if the shoe fits?

i don't wear shoes at work.  i'm not sure when that started but it's kind of a thing.  it's ironic because i love to acquire footwear (the less sensible the better) yet am eager to kick it off at the first opportunity.  my favourite shoeless moment was in the coffee-corner at a bustling (dare i say frantic?) television production house.  my feet in the altogether, i nursed a mug of caffeine (which always was selected to subliminally coordinate with my outfit) only to be be asked if i kept my tootsies bare to "be closer to the earth" for creative purposes.  blink.  sip.  what?  "oh yeah.  totally.  how'd you guess?"  she beamed with the satisfaction of puzzle-solvery and i wondered fleetingly if she was stoned.

people are my favorite.  :D

working in television, one is afforded certain eccentricities.  i brought my cartoon of a wiener dog to work almost daily for a year.  she was an improvement on the neighboring director's shedtastic golden, who was a "sweet-of-heart if not -of-scent" allergy hazard of the first degree.  i had colleagues who worked almost exclusively at night in the spook and quiet of the sleeping building... the phantoms of the opera edita.  another who rigged an admittedly ingenious exhaust system out of CPU cooling fans to vent pot smoke from his office as he worked under the haze of his favorite herb.

even now, working in a philosophy department, i'm in a hotbed of unique-ity, though here the herbs are not consumed... but far more prolific.  even the bathroom stalls contain shrubbery.

but come august 23rd i will enlist in a nation of conformity.  a profession built upon sensible shoes and dress codes.  i have never worn a uniform in my life.   oh, and no one trucks around the ward with nude feet.

medicine simply is not the place to bare your soles.

eccentricity is limited to the colour of your stethoscope as far as i can gather (mine is green on principle but it's admittedly such a dark green it might as well be black.  they have pink but that's a little too Pepto-Barbie for me).  and sitting at the orientations, amid a sea of straightened hair, tall boots 'n' leggings, the appearance of a subspecies seemed to form.  the men almost all had the same kind of "precision-tousled" american eagle look to accessorize their staggering youth; the women were evenly tanned at the "lightly toasted" setting of their generation... and everyone had shoes on.  no exception.

mental note: don't shave your head again, heather.  you'll be fed to the crocodiles.

i have spent over a decade in the indulgent and playful world of entertainment.  i make bad jokes with a passion, employ cartoon voices on a regular basis, and do my best to make fun of myself whenever opportunities arise.   i say "no" to employers and defend my position (something i am sure has served me both well and quite poorly).  i'm not just 10+ years senior to my class-of-2015 contemporaries, i am an openly opinionated, do-my-own-thing, shoeless goofball with two kids and a mortgage!  demographic anomaly meets misfit in general.

i like to think of myself as anti-conformist, but that's as easily said as done in an environment that loves nothing more.  i like to think that i will successfully retain my sense of individuality as i climb aboard the U.S.S.Medschool... but i am a visitor to this foreign culture.  there is a degree of "when in rome" that is requisite to my residence there.  indeed the first vow of the hippocratic oath is one of fealty to the brotherhood of medicine (future blogs on THAT one forthcoming), and it is morally incumbent upon me to honour those words.

it all begins with the first step.

i will require a pair of sensible shoes.  and i'll have to wear them, too.




heavens, what what i done?