Walking and the Things I Put On My Feet

These are some of the footwear that I own. I might own way too many shoes for a guy. However, in my case, I'd like to think that it's justifiable, seeing as how walking is a hobby of mine. With the exception of the slippers, 3 out of 4 of which were given to me, every piece of footwear, including the dress shoes in the picture is pretty much worn out.

I try to walk at least 10 km or more 4 or 5 times a week, but I'll take whatever kilometrage I could get. I try to get them in the street and I try to get them in shopping malls and whatever places in the city that I could stretch my legs in. I'm probably a relatively familiar fixture in all the bigger shopping centers here, though I hardly buy anything other than food or maybe groceries and office supplies. I get paranoid that the employees that I keep encountering all the time might think I'm insane or whatnot. I tend to do all this walking this alone.

I might have someone with me say, every 10th time I go out. It's nice being able to talk with someone while walking for a change but usually, I feel a lot more comfortable being alone. Walking helps me to think more clearly and it gets me to wherever I want to go in this city for free. I don't get to think for myself all that well when I'm with someone- no offense to people I've gone out with. Being with someone also tends to make things a bit more expensive for me. I don't know. For some reason I always end up buying stuff when I'm with someone.

I'm not a health freak or anything. It's just that I find walking to be something that can calm me down. As people who have known me for quite some time know, I tend to get pissed off about things quite easily. I'd like to think that I do a good enough job of keeping things under check, but I know that this is not always the case. This makes it so much more important now that it seems that so many things are are conspiring to keep me from getting a sense of groundedness and security.

Why do I have these many shoes then? Surely, four or five can suffice? Well, yes and no. I could get by on just having 3 t-shirts, but I really wouldn't want to. Besides, shoes are so much more than just protection for our feet, they can also make or ruin the rest of your...um...get-up. It's not that I'm really into fashion or that sort of thing, but I having more shoes to go with your pants and shirts can be handy and keep things from being too boring.

Up until 4th year high school, I pretty much only had two shoes- one for school and a pair of sneakers. And these shoes were not only fugly (my mom chose them, of course), they never fit right, namely because I never had a hand in choosing them. As soon as circumstances allowed, I started buying my own sneakers. First, a cheap pair of Adidas sneaks (take note that there was actually a time that the so called classic models cost between 500 and 1000 bucks), then a pair of canvas low top Converse Chuck Taylor basketball shoes (which would comprise the core of my collection) which cost around P450, back in 1999.

Back in those days, chucks and other canvas shoes were simply NOT cool in the least. At least, not in my school. I liked them because they were cheap and because Dimebag wore them. I was actually made fun of for using these shoes. After Nike bought out Converse in 2003, they started this marketing campaign and damn near everyone started to wear them and prices shot way, way, up. Meh. Go figure.

Now I have all the shoes that you could see in the picture, and there are quite a number of pairs that I'm still interested in. As you could see, I'm a solid colors kind of guy. I'm not really a fan of designs that look too cluttered and I did a bit of DIY work on a few of the pairs. I wouldn't buy anything that was too loud per se, but I would buy something plain with the intention of making it loud, if you catch my drift. Call me stupid, but it feels more honest to do it this way, for some reason. I refuse to believe that personality can be bought off the shelf.

I guess I'm pretty lucky that Bacolod City is relatively friendly to pedestrians as compared to many of the bigger cities in the country. I would never want to have to move anywhere where walking to and from places of interest and importance would be impractical. I wouldn't be able to justify having these many shoes then. And I'd be really, really sad when that happens.


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outdated piece in a similar vein:
http://yarrr.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2005/11/a_winded_explan.html#comments