When I was little, Ziza loved to throw tantrums. He was nervous and a scaredy-cat. He was afraid of the dark, afraid of getting vaccinated, afraid of having a cavity filled, and my mom and I often had to calm Ziza and try to persuade him. Of course he was still scared, but I would go into the dentist’s office with him. I wasn’t scared at all, so Ziza pretended he wasn’t either, so he wouldn’t embarrass himself. All my life, I’d been certain this Ziza was a secret one that only Mom and I knew about and that there weren’t any others out there. But then I got my hands on Lucy Irving’s Exercise Your Demons: A Mindful Journal [most recent English edition: Sterling, 2020. ISBN 9781454936350].

The book feels like a textbook—it describes different kinds of “demons,” like my Ziza, who can live inside of us: laziness, jealousy, greed. There are thirty in all. Each is described in detail with a portrait to match, showing the demon in all its glory. (These look a lot like Wanted ads.) The characteristics and symptoms in the book will help you easily identify your demon. You could have a whole gang! But the book will give you tips on how to best deal with them. There’s a lot of different advice, but it’s all quite do-able.

Perhaps I’ll start with the “social media demon.” I get a lot of flak from Mom about my smartphone use. I can’t tear myself away from it. I swear I’m only going to look at something for a bit, but then I get carried away… And that happens every time.

Image: ammonitepress.com

So, first step: I have to calculate how much time I spend on the phone. Yeah...I thought it would be a certain number of minutes a day, but in the end it came out to a huge number of hours every week! Turns out Mom is right. This “demon” is stealing a big chunk of my precious life. I’m also greedy and I feel bad giving him so much of my personal time. Onto step two!

Katerina Omelnitskaya, 12
Translated from the Russian by Alisa Cherkasova
Book cover image: sterlingpublishing.com

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