I find Anastasia's blog impressive. The two works selected clearly reveal an innate tension of self-sabotage. In the example of Round Table, the goal of 18 “headless” creatures is to obtain a "head" (the ball), but their behavioral patterns work against their own objective. In the meantime, another work called The Helpless Robot, shows an internal conflict within a robot: one part of it desires to get help from the audience, while another part discourages the assistance. The two interesting works remind me of a few classic cases that frequently happen in our lives: rejecting help, procrastination, and perfectionism.
Basically, self-sabotage is a split creaturely quality. It refers to a conflict between intention and behavior, especially the pair of protective intention and destructive behavior.
It is possible to visualize the quality with a self-deleting writing program. To be more specific, this creature attempts to write an essay, but when it has completed several sentences, it deletes them after a few seconds due to dissatisfaction. In this case, it will never finish the essay, no matter how much time or effort it invests.
This work presents a familiar scene from a Word document, but it may trigger more mixed feelings. Students may recall their deadline weeks, when they have to stay at their desks and work on projects day and night. It is also a time when they find themselves procrastinating and too anxious to focus. While the importance of meeting deadlines has been emphasized a lot, this work offers a new perspective for them to reflect on their state and calls for self-care.