Modern wellness loves to tell us to sit in silence, meditate, and journal our feelings.

Not me. I watch K-dramas. I think they might be one of my favourite forms of self-care.

It feels like every time I open my phone, there’s someone telling me to wake up at 5 a.m., jump into freezing water, journal about my inner child, or meditate for twenty minutes before the day even starts. Honestly, who has the time? There’s always something new we’re apparently supposed to be doing to feel better about ourselves.

Hey, if sitting quietly on a floor cushion and breathing into your diaphragm makes you feel amazing, I genuinely love that for you.

But I’m home with teenagers, so half my day is spent driving someone somewhere, restocking the pantry for the third time, or helping someone find shoes that are literally sitting right in front of their faces. I swear, if those shoes could talk, they’d be screaming, “I’M RIGHT HERE.” On top of that, I’m answering client DMs for my business and trying to get the endocrine system into my head for my nutrition course. At this point, my brain has about seventeen tabs open, and at least three of them are frozen.

By 9 p.m., I’m not looking for spiritual enlightenment. I don’t want to sit alone in a dark room with my thoughts. I’ve had enough thoughts for one day. That doesn’t sound peaceful to me, especially after the kind of day I’ve had. When my brain is completely fried, I don’t meditate. I put on my sweatpants, wrap myself in a blanket, and turn on a K-drama.

People always ask me, “Isn’t it exhausting having to read subtitles the whole time?”

Nope!

Think about how you normally watch TV. You put on a show in English, and three minutes later, you’ve picked up your phone. You’re half-watching some crime documentary while scrolling Instagram, checking emails, or looking up something random on Amazon. Before you know it, you’re trying to follow three things at once. That’s not really resting, is it? You’re just switching between two screens and giving your brain even more stuff to process.

K-dramas are a different story. Look away for four seconds to check a text, and boom… you’ve missed the scene where the chaebol heir gets hit by a white truck, develops amnesia, and somehow ends up working on a cabbage farm. You look back up and have absolutely no idea what’s going on.

With the subtitles, you actually have to pay attention. You’re reading, watching the actors’ expressions, and trying to keep up with the story. There’s no scrolling through your phone without missing something, and honestly, that’s part of what I like about it. For a little while, I’m not thinking about my to-do list, what I need to study, or what everyone needs from me. I’m just watching my show.

Another reason I love K-dramas? The storylines can be completely, shamelessly unhinged.

I mean, look at Crash Landing on You. A billionaire heiress goes paragliding, gets blown off course, and somehow ends up in North Korea, where she meets a ridiculously handsome soldier who hides her, protects her, and eventually falls in love with her. In real life, that would be a geopolitical nightmare. In K-drama land? It’s a love story.

Or take Business Proposal. A woman goes on a blind date pretending to be someone else because she’s trying to scare the guy off. Instead of being horrified by her completely unhinged behaviour, he’s basically like, “Perfect. I would like to marry you.” Sure. Why not? And honestly, that’s exactly what I love about it. (But honestly, in real life, you’d probably be explaining yourself to a lawyer, not planning a wedding).

Just a few hours, I don’t need everything to make sense.

Real life is complicated enough. There are bills, schedules, kids, work, health, relationships, decisions and approximately 400 things you’re supposed to remember at any given moment. K-dramas have their own kind of chaos, but at least it’s someone else’s. You know there’s going to be some ridiculous misunderstanding around episode eight. Someone will get caught in the rain, there will be one umbrella, and two people will stand so close together that you’re practically yelling at the screen for them to just kiss already. Then there’ll probably be ramyeon involved somewhere along the way, and eventually, things will work themselves out.

Real life doesn’t always give you neat little endings. Sometimes, problems are still there the next morning, waiting for you alongside the laundry and the emails you didn’t get around to answering. But when I’m watching a K-drama, I get to step away from my own life for a little while.

I’m not watching because I want to learn something or improve myself. I’m watching because I want to feel something that isn’t my own life for a little while. I want to laugh at ridiculous things. I want to yell at the characters for making blatantly terrible choices, and get butterflies when the two leads finally look at each other after twelve episodes of avoiding it, and sometimes I want to get a little emotional. When the episode ends, I notice I’m actually relaxed. My shoulders have dropped, my brain feels quieter, and for the last hour, I haven’t been thinking about my to-do list. I’ve just been somewhere else for a while. And maybe that’s what wellness looks like for me sometimes.

So if you’ve had a long day and the thought of meditating, journaling, or doing one more thing to improve yourself makes you want to lie face down on the floor, maybe tonight you can skip the self-improvement routine. Put on something you enjoy. Get comfortable. You made it through the day, just put the subtitles on and laugh at something ridiculous.