Making a deal with the Devil

Actually, not one Devil, but possibly two. Perhaps this post should be entitled "Making a deal with the Devil about making a deal with the Devil"

Although we all know that the Devil doesn't actually exist, don't we? The Devil "himself" is a creation of man. Our own worst enemy is not a red beast with horns and a pointy tail, but the little voice inside that we fight with every day, which knows all of our fears and intricately presses all of our buttons from the moment we awake to the moment we fall asleep.

If there were a real Devil then I would be in deep sh*t. When I was twelve, my best friend and I created a contract which read "In return for wealth and power, I give my soul to thee". After cutting our thumbs with a pencil sharpener blade, we used a dirty fountain pen to sign it in our own blood. We signed our souls to the Devil. And then walked around for the next few weeks pretending to be witches.

If I ever get wealthy or powerful, I'll let you know. Apart from a dream that there was a man with a goat's head standing in my bedroom, nothing happened and the riches have taken a little too long to arrive, in my humble opinion.

Yesterday's Devil was my Business Advisor. Whilst trying to explain away my current situation and lack of focus, I bemoaned that what I really needed was for someone to keep me accountable and focused every few days - an Accountability Buddy. It's all very well having a coach to discuss Goals every fortnight, but in the interim it is easy to lose momentum.

Instead of saying "Good Luck with that", he held his pen to my Action sheet and said "Okay, so what do you want to get done before our next meeting?"

Oh Crap. You mean you actually want me to commit to doing something productive?

The first item on the list was contacting the MD and sorting out this contract one way or another. It's holding me back. I need to know either way whether this is going to go ahead. The next three items were all related to moving house and selling items and I actually committed to telling the Lettings Agency that I was moving out in the next two weeks as I had originally planned. I felt ever-so-slightly sick when he wrote this one down.

And my forfeit? My Business Advisor has a penchant for kitchen gadgets. During our meeting I mentioned that I have a set of Japanese ice-hardened steel kitchen knives, apparently worth $400 which I bought on eBay for £25 and want to keep. If I don't complete all of the items on the list, he wants the knives.

Double Crap. Why did I open my big mouth?

Yesterday morning I decided to see if I could find an ISBN number for the World Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft book and ran a search in Google. There is one for sale on Amazon in the same condition (actually without the dust jacket - although the dust jacket on mine has seen better days) and it is listed for £268.... Who would have thought that when I was 12 I would have bought a book which which would bring me so much wealth nearly 30 years later.

Anyone would think I signed my soul to the Devil, or something....