After impulse shopping on two pairs of ankle boots, dsicovered a air of suede high heeled loafers and black oxford heels from Joe Fresh.

Advice: Buy from five shoe categories only: boots, athletic, special occasion, work and casual.

1. Assess your current shoe wardrobe before shopping. Pull every shoe out of your closet to determine its current value. Separate each shoe into the shoe categories mentioned in Step 1. Examine the heels and toes of the shoes to see if they need to be replaced or repaired. Decide which shoe categories require additions or deletions of footwear before you hit the malls for a shoe-shopping spree.

2. Determine cost per wearing to determine a shoe’s long-term wardrobe value. Take the retail price of the shoes and divide it by the number of times you think you’ll wear them. For example, if a pair of shoes costs $100 and you will wear them once a week for 52 weeks, the cost per wearing is 100 divided by 52. Your cost is $1.92 per wearing.

3. Think about comfort, then style, before you buy. Shoes are primarily an impulse purchase. A woman sees a pair of shoes she loves and decides to buy them instantly. To prevent buyer’s remorse, think about buying shoes that look good and feel good.

4. Purchase supplies to maintain your shoe wardrobe. Maintain your shoes to extend the life of each pair. Create a shoe repair kit. Buy shoe polish, a suede brush and rain-repellent spray. These items are necessary to not only build a shoe wardrobe but also keep your shoes immaculate after each wearing. (x)

One of the worst pieces of career advice that I bet each of you has not only gotten but given is to “do what you love.”

Forget that.

If you are in touch with who you are, you are doing what you love, no matter what, because you love it.

So how could you possibly pick one thing you love to do? And what would be the point?

The world reveals to you all that you love by what you spend time on.

Try stuff.

If you like it, you’ll go back to it.

I just tried Pilates last month. I didn’t want to try, but a friend said she loved the teacher, so I went. I loved it. I have taken it three times a week ever since. And it’s changed me. I stand up straighter. (I’d also have better sex, if I were having it. The Pilates world should advertise more that it improves your sex life: Totally untapped market.)

Often, the thing we should do for our career is something we would only do if we were getting a reward. If you tell yourself that your job has to be something you’d do even if you didn’t get paid, you’ll be looking for a long time. Maybe forever.

So why set that standard?

The reward for doing a job is contributing to something larger than you are, participating in society, and being valued in the form of money.

The pressure we feel to find a perfect career is insane. And, given that people are trying to find it before they are thirty, in order to avoid both a quarterlife crisis and a biological-clock crisis, the pressure is enough to push people over the edge. Which is why one of the highest risk times for depression in life is in one’s early twenties when people realize how totally impossible it is to simply “do what you love.”

Here’s some practical advice: Do not what you love; do what you are.

(via Penelope Trunk)

As an alternative to methods of writing prose as a form of stress-therapy, I have been recording events and memories of 2012 via the art of illustrations in the Pony Brown diary-planner. Allowing the ink-filled tip of a “kitty princess” pen, to shape and re-lined drawings, is akin to the visualizations in my mind’s eye and a peaceful sensation.

While the art of writing, and writing, is often difficult to accomplish under periods of stress, the alternative methods of the art of illustration continue to thrive under the most stressful circumstance in-between academics. In contrast to creating this post, where I have spent more than an hour revising the grammar, sentence structures, and spelling errors, the action of of drawing the illustrations, adding colours, and snapping-uploading these photos to Flickr was approximately under 15 minutes.

Why does this method provide more of a relief from stress, versus writing?

For myself, it is the lack of verbal conversations. When I find myself in oral communication with others, the subject, and etiquette, often revolves around the environment and the strengths of the force of their personality. It is not so much that we speak, but that we adhere and confirm (or was that, compromise?) in our communications.

However, in contrast, the art of drawing is to satisfy myself, and myself alone. I draw and doodle but once, choosing the colors for these characters and figures is but a single thought, a once-choice that is not prone to constant revisions and the pitfalls of perfectionism (as this written blog post has done so).

Therefore, the art of drawing is much more of an effective stress reliever than the art of writing. I satisfy myself and my desires, seeking an inward approval (versus external acclaim).

Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden; in the large, the smallest weakness is easily seen.
- Leon Battista Alberti

These are a few of the iPhone photos! from the rooftop that day.