Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

I don’t think I’ve ever owned more than 3-5 different pairs of shoes or boots at any one point in time that were in active rotation. I might have more than that right now but several are packed away either for emergencies or gently worn donations because they no longer fit my needs.

Black dress shoes and brown shoes for office work, two different pairs of cross trainers for everyday and gym-specific wear, and a pair of steel toe boots. That’s the general lineup of footwear I keep.

As for designating any as a favorite pair? I don’t know that I could. I’ve never had to retire a pair of shoes or boots and thought about how I was going to miss them, or try to replace them with an identical pair only to be disappointed the new pair didn’t feel the same.

I’ve had some shoes that lasted only six months, and others I managed to wear for many years. In fact, the black pair of Asics I have is probably the same pair I’ve had for the last five years unless I replaced them with an identical pair. In either case, those are probably the closest I could get to having a favorite pair. If it’s truly the same pair as I had in 2019 then those ones went with me to Colorado and California (mountain hiking in the former, San Diego for TwitchCon in the latter) so they’ve seen some serious wear.

Aside from that, I honestly cannot think of a specific pair of shoes that I could figuratively cry over because I loved them so much. I’m basically a shoe heathen. They’re just shoes.