Searching for My Solemate

Once upon a time (about 3 weeks ago), I designed the perfect blue shoes in my mind, safe where no one could see them. One day, I decided I was ready for the bright blue suede pumps of my dreams to brighten my mournful winter suits. I went searching for them in every shoe store in Atlanta's retail forest. At DSW, all the blue shoes were patent leather. At Macy's and Bloomingdales, inkblot/navy was the closest color available to bright blue. The mall shoe stores had blue flats and boots and open-toe stripper shoes, but no work-appropriate pumps.



I found two pairs of blue shoes at Neiman Marcus, the Manolo Blahniks from Sex and the City and the latest satin d'Orsay heel from Christian Louboutin - too well-known and not a good fit respectively, and both cost about $900. I went on and on and grew more disillusioned at every stop. "All shoe-makers are jerks!" I declared to anyone who would listen.

Weeks later, I was looking - again with no success- for a new briefcase. I'd spilt tea and food all over my bag that day. Then, half an hour before the mall was to close, an effortlessly fashionable woman passed in my peripheral vision wearing BLUE SUEDE HEELS! They were an enigmatic shade of grey-blue, I observed, as I chased her down in my own heels yelling "Hey, Girl-with-the-hot-shoes!" She got hers a year ago, she said, BUT had seen a similar pair at Zara a month ago. With only minutes left before closing, I ran upstairs to Zara and scanned the store for blue shoes. Seeing none, I grabbed a sienna suede pump and thrust it at a sales associate: "I just saw a girl with shoes like these in blue! She said she got them here!" (I fictionalized a bit. She wanted to know what I wanted, not my life story.) She went to the back and pulled out one of only 2 pairs left, the one in my size. MY SIZE!


I'm sure there are other blue shoes out there that I would love, but this pair makes me happy and were about $80. The moral of the story is that you never find love when you're looking for it, but be ready to seize opportunity and it will come. Alternatively, start your own blog, and no one can stop you from writing about shoes. THE END.

Bad Day

Yesterday was an opus of failure. I embarrassed myself at a new client meeting. I was late to a lecture …at which I was the speaker. I stubbed my foot on my coffee table, so I can’t even wear a 2-inch heel today. I had a women’s doctor appointment, which makes me feel like I’m being treated for the failure of not being a man. (And, by the way, the doctor's scale is broken...I hope.) My car gave out in the middle of 5 o’clock traffic the day before my oil change appointment at the car shop. And, lacking transportation and fearing what the universe still had in store for me, I missed a girlfriend’s surprise birthday get-together. Why is it so easy for others to not say the wrong thing, gauge distances to hard objects, weigh proportionately to their height, never disappoint their friends, and show up to appointments and maintain their vehicles on time?

I took comfort from a good friend’s recent note (the moment she starts a blog, I’ll link it!):

“I worry about the effects of things I said or did years ago, long-forgotten by the other parties involved. I worry that a misspoken word, a misplaced comment, a misunderstood facial expression, or an inadvertent gesture will damage rapport, will destroy reputation, will exacerbate relationships. …Even my actions must, I believe, follow a strict regimen in order to keep up my appearance of being attentive, caring, interested, and otherwise desirable to have around. The reason I do this is because people are measured by their failures instead of their successes.”

When I read these words the first time, I was astonished at how I’d never heard anyone say these things before, but also heartened that I had proof someone besides me ever felt this way. Without her starting this conversation, I might have never had the epiphany I had this morning: everybody poops. Everybody.

You’re not alone, so get up and try again today.

No Such Thing as The One

I have a raging egomaniac I try to keep caged up in myself. If I’m not vigilant, she shoots out of me like the alien in the thriller preview of that alien movie that I never ever wanted to see. So I can understand how romantic it would be to believe in The One, the only perfect other half in this world for me, my destiny. The reality, though, is profoundly more beautiful than the fantasy of God as my personal matchmaker.

If there were, for the sake of argument, just ONE particular person that God/the universe/stars-uncrossing created for me to find and love, the possibility follows that I might miss this person, not recognize this person at a crucial moment, or lose this person somehow. Then, I should be devastated. In fact, people believing this premise to be true, do feel devastated when any of those events seem to come to pass.

But time goes on, and we learn to love again, maybe even feel this sensation of finding our destiny and being the center of the universe again. This is possible, because The One is a myth - not because you were wrong about the last One! Remember applying for college and stressing out about making the right choice? It turned out that there was no right or wrong choice. Each college would have set your life in a new direction, and they all would have been great. An education is an education.

Love is love no matter who you love. Love isn’t a chest that can only be unlocked by a heaven-sent, custom-fitted key. Love is a part of you, of all humanity, and it makes us worth perpetuating in spite of the bad things we do. I think mankind comes out better as a whole in this worldview, and as individuals, we don’t have to stress out so much about nitpicking on someone’s faults or passing some random number birthday alone.

(Shoutout to Rodolfo at MIT procrastinating his PhD by talking out blog ideas with me! Te extraño aca.)