Sweaty Generalist: January 2014

Beer, wine, vodka, whatever your preference, alcohol is readily available wherever you go. I come from a small town where drinking starts at a young age. I remember hanging out in friends basements as young as fourteen drinking Rockaberry Coolers thinking how awesome our lives were. Those coolers turned into vodka, which turned into beer, then wine and so on. As with many young adults, my life revolved around drinking. Jobs were a means to getting drunk on the weekends. University was a constant party and I loved it! For most of my adult life, I worked through the week and partied on the weekend. I have pictures of awesome times I had with friends, dancing, clubbing, hanging at the pub, but the memories are mostly blurry. In my early twenties it was easy, I could drink all night and have no problem getting up for work the next day. But as I grew older, it became harder to balance work life with my party life. I realized I had all these "drinking friends" but how many real friends did I have?

When I moved to Korea, that lifestyle got even worse. Korea is known for it's drinking culture. Employers take you out to dinner and buy drinks all night. As a foreigner it's how we bond. We work all week and then drink it all away on the weekends. Seoul is one of the top party cities in the world. A bottle of Soju costs $1, and you can buy beer, wine, and liquor at every convenience store(of which there are thousands!). It's very easy to blow all of your hard earned money on drinking, and wake up Monday morning not remembering a thing. My first year in Korea was spent doing just that, and I had a blast! But then my lifestyle began to change. I realized my love for running and cycling, trumped my love for drinking. It was no longer easy to wake up in the morning with a hangover and go to work or go for a run. So I started taking weeks and months away from drinking. It wasn't easy, especially when you belong to a club with the slogan, "A drinking club, with a running problem". But, it helped me sift through the "party friends" and find the real friends.

After my break up last year, I spent the good part of the summer and fall drinking the pain away. And let me tell you, it got very messy. I am a very emotional person. I've been dealing with some eating issues, including binge eating disorder, for the past few years. I am realizing what I do in times of emotional stress, I either binge eat or binge drink and often I do both. I have been working hard on controlling my eating issues and I find that staying active and healthy has helped a lot. I spent most of January not drinking, I'd go to hashes, drink water and have to explain to everyone why drunk Steak wasn't making an appearance. I'm saving it all up for a big night out in Hongdae for a friend's going away I would say. Which I did, last weekend. My good friend Emily is leaving Korea so we had a big get dressed up all nice and fancy last night out in Hongdae(the university party area of Seoul). And I had a blast. I drank, a lot, and danced, a lot, and ate, a lot. Sunday morning came and no surprise here, I felt terrible. Not only was I ridiculously hung over (why didn't my vodka/water/lemon concoction work this time?) but I felt terrible about myself for eating so much and for feeling like I was inadequate. So I proceeded to spend Sunday and Monday stuffing my face with everything and anything I could find. And I cried. A lot. About everything, I cried about my failed relationships this year, I cried about my inability to be confident in myself, I cried about my lack of willpower, I cried about my uncertain future, and anything and everything in between. I work so hard towards my goals in Cross fit and running, how could I sabotage them like this?

After peeling myself up off the floor, I looked in the mirror. Really looked. Why am I doing this to myself? I am very good at convincing others of how confident and great I am, I nail job interviews, I get asked out by great guys, I have tons of friends, why can't I convince myself of the same things? So I thought about my goals and what I want for myself. I want to be healthy, and fit. I want to be independent and able to take care of myself. I want to be able to control my emotions and my eating. And how does drinking attribute to these goals? The answer was clear, it doesn't. Drinking does nothing but derail my progress. It was at that moment that I decided I don't need or want it anymore. Will it be hard? Yes. Will I lose some friends because of it? Probably. But the people I really want in my life are the ones who will love me no matter what. The ones who will stand up and support my decision even if they think it's the wrong one. The ones I can call no matter how long it's been and they will listen and understand like we saw each other yesterday. Those are the people who matter.

The ones who tell me that drinking makes me more fun can suck it. I am who I am. As many of my friends will tell you, I am polite upon first meeting someone, but after that I close off. It takes me a long time to let people in, in my mind, I feel like I need to really know someone before I am willing to put the time and effort into being their friend. Does this make me a snob? Maybe. It definitely makes me a bitch at times. But it also means that I have friends whom I care about deeply and for whom I will do anything for. If you are a friend who falls into that category then you likely know everything about me. You know I am confident on the outside and insecure inside. You know I am sweet and thoughtful and full of feelings and emotions. You know I am stubborn and determined and will fight for my way no matter what. You know I fight for control over things in my life, and you know that instead of showing my feelings are hurt I close off and get defensive. If you are one of those friends, then your response to my declaration of soberness is "Awesome Caley, you got this", not, "Life is boring without drinking". I'm not choosing to be boring, I am choosing to live my life without the negative parts, and alcohol is a negative part for me.

A chat with a good friend this morning helped me feel more confident in my decision. He is brutally honest and at times it sucks, but he knows me well and knows that's what I need sometimes. I told him of my decision to quit drinking and he responded with, "you've said that before Caley." Which I have. And then he made me realize it's time to take a hold of my life. I've got a lot I need to work on, but it's time to make real concrete changes. Get control of my eating and drinking issues. Get control of my debt. Finally live my life for me and not for someone else. I need to stop wishing things will change and make them change. It's going to be hard. But I know I am driven enough to do it. Five weeks left in Korea. Big changes are happening, and I am not going to let anything get in my way. Definitely not alcohol. This is my life and I will be successful!

As I said in my last post I am trying to live everyday I have left here in Korea to the fullest, so last weekend I ventured up north to Pyeongchang with some fellow hashers to run in the annual Naked Race. I've run this one once before, two years ago with some of the Seoul Flyers, and I guess I was crazy enough to do it again. The race organizers gave us a bus to transport us up there so we all met bright and early at 6am to begin the trek.

The race is labelled a "Naked" race but participants actually need to wear a little something. Men were allowed to wear shorts only and women shorts and a sports bra or t-shirt. It was a chilly -5C with a windchill of around -8/9C. It was not the warmest! But crazy as we are, we stripped down and prepared ourselves for 5km of cold!! The Koreans at the race were fascinated with us crazy Waegooks (foreigners) so they were interviewing us and taking lots of pictures. We definitely felt like celebrities!

Posing for pictures

One of the hashers in his running attire for the day!

At the start line getting ready to run!

At the start line I was prepping myself for a slow run, I wasn't planning on breaking any of my records or anything like that, but once I began running I realized I was running at a good pace and was feeling pretty good. After the first 2km I stepped it up and decided I was going to try to beat my best 5km time which was 25:56. As I approached the turn around I realized I was relatively close to the front of the group, so I kept on pushing. I caught up with a Korean woman who was running at a good pace so I tried my best to stick with her. It was clear she didn't want me there as she kept trying to lose me but I pushed on. When we got down to the last 150m she stepped it into over drive and out sprinted me to cross the finish line about seconds before me. I crossed with a time of 25:12, my fastest yet! And to my surprise the woman in front of me was actually disqualified for her clothing(she wasn't wearing shorts) so I placed 5th in the women's 5km. I was joined on the finishers board by my friend Damien, who got 3rd overall and my friend Leigh who was 4th in ladies. We even got a special foreigners ceremony because we missed the actually prize ceremony.