On shoes and courage

These are my new shoes.  The uber-trendy ones I allowed myself to buy for fall.  (For those of you who care about such things, they are by Crown Vintage and I bought them at DSW.

Some of you will view this trendiness as a monstrosity.  Others of you will yawn, and tell me I shouldn't call them uber-trendy because that's been in style awhile, Val.

But for me this is uber-trendy.  These are the most outrageous, and perhaps I should say courageous, shoes I've bought in a long, long time.  And I dearly love them.

Do you ever have those things you want to do?

Like change up your hairstyle - cut bangs or go pixie short like you've been dreaming of ever since you fell in love with Audrey Hepburn.  Or get a zebra rug.  Or learn to make crepes.  Or take a trapeze class.  Or paint your nails a forest green that's almost black. Or paint your walls an actual color, a color that's not a watered down shadow of a color.

And yet you hesitate? You stop yourself.  You're afraid it would be too outrageous.  You're afraid people will look at you funny.  You're afraid it would be too extravagant, too risky. You're afraid of what your husband would say when he comes home to the zebra rug.  You're afraid you're too old for forest green nails.  You're afraid you might bomb in trapeze class.  You're afraid crepes will be more effort than they're worth.

So you don't do it.

This is me.  I have many little things like this.  Many of them to do with fashion.  And there's something incredibly liberating about just doing it, fears and risks and caution set aside.

It's just a darn pair of shoes, and yet somehow, it opens me up to new possibilities.  It's just a tiny taste of courage, step by step.