Daily Autobiography

You will never forget 9 Hours Later which is the fifth volume in my Daily Autobiography series. It's a daily diary written in the aftermath of divorce, while living alone again, dating as a sober man, and rebuilding momentum one ordinary day at a time. I didn't write this to fit a genre or deliver a clean arc. I wrote it to document what actually happens when the structure of marriage disappears and you're left alone with time, desire, discipline, and your own thoughts. Sobriety runs through everything here. I write about Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, emotional regulation, and the daily discipline required to stay sober in AA while navigating dating and modern life. As a divorced dad, I write about co-parenting, time with my kids, and the strange contrast between family life and solitude. Alongside that are reflections on work, creativity, routine, yoga, tennis, and the slow process of rebuilding personal momentum without pretending it's linear. The humor in this book isn't dad-joke humor. I'm not interested in safe punchlines or polite self-deprecation. This is the return of the darker, sharper humor I had as a teenager before life sanded it down-humor that comes from noticing absurdity, discomfort, and contradiction and letting it sit there. It's closer to the tone of a dark stand-up comedy memoir than a motivational one, but it lives on the page as observation, not performance. I don't explain the jokes. I just write what happens and let the humor emerge where it does.

You are about to experience my life through insanity, addiction, recovery, success, and reinvention from 1984 to 2026. This is a raw and unfiltered account of what actually happened. I tell you how chaotic my life was, how badly I unraveled at times, the reckless choices I made, how deep my alcoholism went, and how constantly I tried to escape from myself. You will follow my childhood, college years, time as a police officer, graduate school, marriage and fatherhood, getting sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, spiraling in new ways, and eventually building an online following that reached over a billion views before walking away to write books like this. Working through these pages helped me see something clearly: I created this life one decision at a time. The first half of this book shows how I wrecked myself through addiction and constant escape, first with video games, then alcohol, then achievement and distraction. The second half is about unraveling those patterns. If you have struggled with screens, drinking, compulsive behavior, being overweight, feeling out of control, or wondering what the point of life is, I have lived that. I share what it was like to gain and lose weight, to drink compulsively, to build a marriage that felt strong and then watch it strain under the weight of who I was becoming. I believe in being the change I want to see in the world. This book shows the changes I have lived through. I hope one day my kids read it and see both the traps I fell into and the way out. I am grateful you are here. Thank you for taking this journey with me.