Saboteur in overdrive

May 29, 2020

Once I found my old blog I decided to write a post a day. I am in an inner dry state. Have been for a while. Cannot find thoughts, ideas, and the blank page has been scarier than ever -- bringing on palpitations and strong headaches when I sit with my laptop. Once when I was in a similar dry state, I wrote a post a day and it shifted things. It was a process that helped then, can it again? I don’t know. We can never enter the same river, walk the same path, twice. Or as a friend used to say, ‘eggs are broken but once.’

This is mainly a stream of reflections type of blog. I don’t write of ‘important’ things or make too much attempt to structure my work. I can do this, I thought. But two or three days have passed since and each time I have gone to the blog something metallic, tight and impenetrable descended on my head, squeezing and hurting and not allowing anything in or out. I have given up and proceeded to do something else, something less satisfying, something that I knew was a distraction from the ‘real work.’

There are times in life when the ‘real work’ is right there. Easy to know, easy to follow through on. Those are light and joyful states. When I am writing, and the words can’t stop flowing. When I am training, and the body can go on for ages. When I am reading, and I say just one more page until it is 4 am and the spouse opens a sleepy eye and says, ‘oye, go to sleep.’

This is not one of those times. Right now, my thoughts and days are scattered, discontinuous and alternating between feeling empty or filled with zooming nothings. Yesterday I had an Archimedes moment – Yikes, it’s the inner saboteur!

The saboteur archetype thrives on fear and low self-esteem. When in shadow it eggs one to self-destructive behaviour whispering – you don’t need to work today, chill, and do it tomorrow or why sleep now, stay up and watch the show you can sleep in, or whatever. 

Carolyn Myss has named the saboteur as one of the four survival archetypes. I thought hmm… ya, it would be active right now. It feels like a time when survival issues float within even when I feel safe and fed in my home. Lots of fears drift in and out of my body and mind. 

My saboteur is tall and slim, dressed slickly -- waistcoat and pocket watch. He is a man with a soothing voice whose face is always in darkness even when it is bright. He is barely visible but always present right now. His efforts to tear me town, label me useless, have been very successful these days. But last night though he purred in my ear, ‘watch another episode, it’s not that late.’ I turned off the tv and read a few pages of the e-book that I have barely read a line of all month. And here I am today and hope to will be tomorrow too. 

I am going to write everyday until...