Breaking Up with Shoes

I had a revelation this morning.

I DON'T CARE ABOUT SHOES.

I know that pop culture and Sex and the City say that every woman should be obsessed with shoes above all else, but I have tried to love shoes and they just haven't taken. Every season I find one pair of shoes that almost goes with anything, and I wear them every day. Toward the end of the season when we start thinking about rotating the wardrobe a bit, people start talking about what cute new shoes they'll get to wear, and I start getting a stomach ulcer.

This whole week I am taking an entirely self-indulgent vacation. I went to my Holland, MI Bed & Breakfast (Jen and Kevin's house) for a few days to relax, then came back to Chicago to wander around the city until Tuesday. I dropped in on an early morning yoga class today at a studio a few blocks from my apartment on a quest to promote inner peace and get some exercise. The young, good-looking yoga instructor coached us through a pose in which we were to "allow the buttocks to fully blossom." I smiled all the way down from my liver.

What pair of shoes has ever told me that? Shoes pinch and squeeze to shape your feet into what they are "supposed" to look like. Well, I quit shoes.

I'm going to call these years I am living my "personal development" years. I am going to give up trying to care about shoes and other things that don't speak to me, and instead I am going to take dance classes, travel, learn jazz, develop artistic expression, garden, and invest my dollars where my buttocks can blossom.