I recently handed the monthly bookkeeping over to our accountant. It was how I imagine handing the keys over to my newly licensed driver will feel in roughly 6 more years. I’ve been doing the bookkeeping for our little company for…ever. The funny thing is that I’m a creative at heart and becoming bogged down with the in and out flows took quite a while. Year to date comparison P & L’s run on a monthly and then weekly basis soon followed.
Who knew bookkeeping was a gateway to compulsiveness? I am sure someone knew that. But I didn’t. It wasn’t until three months after my roofer and the other roofer and his wife gave me a thumbs up to turn the monthly maintenance over that I finally got my nerve up and did it. I called Joe. He told me how to package up the files, statements, monthly and quarterly reports from 2010. And I did it all. Wrapped it up in a nice neat email, files attached and it just sat there in the “drafts” box of my email. I had a death grip on that stuff. But finally I got out of my own way and sent it over. And I breathed. Deep. No more dreading that the mistake I made this year will finally be the one that cost more than a payroll service I should have hired years ago. What’s so funny is that I know Joe’s only doing it as a favor to us. He’s certainly not going to retire off of us. In fact I’d be surprised if he made anything off this arrangement of ours.
All this has shown me just how much I hate change. It hate it lots more than the pain of just about any uncomfortable situation you can drum up. But this year, with some much needed business coaching, which I suppose was just the couch trip this roofer’s wife needed, I’ve learned that fearing change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It’s much, much worse. So get out of your own way already.
I just glanced at my post title. Tidal-holic. And it reminded me of why I started this rant. I held that bookkeeping assignment inside my heart for nearly 15 years. When you’re self-employed, keeping the books, watching the ebb and flow of cash can easily become a compulsion. Especially when your business is seasonal. The money flows up on your beach, lapping at your calves and it’s cool, refreshing. And then it slips down back into the ocean, impossibly slick. Dripping through your fist. And you watch those tides – like a surfer. You watch. The ebb and flow of the tide is hypnotic. You can’t tear your eyes away. You’re not watching the high tide and low tide anymore. You’re married to each wave that hits your shore. Balance goes up, up, up. It’s bliss. Balance goes down – oh it’s sinking low. Fret, fret, fret. That beach is brutal. Cut glass and jagged shells. But it’s of your own making. The salty sailor knows that no matter what the individual wave is doing, the tide is sure to roll back in. It always has. It always will. Breathe.
