Car-less or car-free?

I've been meaning to sell my car since the summer of 2009, and one and a half years later, I have finally got round to it. I've had it for over seven years, since the heatwave of August 2003. In that time, it's cost me about £14,000, including depreciation, and done about 50,000 miles. Assuming carbon emissions of 139 g/km, that works out at about 1.5 tonnes per year, plus any nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide. Bad for my pocket, and bad for the planet!

It's an odd feeling not having it any more - slightly twitchy, probably a lot like a mild form of cold turkey. I barely used it at Mucknell, so it didn't make sense to keep it. But I now feel as if don't have the freedom and flexibility to jump in and dash off at a moment's notice. Which calls into question, what is freedom?

Is freedom having this flexibility, unconstrained by public transport timetables? But my actions affect other people via air pollution and climate change, so they become less free as a result.

Or in this case is it about being free from addiction to oil, flexibility and individualism? Benedictines take a vow of stability, committing them to a community and to a place, enabling roots to be put down and the community to flower.

So at the moment in my state of cold turkey, I feel car-less, as if something is missing. But I hope very soon to be car-free. My set of keys are already lighter in my pocket.