[LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 7] Healing perfectionism on Pyoseon Beach

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Sun, December 10, 2023 | 03:30

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LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 7Healing perfectionism on Pyoseon Beach

Posted : 2023-07-30 11:32

Updated : 2023-09-04 01:26

A caterpillar on Jeju Island / Courtesy of Rachel Stine

By Rachel Stine

So how deep did this need for productivity run? I know we're going the way of Ganse, but there's no need for stories here. I have numbers.

From 2018 to 2022, I ran a New Year's resolutions group on Facebook. Each year, members attempted to complete at least 70 percent of our goals, often using an app to track productivity. These are some of my stats:

In 2019, I spent about 242 hours working on my New Year's resolutions.

In 2020, it was over 550 hours.

And in 2021, I spent a whopping 743 hours and 40 minutes on goals. That figure doesn't include the hundreds of hours I spent teaching to pay off American student loans, which in itself felt like a Sisyphean task.

Every free moment on the bus was perfect for reviewing Korean flashcards. If some Monster-guzzling teenager could do it, I could too, right? Nothing like the Korean spirit of hard work! It built this country up from the ruins of war. Why shouldn't I try to copy that?

Well … it was giving me OCD compulsions. That might have been a good reason to stop.

But I refused. My grit veered into insanity all the time, and I pushed myself in a way that made friends and romantic partners nervous.

One of the worst incidents occurred on Halloween 2020. That night, I got food poisoning at a crab restaurant, and spent the early hours of Nov. 1 hunched over a toilet. My old boyfriend tied my hair into a ponytail and rubbed my back. "See" he lamented. "This is because you didn't grow up eating crab!"

My gut was tied into knots. But in the back of my mind, I had a different concern. The next day, Nov. 1, was a Sunday. That meant to achieve my New Year's exercise goals, I had to complete a one-hour workout before midnight.

And so I spent all of Nov. 1 silently reassuring myself that the fever, chills and vomiting would only last a few hours. Finally, at about 4 p.m., sprawled across my Korean floor mattress, I whispered in a hoarse voice: "Do you think … we can work out … tonight?"

My boyfriend literally laughed. "No, babe," he said, and pressed a wet towel to my forehead.

I stayed silent. The OCD drill sergeant in my head screamed.

"Your Daechi kids would have done it! No excuses! GET UP!"

In high-pressure cram schools, I had fallen victim to a work culture that prioritized achievement over sanity. Had I remained in Seoul or New York, I probably never would have acknowledged these self-brutalizing habits, let alone uprooted them.

I was only able to do that on Olle Trail 20.

LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 1 How hiking Jeju's 437km of trails changed my life
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 2 Fighting agrarian anxiety attacks on Jeju's paths
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 3 Carrying a grandma through Yaksu Station
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 4 Going full white lady in the woods
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 5 Getting ice cream and umbrellas from strangers
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 6 Discovering deer carcasses at the tea museum
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 7 Healing perfectionism on Pyoseon Beach
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 8 Confronting OCD in Woljeong-ri
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 9 Reading a poem about death in the woods
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 10 Confronting the subconscious saboteur
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 11 Worrying about comments section chaos
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 12 Saying goodbye in Gueok-ri
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 13 Walking back, fast or slow

Rachel Stine has volunteered in the North Korean human rights sphere for over a decade. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Korea Times and other major news outlets. You can view nature photography from her journeys around the world at flickr.com/photos/rachelstinewrites.

jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr