Recently a string of minor inconveniences has detoured me from getting any kind of daily exercise, and the combination of this with the holidays, a nasty recycled virus, and some extra responsibilities have left me feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and now, according to my all-wise therapist, depressed. I am Patient Zero for mental illness. I already have SAD, ADD, and chronic Just Let Me Take a Nap-itis. Now I’m depressed. Really? Just now? I thought I was born depressed.

In all seriousness, this happens to me every winter to one extent or another. This winter, though, I have gained weight. More than the usual oh-no-its-time-to-give-up-the-second-glass-of-wine weight. This is a sneaky, perfidious weight. My sluggish mind acknowledges that action must be taken, but it is cold outside, and I’ve been playing phone tag with the trainer at the gym to get a new workout planned, and my jeans HURT me. I should take them off. There’s not a lot one can do without wearing pants, except nap. I should nap.

And so it goes. I just want things to be easy.

I was talking to a friend recently who was returning to the grind of medical school after a month off. He was remarking on how easily he had adapted to doing absolutely nothing, and how that scared him because he had some relatives who’d ballooned to four hundred pounds and had not left their house, had not left their sofa, in a decade. “It runs in my family!” he said, looking mildly horrified.

I don’t have to shake the family tree too hard to find my own versions of what I might become if I let things slide, but this only occasionally prevents me from practicing a slew of bad habits. This winter it’s getting harder and harder to find external motivations for doing what my internal motivators have decided to nap through. What if my internal motivators don’t wake up? What if they just go on a long, long holiday and leave no forwarding address? I can see the handwriting on the wall, folks. Inside me there is a fat, alcoholic, hoarding, crazy cat lady living on the public dole and the only thing I have to do to let her emerge is nothing at all.

I don’t want to have to exercise to be thin and fit. I don’t want to have to get up early to get anything done in a day. I don’t want to have to wrestle out all the terrible paragraphs onto a page before one beautiful sentence emerges. I don’t want to have to fight with an acquaintance to have her become a friend. I don’t want to have to embrace a lot of ugly truths about myself before I find the grace to extend forgiveness to someone else, and yet I’m greedy. I want to be, and have all these things.

I just need to say no to the Easy Button.

My therapist says to start with one thing at a time. Get back to exercising every day. I’ve promised him I will, so now I have to do it or lie to him next time. I hate the cold. I’ll blow my knee or shoulder out if I start a new workout without the trainer. The fat lady in me wants to take a nap immediately. But the greedy lady in me wins. I put on three complete layers of clothing and waddle out into the arctic freeze to do three miles.

It is positively blissful.