I wish I knew what shoes I'm supposed to be wearing. I don't feel like any pair of shoes I've ever owned has been designed for humans to walk in. They all either hurt my feet or disintegrate after a couple months. It wasn't until I was an adult that someone finally took me to a shoe store for fancy people, where they measured my feet, and I discovered that I'm supposed to be wearing wides. That helped, some. But the fancy shoes weren't meant for walking to work in every day.

At some point, shoe stores started selling tennis shoes and sneakers in wide sizes. That helped too. But they're expensive and they fall apart after a couple months. To me, the names of the shoes imply that they're meant to be worn while playing tennis, i.e. on smooth, well-maintained grass courts (or whatever tennis courts are made of. Parquet?) or when stealth is important. I don't know what shoes I'm supposed to wear if I need to loudly walk on dilapidated unmaintained crumbling sidewalks, through mud puddles and patches of grass that have reclaimed the worst of it and, in the winter, up to a foot of snow on top of it all. A good pair of tennis shoes or sneakers is comfortable, because the shoes are pliable, but they fall apart too quickly and I can't afford to keep buying new ones all the time.

So I'm currently wearing a pair of wide boots. But they're expensive and they're not comfortable. My feet always hurt. I almost feel like I should be getting the cheapest shoes I possibly can, and accept that they're disposable. Get on the $15/month shoe subscription plan. Shoes that cheap don't come in wide sizes, but they're also so cheap that it doesn't matter. My feet will stretch them out and they'll fall apart quicker, but then I can just get another pair.

That doesn't feel like it should be the answer, but I don't know what the answer is. Where can I get some of those boots that are made for walkin' I've heard so much about? 🦝