........WHILE DRIVING

I remember years ago before I had a blackerry, before I knew anything about having this type of instant access to the worldwide web, to e-mails, to google, to bbm, I would look at my friends who would use their phones for anything else other than to make and receive phone calls or to send the occasional text as crazy or bored or lame or "too cool for school" so to speak. And don't let me get started on those who would do all this stuff while they were driving. Those people were REALLY crazy!!

Fast forward to a couple years ago and the acquisition of my own blackberry and I became/have become that person I so chastized. It's one thing to put one's phone to full use and by that I mean, go ahead have fun, use all the apps and gadgets on there but the thing I had come to dislike about my own phone usage was that I had become a culprit of doing these things while I was driving.

The thing is I know better!! I've seen all the stories about the accidents that people have gotten into, the deaths that have been caused, that could've been avoided had that person not been fooling around with their phone. I've seen the mothers crying on Dr. Phil and I've seen the anguish that this basically self-serving, selfish act has wrought on the lives of so many. Yet I, like so many others, just convinced myself that I was actually good at it. That it was just those people who didn't know how to text, bbm, google and drive.

Studies have shown that it is equally, if not more dangerous to do these things while driving than it is to drive drunk!! And that still didn't stop me. But something hit me, quite literally, when a friend of mine who drives and texts got into an accident a couple months ago, just moments after he had told me that he was good at doing it. No one got hurt but still....How coincidental or not? It was at that moment that I decided that I needed to make a change.

You see it's just not worth it when it comes right down to it! There is no text or query or bbm SO important that it can't wait until I get to my destination. And if it is, then I need to just pull over and handle it. I mean, what were we all doing before the advent of this technology? We just waited till we got home to check our emails and to look up what ever information we needed to find out. To put other people's children's, mother's, father's, brother's lives at risk for the sake of our own impatience or need to know or tell ASAP is about as selfish an idea as I can imagine. And I am committed to not doing it anymore.

New Year's resolutions are often cheesy and we often break them by January 5th lol, but I made it my business this year to hold myself accountable, to be more responsible, to act like an adult and to stop using or checking my phone while driving aside from receiving or making phone calls and even then, it's only hands-free usage. It's the law here in California anyway. If there are any of you out there who might be reading this blog and who are culprits of this awful habit, I am challenging you today to stop and think about this for a moment and make a decision....is it REALLY worth it?? When you think about it, the answer has to be NO!