Sloth Demon
It Hates My Gym Posters
Possession is often depicted as kinetic action (objects moving, upside-down spider crawls, etc.). The sloth demon operates differently. It wants me inert in a motionless environment. It needs me out of the gym.
We have a home gym. I started buying equipment during the Covid lockdown, and then instead of exchanging Christmas gifts in 2024, my wife and I bought a totally righteous treadmill. Now everything is set up in a spare room next to my home office.
My office was designed for maximum enjoyment of physically sedentary activities, such as writing, reading, watching horror movies, and listening to hair metal. The space is cozy and lush and I love it. That gym room, though, had unwelcoming colors and cold, grim equipment specifically designed to stress my body in uncomfortable ways. Why would I ever leave my heavenly office to go there, let alone enjoy my time in such a place?
Imagine how mad the demon was the day I bought paint. The very act of painting was anti-slothful, and the resulting atmosphere was transformative. I went with Benjamin Moore’s Jack O’Lantern color, which looks differently wonderful in every kind of light. After the gym walls were painted and dried, my wife and I selected posters. In keeping with my office décor, the theme was Totally Awesome Place Worth Visiting. We started with:
Arnold at Muscle Beach
Sarah Connor looking ripped
The Beastmaster (with hawk)
Randy “Macho Man” Savage
Ripley saving Newt
Mr. T.
Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science gym outfit
Try keeping me out of there now, sloth demon.
I walk in and there’s Arnold pumping his triceps in the sunlight. I step on the treadmill and there’s The Beastmaster to my left, Macho Man to my right. Is my willpower soft? Not with Ripley and Sarah prepping to fight Aliens and Terminators. The sloth demon wants me to skip a squat set? Mr. T. pities that fool. And try losing heart in front of Kelly LeBrock. Go ahead and try.
I’ll get into what I actually do in the gym some other time. The important part now is that I like going there because I made it epically more inviting.
“But damn it, Dennis. I don’t have a home gym. What about my sloth demon?”
I hear you. The obvious solution is to take your own sweet-ass posters to the local gym and Fun-Tak them up. But “obvious” doesn’t necessarily mean “practical” or “allowed by membership rules.”
You’re gonna need portable atmosphere. So whether you hit the local gym, exercise outside, or do yoga in your bedroom, see if you can bring some mojo with you. Maybe your décor is a killer, exercise-only t-shirt. Maybe your atmosphere is a playlist. Or maybe the location sucks… but you go there with someone you like, so even the sucky location suddenly rules. The goal is to like wherever you go to exercise. It has to not suck in your mind before you get there, and it has to feel good once you arrive.
Whenever I think about exercise, the sloth demon gets nervous. And when I lace up my sneakers, the demon wants them off, because it knows they’re going walk me straight into my awesome gym. And once I’m in the gym, I turn to Mr. T. We share a knowing look. We pity that demon.