I should have known better than to wear those shoes.<\/p>\n
But I was going to a conference in Atlanta for women-owned businesses, and I knew that the women would all be wearing fashionable, high-heeled shoes. My North Georgia casual-comfortable Keens would not cut it in that crowd.<\/p>\n
Instead I wore some black shoes that had heels and are moderately stylish. I had the forethought to realize that I didn’t want to walk to the train station in them (15 minutes+), so I drove to the station. <\/p>\n
Hadn’t thought about the fact that those four minutes at the other end – which turned out to be 10 – walking from the station to the conference, would be on city sidewalks in 90-degree heat. By the time I got to the conference, my little toes were badly blistered and I could hardly walk. <\/p>\n
I managed to get through registration and find a seat. But all through the morning of presentations, I was distracted by the pain in my feet. I couldn’t take off my shoes, though I eased them away from my toes.<\/p>\n
I was equally distracted looking at the shoes of the other women. Incredible high heels, pointy pumps, all lovely and carefully matched to their outfits. <\/p>\n
That pain was about feeling out of place. It’s an effort for me to wear makeup and dress up because I work from home; I’m not used to it.<\/p>\n
But also because, long ago, I decided that you attract the kind of attention you advertise for, and wearing tight dresses and heels and lots of makeup only got me attention I didn’t want. <\/p>\n
There were other women at the conference wearing sensible shoes. And no one there, I am sure, would have said, “EW! I’m not doing business with her, she’s wearing flats!”<\/p>\n
At 56, you would think I’d know myself well enough to say, “To hell with uncomfortable shoes. This is a conference where I don’t need to impress anyone. I’m going to wear comfortable shoes.”<\/p>\n
Next time, I swear, I will do that.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I had to leave the conference and go to a shoe store (not on foot – thank goodness for \u00dcber) so that I could buy a pair of shoes that would get me through the day.<\/p>\n
I picked this penny for today because it is tarnished – and it’s a 2015, which should be bright and shiny. Like a promising day tarnished by a dumb decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I should have known better than to wear those shoes. But I was going to a conference in Atlanta for women-owned businesses, and I knew that the women would all be wearing fashionable, high-heeled shoes. My North Georgia casual-comfortable Keens would not cut it in that crowd. Instead I wore some black shoes that had … read more Day 23: Vanity and pain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[67,82,83],"class_list":["post-5054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-67","tag-beauty","tag-pain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5054"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5063,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054\/revisions\/5063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}