Taken on my iPhone.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Tuesday marked the beginning of a new year, and that means new regulations. Yes, our friends in the government have stepped up their vigilance in the war against photography - er, I mean terror. Starting with the beginning of this year, they won’t allow you to bring spare lithium batteries on your plane. Naturally, they don’t say why. So if you’re flying out to do some photography, you’d better make sure it can all be done on one battery.

Last September, Scott Kelby wrote about his experience in Minneapolis/St. Paul where TSA agents made him remove his DSLR camera from his camera bag and place it on the scanning belt separately, the way that you have to with laptops. Then they dusted his camera bag for explosives! They claimed this was part of a new policy instated in August which few airports have actually implemented. (Sounds like bullshit to me.)

It all kind of makes you wonder if some property of the lithium batteries doesn’t react well to the new security scanners. I wouldn’t be surprised if the batteries had a characteristic that prevented the scanners from seeing behind them, making them some sort of camouflage for other forbidden materials. I may just have to find myself a lithium battery from somewhere and take it with me next time I fly, just to see if they actually even notice.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. They’re counterproductive. You start something new on the first day of the year — lose weight, quit smoking, etc — and hope it will stick. In the majority of cases, the first time that new thing meets a setback, it gets marked as a complete failure, and the whole plan gets abandoned. Why waste the time?

It makes more sense to quantify progress and set target dates. For instance, instead of setting a vague goal of saying you want to “get in shape”, only to give up after you’ve had a week or two where you couldn’t get to the gym, why not set real, tangible goals with numbers and dates? Why not plan to lose 20 pounds by June 1? At least then, if you have a setback, there’s no reason to give up!

This year, I am setting real goals. Instead of imagining my life as I want it right now, and then giving up when I realize that’s impossible, I’ve put a lot of thought into where I expect to be in one year, and I will spend 2008 working toward reaching that place.

These are my goals for 2008:

1. Be 100% free of all credit card debt by November.
   After this year, I never want to carry another balance on any revolving credit account. Without debt, I will have financial freedom to do whatever I want. I have chosen November as my target because I also want to have a debt-free Christmas.
2. Move to the city by summer.
   I’m not a suburban kind of person. My heart is in the urban lifestyle. Living in the city will be better for my photography, as well as more convenient for commuting, traveling, and meeting new people. I have chosen summer as my target because there is so much happening in the city during summer.
3. Relocate my father by summer
   My father is one of the unfortunate victims of the high cost of medical care. His prescriptions alone cost more than his income. Without my help he would have to choose each month between a roof over his head, or being (somewhat) healthy, and eating isn’t much of an option. And this is in a poor, southern town in a $40,000 house! Bringing him to a city would give him access to better medical care as well as many aid programs that could reduce his costs and give him access to the care he needs, while also giving him the chance to spend his later years near family.
4. Form a corporation
   Making investments and building assets makes more sense when you have the protections of a corporation. I don’t have a specific target date for this goal because there are many other implications to consider, but I do know that I need to do it, rather than talk or think about it, so I’ve made it a goal for this year.
5. Add 100 lbs to my benchpress
   Specifically, I want to raise my benchpress 50 lbs by summer and another 50 lbs by Christmas, but these increases need to be marked by similar improvements in other strength training areas too, including squats, curls, deadlifts, etc. In other words, I want to increase all my weights, I have simply chosen the benchpress as the measure for reaching my goal.
6. Travel out of state at least once every month
   This is pretty self-explanatory. I want to travel out of the state, whether visiting friends I’ve left behind or going someplace I’ve never been, at least once every month this year. I also want at least one of those trips to be out of the country.

So there it is. Those are my goals for 2008. I look forward to writing about their completion!