The cushion is all but gone...

I'm slowly and happily coming to realize what I won't do with my life and what I should abandon. Dreams on which I should give up, ideas I shouldn't bother writing down, fantasies over which I can finally stop dwelling, and it feels pretty fantastic. It's not a pessimistic kind of giving up, it's a realistic kind of giving up. I'm focusing on other aspects of the adult process and it's making me cut the clutter from other areas of my day and from my brain.

The entrance to my office building, like most big buildings in big cities, has meal detectors which need walking through before I get to sit at this computer and type this. There is also an x-ray machine and today the security guy monitoring everyone's bags asked, "Shoes?" as my stuff passed through. I was still a little sleepy as I stood there waiting for my bag (though not groggy, yesterday being the first "X" on the calendar of a sober household) and looked up at him in time to hear, "Are those your shoes?"

After the day job I have to go straight to the night job, and the plan is to walk instead of take the bus (which is actually faster when commuting inside the confines of downtown Chicago at 5pm on a weeknight). To work today I wore a pair of beat up Adidas which have a strange squeak in the left foot but are in no way worth abandoning since they are still comfortable and fit well and for the sake of sentimentality they were the last thing I bought in the Chicago area (Aurora outlet mall) immediately after getting laid off from my first adult job and then moving back to Iowa to work at a diner while exploring the country and sleeping on couches. Those shoes have been the most important part of my post college uniform and I'm sad to say that they're nearing the end of their run (literally because the cushion is all but gone and I can't wear them to run anymore). I looked up at the security guard and said yes, those are my shoes. He was smiling and said, "Big. Twelve?" No, they're actually size thirteen I told him. "Yeah, I was actually gonna guess bigger, but I didn't want to say anything."

It's pretty common for someone to comment on the size of my feet when they see them when people find out how big my feet are. I'm only six feet tall but I've had feet of a person four inches taller than me since I was twelve. It isn't easy finding big shoes when you live in a small town in the Midwest, which makes the random finding of my Adidas even better. As day-to-day routines come and go, things change and usually aren't as good as they used to be. That's not to say they're worse, just different when you add new elements. Starting my hunt for new shoes (and it will be a hunt and definitely not something as simple as walking into Footlocker and finding a new pair, this will require mail order) has prompted me to feel optimistic that I can move on and abandon old ideas, clearing room to concentrate on new stuff. My new shoes won't have the same arches or the same outlet mall back story as my current shoes, just like my new job won't have the allure of the Travel Channel, but knowing that the right options exist in the world as long as I put my glasses on and keep my eyes open it will make it a little easier for me to try on a lot of pairs of shoes.

Sidebar: You know how there's always one urinal a little lower than the others in the men's room? It's for little kids or shorter guys or whatever? Well a meeting was on break earlier today when I needed to use the bathroom so it was crowded and all the normal urinals were occupied. Not a big deal, but I was eaves dropping on two suits who were washing their hands and not really paying attention to the matter at hand or the lower than usual potty and accidentally pissed all over my leg while using the little kid urinal. This doesn't really add to my point about new shoes and limiting your pursuits, I just thought it was funny. Now I'm just sitting here waiting for it to dry.