Beal, if you haven’t heard of it yet, is the humorous, but all too real, malady that strikes bloggers at various times of the year, particularly in February and March.
Practical Penumbra’s post on Beal Awareness Week characterizes beal as an illness characterized by having it. I consider it an annoying, but non-life-threatening imaginary illness which spreads at internet speed.
The actual mechanism of contagion is still at issue, but its symptoms are unmistakeable. Everything sloowwwss down and your creative fire goes out.
Researchers have reported other phenomena and side effects.
You can find yourself staring blankly at your monitor or at nothing for extended periods of time. That’s how you know you have beal. It soon becomes the justifer for your non-appearances in life.
Beal is the reason you didn’t get that report done on time or the dog washed and is why you have no idea where your tax paperwork is. Beal is why you cannot even manage to file for an extension.
How to handle beal
Sympathy and understanding have been recommended by early investigators, but there are no reports yet of success from this approach.
A less conventional way of treating beal has had some interesting results. The first clue that led to this handling was the fact that beal only seriously affects those who believe their creativity comes from an outside source.
You might even say that beal is the end result of agreeing that your creativity is the result of someone elses control. If you are willing to believe that all of your creativity comes from within, you can be free of beal.
If you are currently afflicted with beal, first try looking at those things around you that are trying to stop you. Get rid of the worst of these and you will find it difficult to keep your case of beal going for long. You will find yourself smiling again and thinking of ways to get in trouble again.
If there is no external influence stopping you, I will be very surprised, but you might want to look at the things you’ve done recently that you weren’t very proud of. Thing you should have done and didn’t will hold you back from being creative. Things you did that you regret will absolutely stop your creativity in its tracks. And finally, if you’ve had a big failure recently, you can expect beal to dog you for some time.
All of these instances can be handled if you have the determination to do so. You can choose to become creative again without any external intervention. Basically, you have to raise your morale by getting some products out.
If you can’t begin to get products out, you need to handle the things you have done or not done, because these are sticking your attention so you cannot get the show on the road.
Try using these ideas and see if you can be beal-free.
UPDATE: Harvey at Bad Money has an informative and amusing solution for breaking free from beal. He is also the only other blogger I know who uses a keyboard with a PDA for writing.
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