By Ahmet Abdulaziz ….
I admit I am a lazy person. I usually prefer to delay everything unless it becomes absolutely necessary to do it. The whole of my life I have been like this, in almost all facets of my life.
However, buying a pair of shoes for myself has always been the most difficult act. I do have some genuine reasons for that too, but even then I wonder why does buying a pair of shoes always disturb me so much.
To put it bluntly, my problem is that my left foot is a bit bigger than the right one. I know this is common among people, not all, but a large number of people also face this problem, but I am sure buying a pair of shoes is never such a big problem for them, as it is for me.
It happens whenever I feel my running shoes need to be changed, and I start thinking of going for a new pair of shoes. This is the first step, when I just have to go and buy them, but it has never been so simple for me. It takes me weeks and weeks to force myself to make the decision to change the shoes. For all these weeks, which at times span over a couple of months, my laziness constantly makes me believe that I could still run in the old out of form shoes. But as the time passes and they start hurting my feet while running, I start nearing the ultimate decision. A couple of months usually do pass to reach this stage.
Once a decision to buy the shoes has been taken, I come across the next problem. At this stage I have to decide when to go to the shoe shop to buy the shoes. Again my laziness makes me believe that I am a very busy person, who does not have time to go and buy the shoes. Again this process takes a few more weeks, and I continue using my old worn out running shoes.
The next step is to decide the shop from which I would buy the shoes. Again, my laziness comes up with the history of every shop, making me believe that it had always been difficult to buy a suitable pair of shoes at a reasonable price in the past. Again it becomes a difficult problem to sort out. 
Still in a state of indecisiveness, my laziness makes me believe that if I reduce my running and walking, I would be able to use the same worn out shoes for some more weeks and months. As always, I accept this recommendation and reduce usage of my shoes. But then a time does come when I feel myself compelled to go and buy shoes.
Unwillingly, one day, I go on a tour of shoe stores in the city, trying shoes, and never liking any of them. I return back home without buying the shoes.
When I enter this phase, I usually stop my daily running and walking, because my old shoes hurt my feet too much.
After a couple of weeks I find myself going to one of the shoe stores that I had visited earlier, with a particular pair of shoes in mind. At that stage, I usually enter the shop with the commitment of just picking the shoes, paying for them, and returning home.
Even then I have to try a couple of pairs of shoes to find the ones which can accommodate my larger left foot. The biggest problem is that the common belief is that a shoe would open up when worn and then fit the foot, but frequently it does not happen, particularly in my case. The end result is that I end up buying a pair of shoes which are either too loose or too tight.
Once I buy a pair of shoes, I enter into a phase of adjusting myself to either loose or tight shoes.
However, it is not so easy for me to run with the left foot in a tight shoe and the right foot in a loose shoe. I try to adjust myself to it, but frequently I end up buying an another pair of shoes, with the hope of them being more suitable. Over a period of time, I feel myself forced to adjust myself with one of the two. Fortunately both of my sons have the same shoe size, so they happily take one for free.
Why am I telling all this? It is over two weeks since I bought a new set of running shoes for myself, which I have tried a couple of times. However, I have not yet made the decision to use or discard them and go for an another pair of shoes. I am still using my worn out old shoes, which hurt my feet, and I do not know how far this phase will continue.
Yes, it is just buying a pair of running shoes, but for me it is a very difficult problem.
