Sunday Health Progress 3

This was not a healthy week for me, ladies and gents. On Tuesday (my birthday no less), the yellow dust (황사) arrived and settled in for the next three days. William at dollop of solipsism has a nice post from last year, explaining what yellow dust is. In short, it is an evil, sulfurous devil-cloud from the deserts of China and Mongolia that blows across East Asia with the heavy winds. A while back, it wasn't such a big deal and folks in Korea and Japan hardly noticed it. But thanks to China's raping of the environment rapid development over the last 20 years, many of the natural barriers that used to contain the sands on the mainland are gone, and have been replaced with concrete and steel towers of doom that spew forth pollutants at an alarming rate and attach themselves to the particles that now pelt Korea, Japan, and even sometimes affect the weather across the Pacific.

I tried to limit my exposure, even skipping taekwondo, knowing that my immune system had only recently recovered. Alas, the freezing rain on Thursday did me in, and I came down with a nasty sore throat, completely lost my voice (so I missed work Friday), and have been seriously congested for the last two days. I even had to cancel the birthday party Min Gi and I had planned to host today... darn.

As such, my best intentions health-wise were shot to heck, and I've been subsisting on sweetened crackers (고소미), ramyeon, and gallons of water. I feel better today, now that my body has been able to rest a bit, but I'm not even going to bother with weighing in because my system is screwy (and my salt intake so unusually high), so it won't mean much.

This week, therefore I will get back to my goals I set last week, hopefully with greater success. I have been able to devote more focus and time to my writing this week by stopping watching television shows I just don't care about anymore (there are a few, like Lost, that inspire me creatively and so I just don't want to give them up--yet).

I have also been ignoring things I don't really care about and spending more time on the things I know I do. This feels amazingly freeing. I am very inspired. More than I have been in a few months. Enough so that I might actually be excited about moving back to the U.S. in some ways.

Here's hoping this week is better!