Visualeyes 2

If you had the choice between pouring over a bus schedule for departure times to coordinate your errands for the day or jumping into a car and driving to do the errands, which would you pick? That's a no-brainer, right? I've got to say that even though I know I need to perfect my bus/train skills, I still find myself jumping into the car. There's a voice in my head that says, "Hey what are you doing? You shouldn't be driving!" but another voice, the one that likes to rationalize things and make excuses for why it's okay to do something, says: "But you can't carry this furniture and all this other stuff to Goodwill by going on the bus. So just make this quick trip, using side streets, not the expressway, and it will be alright." It makes sense to me. Yeah, right.

The problem is I could rationalize just about anything as a way to use the car because letting go of it is really hard. Harder than I imagined and I was imagining it to be pretty awful. I realized I wasn't handling this transition well after I bought 2 bags of Halloween candy [no kids in my complex and never had a treater in 15 years living here] and ate it all.  Not in one day of course, but it sure didn't help the blood sugar any.)  Hmmm... sounds like a touch of depression to me. Funny how that can creep up on you.

So what should I do about this? I can't change the fact that the driving needs to stop. But I can change the temptation of having the car calling to me. I have to get rid of my car. Geez, the idea of that makes me shudder yet I know myself well enough that eliminating temptation isn't a gradual thing. I just have to make a complete break. Oh-oh, there goes that voice in my head pleading, "No, you haven't been without a car of your own for over 30 years!" [Now before you start calculating and thinking I can't add correctly you should know that I got my first car at age 21.]  I have a nephew going off to college next year and I thought I could give him my car. My sister and I planned to drive the car up to Massachusetts in June when her kids were out of school. That means the temptation sits in front of me for 8 months. I now know that I can't face it that long. Since my sister can't come get the car now and there is always the possibility of driving through snow once you pass October and head to the North, I started exploring auto carriers. That's worth a blog post of its own! Then to add temptation of a different sort, a friend told me that she and her husband would like to buy my car because it is newerthan hers and has less miles. That would solve the problem of transporting the car and get it out of my sight. But I did offer to family first. A dilemma that I have to mull over. Care to share your thoughts with me on what you would do?