I'm like, Christ, I'm going to have to transcribe some of the more explicit parts of my own story by hand. I'm going to have to edit that section manually. Shit. And it was funny because sometimes I didn't even notice things in there. There were certain things that, I don't even want to say them again, because I'll have to fucking manually transcribe this shit or manually edit it next time also. I don't want to fucking do that. So they'll be in the book as written, though.
After I get home from the meeting, I work on, I make some hummus, fire up some beans, listen to some Tucker Max, keep laughing my ass off. Also listen to this book by Derek Sivers today, which is actually pretty good. It came up randomly as hell on Spotify, and it's called Hell Yeah or No, What's Worth Doing? I'm like, you know, that actually sounds like a good book for me to listen to, because I want a lot more hell yes in my life and a lot less, eh, whatever's.
So you're like, shit, finish, tell me about the friend's friend that you were texting. All right. So actually I'll read the message I sent her at first. I just sent her a regular ass message. It says, hi, this is Jerry Banfield. I just got your number from a friend. So I text her at 2.09. I don't hear back from her for an hour and a half. I'm like, fuck, did I say something wrong? Should I have given more context? Then she says, hi, Jerry, at 3.28 p.m. Hi, Jerry, our mutual friend has some beautiful things to say about you. She seems to think we should get each other. Then she sends a couple of emojis. And then, right after that, maybe like five minutes later, I didn't respond right away because I'm playing Harry Potter Hogwarts battle with the kids, she sends a nice like two-minute voicemail. And you know, I really love a good voice memo. Remember how I sent that voice memo to a woman I'd been talking to and she didn't respond well to it? Well, this girl apparently feels different. So she sent me a voicemail. So I excused myself from the kids real quick while they were playing the game. And I sent a voicemail for like two minutes to her.
And long story short, after I invited all these women to go for a walk with me at Crescent Lake Park, and they all fucking said no, guess where this woman wants to go for a walk tomorrow? Crescent Lake Park, baby. So we're going to go for a walk. I said we'll go for a walk at 4.44 p.m., you know, angel numbers and shit, just like when I met with a woman I went out with on the beach. But let's back up for a minute. I haven't even met this girl, so I'm working on not fantasizing. And by girl, I mean, this woman is older than me, but I still feel like a teenage boy. It's just boys and girls, we're just having fun. I want to go get to know her. And I'm really excited that a friend is giving me this warm lead.
So I'm really grateful. I got a date, something I'm looking forward to tomorrow where I can go meet another woman. This is, I'm on a fucking streak, y'all. I had one on Saturday, one on Sunday with the dating apps. Now a friend's hooked me up with one of her friends, and she's got a nice Southern accent too. I just hope we hit it off. With a woman I went out with before, looking back, I wish I'd been more forward and just honest about being attracted to her instead of overthinking the personality and the energy so much. Lesson noted. If you're working through your own dating life and the lessons that come with it, you're welcome to set up a call with me.
I also sent my mother a text message tonight. I haven't talked to her since Monday and it's Thursday. I sent her a text message. It's so toxic, but I was being funny and formal. Good evening, mom. From now on, I'd like to hang out with you outside of your house. For example, walking the dogs or going to the dog park with the kids. Or you can come over to my house. She hadn't responded back yet, which is fine. And I'm like, you know, I just want to set up like, hey, I'm alive and well. I just want to let you know, you know, we need to change things in our relationship. I love my mother. At the same time, though, hanging out at her house where there's pill bottles all over, the fridge is stuffed with shit food. The kids go over there and eat like an ice cream sandwich or a fucking Popsicle and a thing of Smarties, the big quarter-size things of Smarties. You know, they just go over there and eat shit. And then lately she's gotten into just watching Winnie the Pooh with them. You know, she has stuff to draw with the kids and things like that. But I'm tired of bringing the kids over there. And, you know, it's nice that I'm there with my mom. But at the same time, I'm like, this is not the environment I want my kids hanging out in. We asked her to pick the pill bottles up before and she didn't. And she's a hoarder. So I thought texting would be a simple way to communicate this boundary and be straightforward about it. And yes, I would like to still be able to see my mom, but our relationship just got into a rut of going over there, seeing her house, talking about the same kind of shit. And often I feel worse after I go over there, and often just seeing her out of obligation, not joy.
To wrap the night up, I clean the shit out of the kitchen. I make some hummus. I throw some spicy peppers in the hummus to make it nice and spicy with a little garlic. And I have a couple of carrots and some celery with it. I know, right? I'm fucking wild. Then I roll through. I use ChatGPT to grind through processing like 20,000 words of the first couple of chapters of what might be called I Didn't Need Fixing. It's still cold as hell in here. I'm wearing a coat and I'm under a blanket on the couch. But man, I'm thankful for a great start to the new year today. Really grateful to have given out all those books, even though I did get a call on this phone today. No voicemail or anything, just a missed call. So nobody's texting me yet, which they said to fucking text me. But anyway, we'll see. I got a new distribution strategy and I'm ready for bed. Looking forward to tomorrow.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Why I Refuse to Hide the Messy Parts
Originally published September 24, 2025.
This is my journal entry from September 24, 2025, part of my daily autobiography The Kind Divorce — my real, unedited days, published in order.
a reader left an incredible five-star review for Author in St. Petersburg on Amazon today. His words moved me deeply—not just because of the praise, but because of how clearly he understood what I’m trying to do with my writing. His review does include some spoilers, but what stood out most was that he found the book “one of the funniest diaries” he’s ever read. That means a lot to me. When I open up my life in such an intimate way, I never know how it’s landing for readers on the other side. According to a reader, it was surprising, honest, and hilarious—exactly what I hope my work offers.
In his review, he said that unlike most authors, who protect their image by leaving out unflattering details, I held nothing back—calling it one of the funniest and most honest books he’d ever read, and even joking that it belonged in hotel rooms alongside other well-known books. I laughed when I read that, but I also felt profoundly validated. That’s the world I want to help create—one where people feel safe enough to be completely honest. Someone has to lead by example, and that’s what I’m doing.
I’m not doing anything illegal or immoral in my life. I’m just honest about the messy, embarrassing, and sometimes unflattering details that most people hide. That’s the whole point. We need people to tell the truth, to show the full picture of what it means to be human. I think so many of us have fascinating lives under the surface, but we’re afraid of judgment. It’s only a small number of people who are actually doing things they couldn’t safely talk about publicly. For the rest of us—those living normal, healthy, family-oriented lives—why not be transparent? If people like me can’t tell the truth, who can?
I hope my books encourage more face-to-face honesty. That’s where real connection happens. Writing these diaries has taught me to live in a way that I’d be proud to write about. If there’s something in my life I wouldn’t want to share in a book, then I need to ask myself why I’m living that way. That’s the real gift of this process: it keeps me accountable to my own values.
Sometimes I still feel guilt, remorse, or fear about offending people with what I write. Author in St. Petersburg has plenty that could rub someone the wrong way. I’m sure there’s something in there to offend anyone, no matter what they believe. But being offended can be an invitation to look deeper, to grow. Still, my ideal is to live in a way that feels good to share publicly—where I can hand someone my book and know it represents me accurately and honorably. If I find myself being judgmental or harsh, that’s a sign to change—not to censor my writing, but to evolve as a person so I no longer act that way.
Sometimes, though, you’re going to upset people if you tell the truth. That’s part of the deal. Most people avoid that risk. We say what others want to hear, and in doing so, we block the truth we need to hear ourselves. What helped me get sober—and completely change my life—was when people stopped telling me what I wanted to hear and started saying what I didn’t: that I was an alcoholic, that I needed to stop, and that they wouldn’t tolerate it anymore. That honesty saved my life.
Tonight, I visited my mom. She told me my brother is very hurt that I didn’t go to his wedding. She was upset too, saying I didn’t use proper etiquette in letting him know I wouldn’t attend. She reminded me that weddings, births, and funerals are important moments in life. I didn’t go to my brother’s second wedding, though I was there for his first. I also didn’t attend the funeral of one of my best friends from college. It was a long drive, and I knew all my old friends would be drinking afterward. That would have been awkward for me, and I didn’t want to risk it. Oddly enough, I felt peaceful about not going. I’ve connected with him many times in dreams since then, and those encounters felt more meaningful than standing at a funeral.
I also felt good about not attending my brother’s wedding, though I did have a wave of sadness that day. It wasn’t really about the wedding itself—there were other emotions swirling, like leaving massage school, which I wrote about earlier. Tonight, I feel proud that I have the courage to put my real journal into a book and hand it out to the world. That’s not easy. But it’s what I believe in—living so truthfully that my life itself becomes worth sharing.
I talked with a girl today at my yoga studio named a friend. It was our first conversation, and she told me that if her house were ever on fire, the one thing she’d care about saving would be her journals. That caught my attention immediately. She said those journals were her most precious possessions. I told her I’d love to read them and encouraged her to publish them someday. She laughed and said, “I don’t think they’re prepared for public consumption.” I told her that was exactly why they’d be worth reading. I wish I had my dad’s journals from thirty years ago—what a treasure that would be.
Later today, I read a few pages of Author in St. Petersburg to my daughter, my daughter. Of course, I chose parts that are appropriate for her age, but what struck me is how valuable this book will be for her as she grows up. She asked when she’d be allowed to read the whole thing. I told her that someday she could—once she’d lived enough life to understand some of the concepts and language I use. It’s not just the vocabulary that takes time to grasp, but also the deeper themes about relationships, health, and sexuality. I told her she’ll know when she’s ready. I love the idea that she might keep this book for the rest of her life—that it might mean more to her thirty years from now than it does today.
If I could read my father’s diary from when he was forty-one, I’d devour every page. It would let me see his world through his eyes, remind me of memories I’ve forgotten, and give me the kind of connection you can’t get through stories passed down secondhand. That’s what makes keeping and publishing journals so powerful—they preserve who we are in real time, before memory and revision can smooth the edges.
I wish more people would publish their diaries like I have. I’d love to read them. Almost anyone I know, if they put their daily life into a book the way I do, I’d read it instantly. So many of us feel lonely because we don’t really know each other. We walk around showing only the version of ourselves we think others will approve of, hiding the rest. But I’ve learned that the parts we hide are often the same ones that could bring us closest to others. If you’ve felt that same loneliness and want to be known instead of hiding, you can set up a call with me and tell me the truth about your life.
That’s one of the greatest lessons I’ve taken from Alcoholics Anonymous. The things we’re most ashamed of—our drinking stories, our childhood traumas, our failures—are often what bond us most deeply when we share them honestly. Those confessions are what make us trust each other. Through that kind of raw honesty, I’ve had some of the most profound experiences of my life in AA meetings. That’s where I learned to speak with complete openness and graphic detail about my life.
I gave out three copies of my books at yoga today. One went to a friend, since it felt right after our conversation. Another went to a friend, who I’ve known for years. The third I gave to one of the studio’s co-owners, one of the co-owners of my yoga studio. I’ve been attending her classes consistently for the past three years, though I hadn’t been in a few weeks. She looked genuinely happy to see me when I walked in.
I felt vulnerable giving my yoga instructor the book. I’m not sure how she’ll react to some of the content, but I reminded myself that people who care about you usually receive things through a lens of love and gratitude. They want to understand you better. They tend to treat anything that could offend them as an opportunity to learn—about you, about themselves, or about their own beliefs. Of course, some people seem to walk around with a filter that’s always searching for reasons to be upset. Fortunately, that hasn’t been my experience at my yoga studio. Everyone I’ve given a book to there has been warm, enthusiastic, and genuinely supportive.
I also gave a copy of Author in St. Petersburg to one of the dads at my kids’ school today. That made me smile—these books are slowly finding their way into the hands of people who might really connect with them.
How much evil do we tolerate in the world simply because good people are afraid of getting in trouble? That question has been sitting with me all day. I thought back to when the Canadian truckers protested a few years ago. I remember how proud I felt of them. In a world that often feels lost in conformity and fear, they stood up and said “enough.” Amid all the chaos in Canada at the time, that movement gave me hope. And what did the government do? They froze people’s bank accounts to punish them for protesting. That moment told me so much about where we are as a society—and about how dangerous it is when people are too afraid to speak or act. I’ll always be proud of those truckers.
Of course, not every protest has a clear or noble cause. Sometimes people take stands that don’t make much sense or that even create more division. But the principle remains: we need people willing to tell the truth instead of trying to say only what others want to hear. So much of the world’s insanity comes from our collective avoidance of truth.
We spend so much of our lives wishing someone else would lead by example, but today I feel more than ever that I am becoming the change I want to see in the world. Reading Author in St. Petersburg with my daughter today reminded me why I do this. We revisited stories from just a month ago—our trip to Adventure Island, wandering through the mall, eating at the conveyor-belt sushi place. Those little memories already feel precious, and I love that she’ll be able to read them years from now.
I can easily imagine there are people in my community who would love to learn how to write books like this—personal, transparent, alive. I could teach them how to capture their real lives in writing, or even help them complete their own books entirely. Projects like this make an incredible legacy for families. A journal written from the heart becomes a time capsule of love and truth.
I pushed my ex-wife again today about being more supportive of my work. Eventually, I told her that where she’s at now is good enough—but I’d love to see how much more encouragement she can offer in the future. I give her credit for staying with me through all this and for not losing her temper about me publishing books that describe our sex life and every other private detail. Still, it baffles me that this level of honesty seems so radical. There’s no rule or law against it. Why do we give so much power to social expectations that aren’t written anywhere?
We live in a world overflowing with laws—so many, in fact, that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Yet the strongest constraints on most people’s behavior are the unwritten “rules.” Somewhere along the way, we collectively decided that it’s fine to watch porn, read romance novels, and consume endless media built on sexual tension or loneliness—but it’s taboo to simply talk about sex honestly in real life.
It’s such a contradiction. People spend hours watching simulated intimacy or listening to songs about heartbreak, yet they’re uncomfortable having an open conversation about their own experiences. I believe the more honest we are about sex and about ourselves, the less power that kind of escapism will have over us. The more we speak the truth, the more we’ll lose interest in voyeurism and start finding fascination in each other—the real, breathing, imperfect humans standing right in front of us. If you recognize that pull toward escape in your own life and want to talk it through honestly, you’re welcome to book a one-on-one call with me.
I was talking with a friend at my yoga studio the other day, and he told me I was one of only a handful of people in his sixty-eight years on earth who had ever truly surprised him. That meant a lot coming from him. I think what surprised him most was that I actually told the truth. Most people don’t. They dance around it, soften it, or disguise it behind politeness. I’ve noticed, though, that what makes my honesty land well with people like a friend is that I also listen. I let him talk. I genuinely want to understand who he is and what he’s been through.
Later today, I picked up my daughter from school, which was unusual for me. I used to get frustrated at disruptions like that, especially years ago when I was streaming full-time and any break from my schedule felt catastrophic. Back then, my ex-wife usually had to handle things like that because I was too wrapped up in my work.
Today was completely different. My ex-wife was off at her Master Gardener program, and I had just finished giving away my last book at my yoga studio when the chance came for me to go pick my daughter up. It felt good to be available—to be the one who could step in without any stress or resentment. I was grateful my ex-wife didn’t have to leave her class or drive an hour back to deal with it.
When I picked my daughter up, she was in good spirits. We came home, played Uno No Mercy, had lunch, and talked for a while. Then she went off to play with her toys and later curled up on the couch to read. It was one of those simple, perfect afternoons that make you grateful for the life you’ve built. There were no tablets, no screens, just time together. I caught myself thinking how nice it felt to be available for my daughter when she needed me.
I’m also grateful I wasn’t in massage school this week. If I were still driving back and forth to Sarasota every day, I would’ve missed moments like this. At the same time, I look back on those two weeks I spent at the the massage school with real appreciation. I treasure that time, even though I knew it wasn’t meant to continue. Life’s funny that way—you can value something deeply while also being glad you moved on from it.
If I somehow had ten extra hours in a day, I’d absolutely go back. The program runs from about 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., five days a week—seven hours a day. If I could fit that in without giving up everything else I love, I would. But with the time I have now, I’m happier focusing on what fits naturally into my life—like yoga.
This morning, one of the studio’s co-owners led a challenging power flow class at my yoga studio, and I loved it. She had us try movements I’d never done before, even after attending over 800 yoga classes. My muscles felt alive and strong, and I could feel my body holding the strength I’ve built over the years. Then tonight, I hit balls with my son on the machine at the tennis club and got to see a reader again. It was one of those days that left me feeling full—physically, emotionally, spiritually.
I love my life. I’m so grateful I get to live it honestly and share it with people who genuinely appreciate that honesty.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Why I Refuse to Stop Asking Hard Questions
Originally published September 15, 2025.
This is my journal entry from September 15, 2025, part of my daily autobiography The Kind Divorce — my real, unedited days, published in order.
We had our first anatomy and physiology quiz at massage school today, and I scored a perfect 100. It felt incredible. Out of twenty questions, there were only two I wasn’t completely sure about—the answers were “secretion” and “up.” I’d guessed correctly on both. The sense of satisfaction was less about the grade itself and more about feeling grounded in the material, finally getting a rhythm with this new phase of my life.
We covered the muscular system today and learned the seven ways that muscles are named—by location, shape, size, direction, number of origins, location of attachments, and action. I had lunch with some classmates, a lively group who make the long class days feel much shorter. I sat next to a classmate in class—she had looked me up online and told me she was interested in reading my books. I brought her a copy of Author in St. Petersburg as a gift. There’s something deeply rewarding about seeing people’s curiosity about my writing spill over into my real, in-person life.
Later, we had a class on infectious respiratory diseases, which stirred up a storm of questions inside me. The instructor started by explaining microorganisms—bacteria and viruses—and how they cause various illnesses. But I couldn’t help asking myself: how do we actually know that bacteria and viruses are the cause and not the effect of something deeper? The human body is full of microorganisms all the time, and yet people manifest completely different states of health. Some are vibrant; others are sick. So what if the bacteria or virus isn’t the original cause of disease but rather a reflection—a consequence—of the host’s internal state?
I asked the instructor where the proof lies that these microorganisms aren’t responding to something else within us: a mental, emotional, or spiritual imbalance that shifts the internal environment and gives rise to certain physical expressions. Maybe what we call a “virus” is not an invader at all but a byproduct of creation within the host. Maybe the host’s beliefs, emotions, and energy shape its manifestation.
This line of thought connects to You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, which I’ve been reading. She describes her own experiences with illness and how shifting mental and emotional patterns brought relief to her body. Her ideas mirror my own experiences—when I face certain emotions, beliefs, or desires within myself, I notice changes in my physical health. To me, those internal states are the real causes, while the physical symptoms, bacteria, or viruses are simply effects. I am the causer. I am the creator of my body and my life. The microorganisms I might observe under a microscope are reflections of my inner world, not the source of it.
When I tried to express some of these ideas and questions to the instructor, the response was defensive. He seemed uninterested in discussion—only in reinforcing his authority. His stance was that “science has proven this,” and that was supposed to settle it. But that only raised more questions for me. What motives and intentions lie behind what we call “scientific research”? How can anyone assume neutrality when money, reputation, and ideology influence what gets studied, how it’s measured, and what results are published?
From where I stand, much of what’s presented as science today feels like dogma—an institutional belief system that punishes curiosity and rewards obedience. At its best, science is supposed to be an open exploration of truth through observation and questioning. But in practice, it often looks like a religion, with power and money dictating which beliefs are acceptable. Most studies seem like confirmation bias dressed up in data—people proving what those in charge already want them to believe. I left class both fascinated and frustrated. Fascinated by how deep the rabbit hole of health and consciousness goes, and frustrated that so few people seem willing to ask these questions out loud.
Later in the day, I stopped by Publix and bought some apple cider vinegar. It got me thinking—would you believe that vinegar companies have funded studies showing that drinking apple cider vinegar contributes to weight loss? Even when these studies are labeled “double-blind” and “placebo-controlled,” the fact remains: the vinegar companies themselves paid for the research that concluded their product does something beneficial. Can that really be called objective science? It feels like confirmation bias disguised as credibility—companies paying for validation, not truth.
Still, I drank the apple cider vinegar. I’ve seen other writing, like in How Not to Diet by Dr. Michael Greger, suggesting that one or two tablespoons a day may correlate with weight loss. From what I’ve read, I’ve come to believe it’s best not to drink it straight because it can burn your throat—I always dilute it or mix it into something like a salad dressing. For me, the bigger point is that I look things up for myself rather than just taking anyone’s word for it. That’s how I live. I question everything. I don’t sit passively, nodding my head, accepting whatever authority tells me. If you'd rather think for yourself too, you can book a private call with me and we'll work through your own thinking together instead of me handing you answers.
That’s exactly what set off my anger in class today. The instructor’s rigid stance and the material itself triggered something primal in me—a kind of intellectual immune response. My mind rebelled against what felt like an attempt to force-feed unquestioned dogma. It reminded me of how the body reacts to what it perceives as an outside threat. My emotional immune system was fighting to protect my sense of autonomy and curiosity.
At one point, the instructor asked if anyone had lost a family member to COVID. I raised my hand and said my uncle had died. But I added, “He had a hard, unhappy life, and his health was already failing. Something was going to kill him soon, regardless.” I asked why COVID should be credited with his death when, to me, it simply played a role in a process that was already inevitable. It would be like saying, “He went outside, it rained, and he died—so the rain killed him.” That logic doesn’t hold up. To me, the deeper cause was spiritual. He didn’t want to live anymore. His body had given up long before any virus entered the picture.
I argued that if doctors hadn’t been testing for COVID, they would’ve found another label for his death—heart failure, pneumonia, something else entirely. The instructor didn’t seem open to the idea that we might create our own life and death experiences through our state of being. But at least I said what I believed.
Afterward, I felt awkward about how fiery and confrontational I’d been—especially during my second week of school. Yet as I sat with it, pride began to replace the discomfort. I’m forty-one years old, and despite nineteen total years of formal education—thirteen from kindergarten through high school, four in college, and two more in graduate school—I’ve never stopped questioning. I haven’t been broken by the system. I still refuse to think on autopilot.
Yes, I could have been more tactful, but I’d rather be awkward and honest than quietly compliant. Maybe I even planted a seed in that instructor’s mind, or showed some of my classmates that thinking for themselves is still allowed. Either way, I’m proud that my curiosity is still alive—and that after all this time, I haven’t stopped asking hard questions.
The day before, I’d listened to a book preview—just a short sample, not the whole thing—that really stuck with me. It talked about how, in the age of AI and instant answers, one of the most valuable skills we can cultivate is the ability to ask good questions. To pause before accepting what we’re told and ask: Why is it like this? What assumptions is this person making? What’s the motive or narrative behind giving me this information? The more I reflect on that, the more I realize that critical thinking has become a form of rebellion. Once you start asking those kinds of questions, most media platforms quickly become unbearable—you can see the manipulation everywhere. Their motives are clear: keep me on the app, keep me distracted, keep me passive. They push victimhood because a disempowered person doesn’t question anything.
That’s not who I want to be. I am a sovereign being. I’m here because I chose to be here, and I’ll leave when I choose to leave. That perspective shapes everything I do now.
On the drive home, I called my sponsor and a friend to talk about an idea I’d been excited about—starting a new Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in my area at 4 p.m., five days a week. My sponsor told me there were already enough meetings and suggested I check with another long-timer who’s been sober for over forty years. I texted the man, and he replied that he didn’t think another meeting was necessary either. He implied my plan sounded grandiose, driven by ego and a need to control. He did, however, offer a useful suggestion: call AA Intergroup. So I did.
When I called, the woman at Intergroup sounded genuinely supportive. She said they’d be happy to add a new meeting and that the process was simple. I followed up with the man to tell him, and he texted back, “Good luck with it—it sounds totally self-centered.” Reading that, I felt the same rush of emotion I’d felt earlier in class: frustration at being misunderstood by authority figures. Both he and my sponsor—two people I’ve respected and learned a lot from—had dismissed the idea. But even when people doubt me, I trust my passion.
I reached out to the pastor at the nearby church where I’d hoped to host the meeting, and both he and his wife were thrilled. They said they’d love to support another AA group. They already host meetings there, and of course, it also helps them with rent income. We scheduled a time to talk on Wednesday. I also contacted the girl who’d said she wanted to help me start it, and she’s excited to move forward.
I love that about myself—I seek feedback, I listen, I reach out for advice, but I don’t let rejection or skepticism stop me. I follow my passion. When I see something that needs to be created, I create it. When I feel inspired, I act. And when something feels right, I don’t wait for permission—I build it.
Even if my friend with over forty years sober disagrees with me, I see his resistance as a test of faith more than opposition. He’s asking tough questions, and that’s good. If those questions had shaken me enough to quit like they did a year ago, it would’ve meant I didn’t really want it. But they didn’t. Instead, they reaffirmed my commitment. I don’t care if some people end up calling it “Jerry’s meeting” or say it’s “Jerry’s way.” So what? I’ve spent enough time in the existing meetings around here to know I’m ready for something new—something that fits me. A 4 p.m. slot when there’s nothing else available suits my life perfectly. So I’m going to create it, put in the work, and trust that others will show up who need it too. The girl who’s helping me start it is already eager to begin, and I’m sure there are at least a handful—maybe ten or twenty—others in the area who’ll be just as grateful for a meeting at that time. If you're chasing something new and tired of being talked out of it, you're welcome to set up a call with me so we can think your idea through together — not me telling you what to do, just helping you find your own answer.
I also messaged a massage therapist today to see if she’s available for another massage on Friday, and she said yes. I plan to bring her a copy of one of my books. I’ve been reflecting on how I approached her before, trying to coach her a little about her life, and realizing how misguided that was. I don’t know her well enough to give her advice. I’ve only had two sessions with her. She’s shared personal details, enough for me to build her website, but not enough for me to presume to guide her life.
That realization has been clarifying. I don’t want to be in the business of giving advice—not medical, not legal, not personal. Giving advice often requires credentials, and credentials tend to box people into conventional thinking. I don’t want that. I’d rather lead by example—live in a way that inspires people to find their own answers, to cultivate their own intuition. My role isn’t to tell anyone, “You should do this” or “You shouldn’t do that.” I don’t have enough data about anyone’s life to make that kind of claim.
Take a massage therapist, for example. I know almost nothing about her beyond what she’s shared in a few brief encounters. I’m not qualified to give her life advice. With people closer to me—my ex-wife, my kids—that’s different. I know them deeply, but even then, offering advice has limits. For instance, I might tell my ex-wife she should try Al-Anon because I’ve known her for fourteen years and I see firsthand how it could help. But even then, I know it’s better to lead by example and stay patient. Pushing people, even from a place of love, usually just breeds resentment.
I’m learning that real influence doesn’t come from telling people what to do—it comes from living in a way that makes them want to ask better questions of themselves.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
Why I Refused to Sweep My Story Under the Rug
Originally published February 9, 2019.
This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
I asked, "Why don't they share like people do in AA? Why do they keep most of all the best details to themselves? Why are there so few really good stories that I've read at least that get into this level of detail?"
Then, I had what I call a God thought, like, "Well, we see an opportunity for this. Why don't you do one?"
I said, "No, no. Come on. Someone else should set the example.
Someone else should do that, not me. Me? My stories aren't good enough. My stories are too bad."
Then, I've had the epiphany.
I said, "Just do it. Do it so people know what it sounds like. Do it so it inspires more people to do it and that when we do things like this, we can make a huge difference in the world."
All we need to heal as a human race is for people to feel safe sharing their truth. When we hear the stories from people who have murdered and done the worst things, we will be able to connect with the common humanity.
The answer to not having all these violent awful things happening is to have the people who have done them share their experience with it.
"Yeah. I remember getting so mad that my mind went to a truly dark and violent place. That was one of the worst things I ever lived through in my own head. I remember how mad I got, and here's what I've learned: when you get in that initial mad state, you need to get some help right then and not keep it to yourself."
You see, when we have all these people who have done all these things that are horrible that can actually share their experience, then we can learn from them.
Right now we have a culture of ignorance basically, where we have the same things happen over and over again because we don't understand how they happened in the first place.
When you don't understand something, it keeps happening again and
again. It seems like we are here to become godlike where we understand everything. It's easy to love as God loves unconditionally when you can understand everything.
I'm grateful for all the dumb stuff I've shared in this book. I have a massive capacity to understand. When I see someone that's done something horrible on the news, but for the grace of God there go I.
I understand the exact mind state one can get in to do the most atrocious things in life, and I see the way out of that mind state is prayer.
I see that we can help each other avoid doing the very worst things, that no one does something horrible alone. Everyone, we are all connected at all times. Everything I've talked about in this book, I did with other people.
The things I did in a strip club, I did with other people. I couldn't have done that by myself. All the pornos I watched and was so ashamed of, there were people who made and distributed those, and people who failed to take those offline, so I couldn't download them.
For all the worst things I've been involved with in my life that I've talked about in this book and in "Speaker Meeting 2017," all of them involved other people.
And even if I was alone, it involved me learning from other people at some point, or getting the idea from someone else, or other people leaving me alone or rejecting me, or not helping me or listening to me through their behavior.
None of us are ever truly alone and every single thing we do influence other people.
In fact, I would go so far as to say, every thought we have, affects all of
humanity. If we hate someone, that hateful thought affects all of humanity. All we need to do to not have war is to go around in a persistent state of loving and accepting understanding.
When I am able to walk up to someone in an AA meeting who is drunk, who is just walking literally off the sidewalk from living on the street into the meeting, I shake their hand, I look at them in the eyes and I see them as a human being, that makes a difference.
That is what those guys did for me when I came in weighing 70 plus more pounds than I do now, feeling like a piece of shit inside. Those men and women in AA shook my hand and loved me until I could love myself. If you want a place where people will meet you with that same honesty and stay with you, you can book a one-on-one call with me and share alongside us.
The best of what I got out of those meetings was the courage of men and women to really open up and share their stories at a high level of honesty, and to some degree, a disregard for how other people will judge based on that.
I told my sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous about some of the worst that I would share in this book and that I have shared since narrating it.
He said, "I wouldn't narrate that book."
I understand his point of view, because sure, when you put it all out there, you risk something.
I got news though.
No one's getting out of this life alive.
This body will pass away so completely it will be as if it never existed.
But all the love, all the good, all the service, all the understanding and kindness I have, all of that will persist in everyone and everything else.
Therefore, I act upon the world I intend to create today. I intend to
contribute to creating a world of love, kindness, happiness, understanding and connection.
That's why I've created this book, to share stuff like that.
As an entrepreneur online whom many people call successful, with millions of followers, I've earned millions of dollars online, sold hundreds of thousands of courses, have 22 million views on YouTube, 100 million people have seen my ads on Facebook, blah, blah, blah — in this position, you might think it's very tempting to just sweep all this stuff under the rug.
What if someone gets a hold of this thing and gets upset about it?
What if in 10 years, I'm up for president of the US or something, and people get a hold of this book?
"Whoa, we can't be electing this motherfucker to President."
It takes courage to just step up here, tell the truth and say, "Look, I know I've shared it for the right reason and if they don't like it, that's their problem."
When we face these fears in ourselves, we say, "You know what? I'm going to share my truth with the intention to help people, and I will go forward in courage and take the life of my dreams on. I will take the leap of faith and share courageously."
Because my real purpose in writing this book is to inspire you to write a book like it.
I would love to read your book.
The girl who shares in Alcoholics Anonymous in such generic detail, I would love to listen to a 10-hour book of her life in its most detail in the very
worst parts of her life.
I would love and that's why I get so frustrated. It is because I see her, and I would like to say, "Just share your whole truth with us," but a lot of us don't feel safe to share at this level. If you have been carrying something you have never felt safe saying out loud, you are welcome to schedule a private call with me and say it on the call first.
I feel safe because the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous have shown me what it looks like. While it took many of them to get to 70 plus years of age to feel safe sharing at that level, and confronting the fact that some of them have died since they have shared, from my point of view, there is no time to waste.
I would like to live in a world where I actually get to listen to and read lots of your books like this. There are lots of police officers I would love to hear their version of "Officer Banfield." I would love to hear their stories. I would love to hear all the dumb shit they did as a police officer.
I would love to hear my coworkers’ versions of this book. I would love to hear the dispatcher's version of this book and I would probably get upset because I would have such a small part in it, while she got two hours in mine.
But it is fine, I would probably be a two-hour chapter in the security guard's book too.
That's how this thing peaks so loud, isn't it? I get to laughing.
This is my real purpose here.
It is to share my truth with you, and then give you the courage. You know what?
The world can handle your truth, and sure, while individual people may get mad and frustrated, the people who get inspired by it will energetically wipe out the ones who don't like it.
What I found in sharing at this level online has helped me build a massive following of people who come to me and see something that is not the usual, a level of sharing that involves trust.
So, I'm not talking about how great I am any more than I'm talking about how great you are, and how great every man and woman in Alcoholics Anonymous has shown me what this looks like.
Every compliment I get today, people say, "Man, I love how you share."
I say, "You know why you love how I share? Because I learned how to do it from those who inspired me the most. So if you really love how I share, I imagine you'll start sharing like it."
It is not how I share, it is how we share in a world where we are loved and connected, where we love and trust each other, realize and remember our divine connection to each other, remember our eternal life, our immortality, and remember our afterlife the next time we think there is no life after a relationship or a job, or the physical death.
I thought that about being a police officer and it's not true. There is always an afterlife, and as proof of that, we are here right now.
Thank you very much for experiencing "Officer Banfield" with me. I trust that if you have got this deep into it, you are one of the most enthusiastic listeners or readers of this book.
You are one of the very few, the elite, that has gone all the way through this massive testimonial to my life as a police officer.
Will you please help carry the message by leaving a review on this book?
Because that will help more people find it and you will feel good about that, especially if there is something you really liked about it.
What I do with most of the audible books I listen to, or if I buy a book on Kindle, I just really quickly, if the book was helpful, I drop a five-star review on it.
If not, I often just don't leave a review and figure by not paying attention to it, that it is my review.
I often share books that I love with other people. I trust if you have loved this book and you got this far in, that you are empowered and that you will want to share this with someone else who will get the same experience.
I imagine by this point, I hope that you have had a lot of laughs listening to this book, especially the things you never would have expected to hear in it.
All right.
You have listened to me talk this long. "Please, God, just let him finish the book." I think that's about it.
Almost.
There is probably like one more thing I could add, but once you submit the book on Audible, then it's really final.
So, it's kind of a lot of pressure.
Like, where do you just end it?
Thank you very much for reading this book!
You can read more books written by Jerry Banfield at https:// jerrybanfield.com/books.
We appreciate the time you spent reading this! If it has been helpful for you, I hope you will let others know that in a review.
Love,
Jerry Banfield
http s://jerrybanfield.com
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.
What Honesty Really Means to Me Now
Originally published February 9, 2019.
This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
If you wrecked your car drunk driving, is it honest to just minimize it and say if you get in a car accident that you just bumped it over the curb?
Is it honest to make it out and act like you aren't watching or downloading porn anymore when you have got a porn stash that you are
ashamed of?
I don't think that's honest today because those were relevant parts. In my opinion, omission of critical details is a part of lying. At the same time, when you focus on getting what you want, there you go.
From here that was the most difficult part of the polygraph and I've shared in so much detail with the hope to help you either if this is your story and you can relate to these things yourself, or if you need to be able to understand when someone else in your life is going through these things.
I've got letters from wives who have husbands with porn addictions, that just don't understand. I used to rage about things I saw on the news and today I'm able to view things, anything that happens with love and compassion. When I'm comfortable telling you all of my own past worst secrets, I'm also comfortable with your worst secrets and everyone else's too. If you have been carrying things you have never felt safe saying out loud, that kind of honesty is exactly what we can practice together when you schedule a private call with me.
I understand how one can get into a place that looks horrible for those that don't understand. I understand that you take one little step at a time and you go from normal to deviant over a period of years making one little, not major, one little bad decision after another.
"Wow, Jerry. That was a hell of a tangent."
Well, I hope this is helpful for you because we need to talk about this stuff.
In a rare moment of having any honesty and talking about this, a polygraph was one of those rare moments where I had to get into some of these very uncomfortable things and I'm amazed I was able to get through that.
Finally, the polygraph questions themselves.
The polygraph that the captain did with me was fairly easy compared to most polygraphs I've heard.
Now, most polygraphs I've heard were done on officers who were not certified yet. It seems that there is an easier version of a polygraph at some departments like USCPD, at least when I got hired. It seems there is an easier version of the polygraph given to officers who are already certified with kind of this understanding that probably the department that certified you already went through some kind of rigorous hiring process for you.
Therefore, we don't need to be as thorough, we just need to make sure you haven't gotten anything dump since you have been in law enforcement. About half the questions on my polygraph consisted of asking about my law enforcement history.
Things like, "Have you ever lied to a supervisor as a police officer?" "No."
That was very easy to be honest. I was always absolutely honest and straightforward with my supervisors at DMH. That was a very easy question to answer.
Another question related to, "Have you ever done anything at work or mistreated anyone as a police officer?"
"Nope."
That was very easy for me to answer.
At DMH there weren't a lot of opportunities for that and I always tried at work to do my absolute best, to be the best person and to be fair.
There were several more questions about my law enforcement experience and my integrity as a police officer at DMH.
I don't know the exact question, it was something about showing up to work or about making an excuse not to come to work, another integrity question like that.
Then there were the drug ones or something along those lines too. "Have you smoked marijuana in the last year or two or whatever it was?" "No."
That was an easy question to answer.
Then, "Have you lied to me about anything we talked about today?" "Nope."
Now what the captain did notice is moderate reactions, little tiny blips, and he said, those are when you are offended by something. When you feel so strongly about something that just the fact that I asked you, the question offended you a little bit.
Therefore, when asked about my integrity, I got offended a little bit that he would be asking me something like that, but then he said, "Look, what happens is, you got a little bit offended that I asked you the question, but immediately the rest of your results you had the tiny short little spike and immediately it went back down to flat after that."
He said, "I'd know you were lying to me if it spiked and continued to go up and down after that. Because you'd be uncomfortable having just lied to me. You would be sitting there uncomfortable that you just lied to me."
Well, maybe, maybe not.
In my opinion, if you are a pathological liar, you believe your own lies, you are not uncomfortable having said something that's a lie because you believe it, but you do get a little offended still just like an ordinary human being.
I got offended on a couple of the questions that he even asked them, that questioned my integrity, but I believed what I was saying. So I was not uncomfortable with what I said.
The polygraph part itself was only 10 or 20 questions long. I've heard some of my friends that were police officers went through 500 questions. I don't know if they made that up or not. They said that their polygraph took several hours, hundreds of questions, and the dispatcher said that she went through a much more intense polygraph than I went through as a certified police officer than she did as a dispatcher, which interested me significantly.
I can see looking back today that the main thing they wanted to check for is that I hadn't been dishonest or that I hadn't been a dirty cop at DMH and that I was honest in answering the questions about my history. Having been satisfied with that, they did not want to work really hard to potentially disqualify me.
For example, one of my friends said that they had a question about bestiality on the polygraph test, which I thought was funny. The dispatcher told me that they had a question about being part of a molestation situation on the polygraph that she went through with USCPD.
Neither of those questions was on my polygraph, which I was grateful for.
I'm glad those questions weren't on my polygraph either way.
Also, I didn't need to get into the fact that I was molested by a babysitter when I was very young, something I eventually told my parents about, and they made him apologize.
That must have been a difficult ride home for him afterward.
I'm glad I did not have to have those questions on the polygraph because that would have been some uncomfortable shit to talk about at the time. I was not ready to talk about that stuff until about 10 years later when I did my fifth step in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm grateful today that I do have the courage to talk about this stuff because it is essential that we be able to talk about everything as human beings. It is the things we won't talk about that eat us alive, that give us cancer, that lead us to murder each other and to do horrible things to each other. If there is something you have been holding in that you would like to finally say to one safe person, you are welcome to schedule a one-on-one call with me and talk it through.
Can you imagine a world where men felt safe talking about their sexual needs and where rape also existed?
I cannot picture the two going together. If men could openly talk about their need for sex with women, there would be no more rape. Literally, all we need to do is be able to talk about stuff and most of the worst things in the world would go away.
It is our refusal to talk about things that lead to the worst of the worst happening. That's my view anyway and that's my truth today, and if I had to take a polygraph, I hope I would pass it on that.
Thank you for reading this chapter. I'm very grateful to have this experience to share with you. I hope this is useful whether you are thinking about taking a police polygraph or whether you are just curious how the process works or whether there is someone as sick as me in your life that you need to be able to love and understand instead of critique, judge and condemn.
Because if I had not got so much love, so much understanding, so much kind help, so much patience, instead of having this story to share with you, I probably would not be here today, and others might have been hurt along the way.
That's the difference love makes. I've seen the miracle in my life of people loving me back to a place where I have a very normal, very healthy, very sane and safe life today and that's because I'm willing to talk about absolutely anything. That's because people have helped me feel loved and understood, and I'm capable of understanding anyone today.
I've been dreading making this polygraph section of this book because it gets into revealing so much, and yet, I think if we are going to talk about my career in law enforcement, this polygraph is a critical moment because this was my gateway, this was the big hurdle I got over to get hired at USCPD.
Once I was in, I was in for better until it got really worse. Thank you very much for reading the polygraph section of this. I love you.
You are awesome and I appreciate you being here with us.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.