This didn't really seem appropriate for Small Time TV, so I thought I'd post it here.

I'm a miserable person. I don't want to be like this, but nobody seems to understand -- they seem to think I'm happy the way I am. That is not only untrue, but insulting. What tortures me is my lack of ability to do something about it -- I just don't have the willpower to get out of this funk I've been in for the better part of a decade.

And now, as of tonight, I'm out of Prozac. My psychopharmacologist even gave up on me. I can't afford to see my regular doctor, which is a problem because I suspect I have some major medical problems that should have been dealt with a long time ago. I stopped seeing my shrink in June because I was getting far too much guilt from my parents about my lack of progress. The meds seem to have stopped working a long time ago anyway.

I don't know what to do... I'm afraid to get a job, because I fully expect to get fired at some point, and I don't think I'm really all that good at anything anyway. I can't just get a random McJob because it would make me feel even worse than I do now, but at the same time I don't have enough skills in any other regard to do anything except fake my way through. Self-starter? The very idea scares the crap out of me, because I never finish what I start.

I really don't know. I'm 31, my life is as close to the gutter as it can possibly be without me being homeless, and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing I can motivate myself to do about it.

I'm going to try this tomato thing again. Planted ten pellets worth of seeds tonight.

For what it's worth, I am doing rather more blogging on my new blogspot site SmallTimeTV.blogspot.com, but I intend to try to make this my tomato progress diary again. Maybe I won't kill them this year.

The bottoms of the leaves on my tomato plants are turning purple. The top is still green. Is this normal?

I have to put them in bigger pots soon -- it seems they are starting to outgrow their pellets, and at least one of them is digging into the pellet next to it which is supposed to have basil in it. (The basil hasn't done well -- I planted seeds in six pellets, but only three plants have survived to get their first leaves.)

Anyone out there know a good source for five-gallon buckets? My seedlings are getting quite big, and it won't be all that long till it's time to put them outside.

Mine are being grown from seed. I picked up a packet of seeds from Italy (Franchi Sementi brand) very early on, and sat on them for almost a month until the beginning of March came around. San Marzano can be a tricky variety to find if you don't have easy access to a good garden store, and as far as I know almost nobody in the US sells them as seedlings (most places Roma will be the default). Try seedsofchange.com; they have a lot of interesting varieties and are geared specifically towards the organic gardener. Me, more of a Miracle-Gro kinda guy, but I like sustainability anyway.

I'm not much of a blog person overall, but I've been kicking around the idea of doing one that would at least in theory revolve around this year's gardening project. So, here I am.

Since the beginning of March I've been nursing a half dozen seedlings of a tomato variety known as San Marzano. It's a longish-season plum tomato (well, more like a cylinder than a plum shape) that's very popular in Italian cooking, and something of an heirloom variety (and we all know how important heirloom preservation is these days). I've been intrigued about the idea of growing them -- they supposedly don't do well in the Northeast, but they're also a variety with a considerable reputation. Cape Cod, however, has a somewhat milder climate than the rest of Massachusetts.

What's fun is that San Marzano is an indeterminate variety, which means it never tops off -- it just keeps growing and growing until the frost kills it.
What's funner is that I'm going to try to grow them in containers, partly for portability, partly because frankly Cape Cod soil sucks.
What's funnest is that if this crazy experiment works, I have no idea what I'm going to do with all the tomatoes. It'll be insalata caprese every night for a month, until no one in the family can stand the sight of a slice of mozzarella.