Choose your own shoe adventure

I have intense decision making problems. Mostly about small meaningless decisions rather than big. Big decisions I just go with my jungle instincts. Small decisions I needlessly agonize over. Restaurants? You're guaranteed I will send the waiter away twice before I am ready. I require time to develop a delicate balance between the main dish, its side options, appetizers, what other people are getting so I can have a taste, and how excited I am about the dessert menu. Sometimes I feel the need to make marks on a menu so I can keep track of my decisions. I've always been like this. When I was younger, I couldn't just read a Choose Your Own Adventure book like a normal child. I had to go back and forth to determine every possible permutation of the storyline. Quite sad. I don't think I ever actually got through a story because I was always curious what would have happened if I had chosen the other choice. And then given the mini bit of attention problems, I'd lose track and have to start over again.

I am going on a big vacation this weekend that requires non-sneaker comfortable footwear for walking. I'm a big fan of Reef flip flops but they don't stand up well for any sort of volcano hiking or Grecian ruins climbing. My mom suggested European walking shoes... not my style.

My regular sneakers are great, but bulky, and would look goofy if thrown on with a skirt. Sort of evocative of the HR rep walking to work in the 80s. I decided I wanted mesh sneakers like my friend has and embarked on a mission to find them. Google let me down and they do not appear to be made anymore.

After HOURS of scrolling through sneakers on Zappo's and DSW, I found these. I ordered, they arrived, and they were missing shoe tongues. Weird, but kind of Euro-ish, so I went with it. But something didn't feel right; I went back to where the path diverged and ordered a second and microscopically different pair of Skechers.

But these arrived instead. Flashy! And a little too sparkly. But they had a shoe tongue, so that was an improvement. I took them all into work for a poll. The first pair won by a mile. The light blue ones were described as crass. Point taken. So I went to DSW this weekend to return them, and found them in different, less crass colors. So here I am in DSW with like 6 pairs of the almost-exact-same sneaker obsessing over which one to buy. And then I turn, and I see these.

And I love them. They make me feel like a very spry ninja. I spent more time thinking about my footwear for this vacation than I did about college, grad school, and job decisions. Sort of pitiful. But pink ninja shoes are totally worth it.