I don’t work for the forest service, play college basketball, run a hobby shop or a gallery in Oakland. I’m not Tim, and yet, somehow, I am.

This whole no-question-mark after the quotation-mark thing is seriously cramping my editorial style.

7:08

I figured it out. No, the SQL statement wasn’t being escaped correctly. But it’s not the quotation marks… If I use ? then everything works fine. This has to be a bug in MySQL.

The back of my head itches. I buzzed off my mohawk today, but I didn’t take a shower afterwards. Then I fell asleep. Result: itchy head on waking up. So another life lesson, learned.

Robert called and posed an interesting question: If you were reading a book which chronicled your life’s events and thoughts, would you recognize yourself, or just feel a kinship with the character in the book?

I said I think I would. I have a good memory. He said he wouldn’t, based on the fact he can’t remember what he was doing 10 minutes ago. More generally, he doesn’t think people who are 60 will remember what they were doing when they were 20.

My theory is that there would be singular moments in the book, moments that have only happened or could plausibly have only happened to you, that would trigger your recognition. No matter how anonymous our lives are, I believe we all have some moments as such.

I jokingly said mine would be the scene in the book where the protagonist has a debate with his shorter, light haired, bespectacled friend about whether the little toe is evolving out of existence, and if so, what the evolutionary justification is. In the Snap-E-Taco parking lot.

He said he doesn’t remember his position in that debate. So, a point for him, a point for me.

While writing this, it occurred to me that as sixty year olds (or ninety year olds, or whatever) we probably won’t care to wade through our own autobiographies long enough to get to the recognizable anecdotes. I mean, hundreds of pages of having our diapers changed?

By the way, I still think the idea that the little toe is disappearing is preposterous.

This is what I did yesterday: Did some work after midnight until I went to sleep at 2:30am. Woke up at 6:30am to tell Robert I wasn’t going to paintball. Fell back asleep, woke up about 3:15pm. Shambled out of my room to eat, scanned some pictures for my sister, watched Sonic Youth’s ECHOSCAM video. Felt really tired and went back to sleep at 5:30pm, woke up at 10:15pm. Read a little on the web, watched some instructional videos on Adobe’s site.

Let’s tally that up: Out of 24 possible hours, I slept 17 and 1/4.It’s 12:30am, Monday, now, and I feel like going to sleep again. Maybe there is something chemically wrong with me.

Updated: The question mark only poses a problem after the hyperlink—specifically after the second quotation mark in the link. If I don’t hyperlink the survey address, then there’s no problem at all. Is Cold Fusion not escaping things correctly?

In the entry below, I have the sentence, “Well, I guess I telegraph it enough, don’t I, with all my web entries.” I kid you not—if I put a question mark at the end of that sentence, it breaks my database. I get an obscure MySQL error on the insert. What is up with that? Is the SQL mafia getting back at me for badmouthing FoxPro?

Dear Timothy,

How would you like a $100 companion ticket for travel to Ireland? Or huge savings on luxury accommodations in the Europe’s most romantic city? We’ve got all this and more for you. Save on airfare, hotels, cruises, car rentals, even vacation packages. Travelocity’s Real Deals make it possible.

Spring’s just around the corner and along with it, spring break vacation! Take our member poll and tell us what you’ll be doing to celebrate the end of those winter blues. Follow this link to our Survey:
http://survey.travelocity.com/surveys/spr0202.html

Dear Travelocity,

Thanks for the email. It’s always good to hear from old friends. As tempting as a companion ticket to Ireland sounds, I don’t think a trip is in the cards right now, even to The Europe’s Most Romantic City.

You’ve noticed I’ve been feeling down. Well, I guess I telegraph it enough, don’t I, with all my web entries?

I really want to believe that it’s just “winter blues,” like you say, but I can’t really buy into such a simple explanation. I’ve felt this way for too long. Sometimes, when I feel really down, I start to think there’s something permanently wrong with me. But such a fatalistic attitude is probably as absurd as ascribing my state to seasonal affective disorder.

I’ll tell you the truth. I know why I’m not happy, when I’m not happy, just like I know why I’m ecstatic when I am. I haven’t been doing my work. I haven’t been living my dreams. I haven’t been living up to my potential, and I feel that potential crushing me.

People tell me that I should relax, that life isn’t a race or a competition. I hear this, but I can’t… can’t let go, I guess. I’m working on it. I’mworking on defeating the passivity that suffocates me. I lost the habit of striving, or, possibly, I never had it. There are two Tims in me, the one I am, and the one I will be. The one I will be is yelling at me to start moving, because he wants a chance already. But, of course, the two mes are the same—I am the person I will be. I am a relay runner, passing the baton to myself.

There’s something else that makes me unhappy, of course, something exterior to myself, and yet, so much a part of me. It is the reason that I referred to when I still felt ahead of the world, when I would say I was incomplete.

I’ve realized I’ll find that missing piece only after I complete the rest of my puzzle.

But I’m sorry for dumping all this on you. You were just wondering what I was doing for spring break. Umm, a friend has mentioned white rafting through the Grand Canyon, and there’s been talk from some others about skydiving. Nothing concrete yet, though, so I’ll try to keep you posted.

Take care,
Tim

Can we skip to the montage sequence already?

Revision isn’t a problem for the web. Not a practical one, anyway.

A bug on my homepage prevented the display of new entries, although you could have, and may have, seen them through the archives.

I am not a happy person right now, and you do not have the power to make me one. Sometimes, lately, I feel that my ability to be happy has been permanently impaired. I feel great weights pressing down on me every moment of my waking life. These weights are my deferred dreams, the goals I never stepped toward, the plans I never approached, the questions I never tried to answer, the work that I always slept through. I need to find an answer; I need to find their solution.

I can remember a time when it seemed there was more wrong with the World than there was with me. I held my head high because I knew I was traveling the right path. Now I know that I am the one who is sinful, blind, and ignorant; I am the one who has wasted their precious gifts. I look back at what I have written since I was sixteen, and I have accomplished nothing that I planned—but when I dream, my dreams remain the same. I have stagnated, now, for six years, over one quarter of my life. What happened to my days, how did they pass so quickly?

There are no new ideas in my life because I’ve done nothing about the ones I have had. I am not living the life that I should be, and my soul knows this. My mind knows this. My body knows this.

I’m going away now, until I find the life I have to have. If I died today, I would do so full of regret. I’ll know I’m back on the right path when that is no longer true.