Two of these in one week, sort of? Well, within seven days of each other I guess. But let’s call it a make-up for the first one coming in a couple of days later than I wanted.
Also, its been kind of a shit week for me mentally so maybe if I write it’ll help me get through it? I’m sure I’ll get better at embedding pictures in here at some point instead of just punching away at these on my phone, but if I could put a picture this would be where you would see that I’ve taken three Doom Walks already since my last post. Different than just trying to be out in nature, a Doom Walk is almost like trying to run away from myself? Like how we have come to glorify runners in society (or at least on social media) when they just go out and push themselves to the point of exhaustion rather than dealing with their life problems… I’ll just leave the house and start walking with this sense of dread hanging over me and no real plan or desire to get home. Nineteen, seventeen, and twenty-four miles so far this week. But at least I’m doing better today.
I don’t really know what day of the week is going to be the best for these, or if I even really want to try holding myself to a rigid schedule because I know how bad it would fuck me up if I were to miss one even for a legitmate reason. So maybe the aim for these is to have a new one every 5-10 days, which feels like such a wide range that I can manage to actually get one of these out without feeling too much pressure that I shut down but also enough pressure that I actually keep up with it. For at least as long as I can come up with reasons that feel worthwhile. And maybe I’ll stop labeling them as “Week _” but also maybe not because that feels so much easier than trying to come up with a new title every time I write this. Managed expectations while still trying to produce a product of… at least the highest quality I’m capable of.
In an emerging theme, it sure does seem like I do a lot of housekeeping right off the bat rather than getting into that product I just mentioned. So speaking of high quality topics that feel worthwhile? I broke in my clogs, and thats a Reason To Stick Around.
Week Two.
For the last… five or six years I have wanted to be a Birkenstock person. Again one of those super easy to point to “wow you weren’t as miserable living in a crunchy liberal bubble in New Hampshire as you thought you were” and maybe you’re right but also maybe shut up and let me get to the point on my own. But for reasons that I’m not quite sure how to articulate, the prospect of becoming a Birkenstock Person has always seemed daunting and unattainable. So every late August/early September I would look at the website, and then three or four other department stores, and wonder if this would be the year. And then: The Pandemic. Everyone got Birkenstock Bostons and Patagonia Baggies and never left the house again, and I felt like if I did it now I would surely be looked at as the fraud I felt I was… so again, I waited. And then they sold out of the color I wanted anyway, so kismet.
This is all riveting, I’m sure, but I promise I’m getting to the point.
Fast forward from March 2020 to late July 2021. We have just moved to Providence after having just moved to Portland six months earlier, and I have convinced myself that I can re-re-invent myself. I buy the damn shoes. And then they sit in the box for two weeks. And then they sit on the floor next to where we take off all the shoes for another two weeks. There’s always an excuse not to wear them: the walk is going to be too long, what if I ruin the suede, it looks like its going to rain, they don’t go with the outfit I’m wearing and I’ve already changed three times because I didn’t like the way my shirts fit me and I still aven’t unpacked all my clothes.
I wore the fucking clogs two times in the first six weeks of owning them. Once to walk roughly eight blocks to pick up Indian food, and I hated every second of it because I was worried about dodging anything in my path that looked like it would create a mark of any kind. And the other was sitting in my own backyard with a couple of friends that came to town to visit. They made it exactly 11 feet from the door to a chair and then back inside to be carefully placed where they’ve been gathering dust. I was consumed by this overwhelming sense that I am not this person and everyone around me knows it.
The remedy? I took them on a trip. We had scheduled a trip to New Hampshire for my wife to do a charity run where she used to work, and I just didn’t take other shoes. If something happens to them, so be it. If people see me in them they couldn’t possibly think that it’s not who I am because they don’t even know me anyway. So I stood around for maybe four or five hours, walking in a town I used to live in and standing at the finish line in these clogs. It was super weird, at first. My feet had no idea where to be in them, maybe a little because they’re probably a half size too big but also because I’ve never tried to wear this kind of shoe in my life.
And then the weirdest thing happened. I scuffed them, and I just didn’t give a shit. Which for anyone reading this might not think its a big deal people scuff shoes all the time, but for me it was a game changer. I am terrified of ruining my shoes. I have at least a dozen pairs of sneakers still in their boxes completely unworn for years that we have moved several times and I have no plans of wearing them any time soon. A couple of them because they’re weirdly valuable and then more often than not because I’m scared I’ll never find them again and I have a hard time seeing them as ephemeral items meant to be worn and used and live out a purpose. But here I was, just owning the imperfection and realizing that I am not the imperfections of my outfit. I am not the fraying of a shirt collar, or the scuff on a suede shoe, and no one is looking at it like “hey fuck this guy over here and his shitty thing that I’m judging him on” because life isn’t like that and people are much too busy worrying about people noticing their imperfections to notice yours.
I guess that’s where I was going with this this week. You aren’t the worst parts of you. You aren’t the things you think everyone around you hates. You can wear those fucking clogs, and you can break them in and they’re going to be comfortable and a gen z cashier at Trader Joe’s is going to say “nice fit”. Which will give you way too much confidence and you will forget that they slip off your foot weird while you’re driving. But some days it’s not going to be something big; some days it’s just going to be this, and that’s ok because any reason is a good reason right?