On Being Predictable and Human

As I go about my business of writing and photographing a truly great and bestselling travel guide in the next seven months, as I proceed with my everyday plan to spend as much fun time with family and friends, I want two things:

1) To pay off the $7500 credit card and not accumulate any new debt.
2) To lose 42 pounds, exactly 42.

These are terribly typical desires, especially in our culture of excess. I spend too much money on food and my waist and wallet bear witness. Every Average Jane wants to be thin and rich. For me, and I suspect for many, these goals are really about one thing: exorcising the instant gratification beast within me. If only, if only, I had the discipline, the resolve, to just do it, as a famed ad slogan of our time tells me I should.

These thoughts consume me today. Which makes me feel guilty and completely uninformed when I think I should really be blogging about some group called Hamas winning some election somewhere and what that means for war and terror and strife and oppression in the world.