When I woke up this morning, my first thought was “fuck, I have to exercise.”

I’m clawing my way back onto the exercise train this year, and it sucks. I do not care for exercise. I’ve established an elaborate reward system that involves gold star stickers and Chip and Dale-themed Disney pins and it’s still a struggle to get my ass to the gym.

I don’t really care for physical movement in general, and this is a problem. I’m not excited by the idea of leaving the house and moving my body. I am excited by the idea of sitting in my warm basement and playing through Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the second time.

The really sad thing is how I drag everyone else down with me. It would be so good for my family if I was excited about roller skating and made everyone go roller skating on Saturdays. And it would be even better if I made everyone go on a nice winter hike on Sundays, or if I signed us all up for a gym membership with a pool and dragged everyone to the pool every Friday afternoon. If I enjoyed these things myself then it would use very little bandwidth to bring everyone along.

This is the tough part of being the mom. When I am eating candy all the time my kids eat candy all the time. When I’m in my cucumber and tzatziki era so are my kids.

Every good decision I make is magnified in them, and every bad decision too.

It’s too much damn pressure.

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but this whole system continues to weigh on me. It seems like if you’re the kind of person who enjoys being active and eating vegetables then you’ve already got a massive advantage in life and in parenting. But it takes bandwidth and energy for me to make those same good choices that come naturally to others, leaving me with less bandwidth for helping with homework and encouraging piano practice and picking up the living room and sorting through outgrown clothes and grocery shopping and planning birthday parties and planning trips and soothing emotions and not spending too much money and getting everyone–including myself–in bed on time.

Anyway. All I can do is treat myself like a five-year-old with a reward system involving cartoon chipmunks, and hope my kids can develop their own reward system for good choices when they are adults.