Channeling Chicago* via Portland and Oakland
You know how sometimes, there’s that one person who always manages to say what you need to hear when you need to hear it? That person at whom you kind of want to karaoke “You’re my inspiration.”*
There’s this blogger. Her name is Carla. I’ve never met her, but I feel like I know her. She’s one of those bloggers who, when she comments on my blog, makes me feel exceptionally fancy.
Today, she had an extraordinary post. Go read it. Seriously. I’ll wait. The rest of my post won’t make sense until you do.
Are you back?
Good.
So – lately I’ve been struggling with something. My life has changed a lot in the last 2 to 2.5 years. I got pregnant. My father died. I had a baby. I finished grad school. I got a promotion. I have a lot more responsibilities than I ever could’ve thought I wanted. I lost some friends.
Yesterday was ridiculously craptastic.
I got my period and with it some of the worst cramps I’ve had in as long as I can remember (and I remember some pretty bad ones). [Redacted statement about bad work experience]. I lost my work ID badge which left me with no way to access certain parts of work without assistance. A work project I spearheaded & championed is doing very poorly and today I have to report to my boss’s boss on it. After getting groceries, I found that our pantry was infested with disgusting little bug-things living in all of our floury substances. And then my child pooped on me.
The combo of 2.5 years of life changes weighing on my mind + one Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day + the extra feels I have due to this being that euphemistic time of the month = very cranky gazelle.
And then I read that post. (You remember, the one I just told you to read.)
And I left this comment:
As you know, I love shoes. (But not flip flops. They kinda creep me out. Actually, toes creep me out, so any shoes that involve acknowledging that there are toes in there REALLY REALLY creep me out.)
My shoe closet: 40% cute yet moderately comfortable dress shoes (wedges, pumps, boots, dressy things); 40% sneakers (I own so many running shoes I could probably open my own store – if you could have a store where all the shoes are the same size) and other comfy shoes; 8% stilettos; and 2% flip-flops (hey! I swim a lot).
In the last two years, I’ve really moved from a much higher percentage of cute but impractical shoes to the 80% cute/comfy and functional/comfy ratio I currently have. Strangely enough, I’ve also lost (it was involuntary on my part) a huge percentage of my high-maintenance friends (those people that were fun to hang out with but when I look at our interactions, I find that there was no sincere closeness there). I’m still looking to refill that gap in my shoe-friend closet, but if my actual shoe closet trend is a good predictor, I’m going to have some awesome people come into my life.
And just like that, I feel better.
Yeah – things have changed. My life has changed. My friendships have changed. But with that hindsight, it’s easy to see that what I’ve lost was worth losing.
Life’s too short for uncomfortable friends shoes.
(And Carla, even if you are a flip-flop afficianado, I’m still glad you’re my bloggy friend.)
*You know you want it.
