Today, as I have every New Year’s Day for the past five years, I will strap on my running shoes and take part in the Backyard BRRR Virtual Challenge. The goal is to walk, run, cycle or move a total of 31 miles outside in January — approximately one a day.

You’re able to do those miles inside if you want, and I usually do. January is cold and it’s more comfortable walking in my living room watching “Dateline” reruns. But this year, I am committed to slipping into my best winter running gear and heading outside every single day. It’ll be windy, maybe icy and unpleasant. But hard is the challenge. Hard is the reality. And I’m going to stop trying to avoid it and run awkwardly right into it.

To be clear, this column is not about running.

I have written a lot in the past year about escaping the current conditions of hate, fear and economic instability. We are an uncouth country at a scary time, and it’s tempting to try to reality television or yoga one’s way into disassociation. But all the issues remain when this episode of “Real Housewives of Potomac” is over and the yoga mat is put up.

So much of this terrible feeling we’re having now is about helplessness. Our freedoms are being pulled away like strands of string cheese, our neighbors are being kidnapped and our daily costs are rising so high as to strangle us — and it feels impossible to stop. It’s tempting to copy Tina Fey in her infamous “Saturday Night Live” bit that aired in the wake of the racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and eat an entire cake to cope. (The bit was racially problematic, but I get the sentiment.)

Hiding is not the answer. Then we’re still helpless, as well as numb and with higher blood sugar. That just hurts us and makes it harder to flee when the aliens quit playing around and just invade already.

What I choose to do this year, starting with my Jan. 1 voyage into the frozen city, is to focus on the things I can control and not shy away from discomfort.

To quote Glennon Doyle, we can do hard things. There are things we have to do that are so much harder than they should be, and as a widow who is often complimented on my resilience, I wish there were fewer troubling and difficult situations that require me to be resilient. I want some easy ones, thank you.

But for the moment, we gotta get through this hard part. Of course, I have the relative privilege to choose my challenges. I have a warm place to sleep, money for running shoes and access to carbs when I’m done exercising. Everyone doesn’t and I’m grateful. I can absorb some discomfort for those who cannot. The threat to democracy aside, my day-to-day life is mostly good.

I often think that middle-class and rich people love camping and extreme sports because their everyday lives aren’t hard enough, but I’m not going to be dangling off buildings any time soon. I am going to keep my eyes open, though. I am going to help my neighbors when I can, from delivering meals to supporting local businesses, because I can absorb a little more hard for people who can’t right now. I’m not a martyr; I just want to shoulder people where others have shouldered me.

I hope that this hard part we’re in does not settle into permanence. I have no control over most of it, but I have the opportunity for the next month to voluntarily take on something difficult, something outside of my preferred warmth and comfort. As Michael Bolton said, I know every mile will be worth my while, not because they’re going to be fun and easy, but the opposite. I will feel alive. I will experience the chill and bare branches and frozen water, one step at a time.

And they will remind me that I can do it. I can do more.

We can do this.

Let’s step out.