Friday 22 March 2013

Fear Itself


Perspiration’s never a good thing. A pounding heart and light-headedness aren’t very welcome either. Neither is a dose of the shakes, and a case of the dodgy tummy is always to be avoided. But sadly these are extreme symptoms of something that we all experience at some time or other in our lives:  fear.

Fear is one of the most basic of all human emotions. It triggers our ‘fight or flight’ instinct where we either stand our ground or leg it, deciding the odds aren’t in our favour and that it’s better to live to fight another day. Now that’s all well and good if you’re facing down a charging buffalo or the playground bully but I’m not quite so sure how it works when faced with having to complete a set of company accounts.

I’m not too confident when it comes to sorting my business finances. They induce an emotion of ‘bad-scared’ in me. This is quite similar to ‘good-scared’ – the feeling you get watching a spooky film in the safety of your own home – but with the unwanted added reality of consequences. In this case, the consequences are those of HMRC.

Now, in the same way that Catholics can get their sins removed by a priest, in this particular instance I could pay to have my fears removed by an accountant. They’re trained to handle it much better than I am. To be honest though, that would eat up any profits that I might have made throughout the year, thereby being a bit of a false economy. Anyhow, accountants are pretty scary themselves, only slightly less so than clowns, ventriloquist’s dummies or that bloke who’s replaced the meerkat in the insurance advert.
No, it’s time to face up to this particular phobia head-on. It’s time to just get on with it. It’s time to prepare my accounts. So you’ll excuse me if I end a bit early this week. Not only do I have lots of adding up and taking away to do (primarily taking away) but I’ve also got to go to the dentist for a filling.

I keep telling myself – there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing…

© Shaun Finnie 2013

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