Fred the accountant was in the other day and announced that my books were in surprisingly good shape. I think he used the word surprisingly because he knows how thick I am when it comes to anything financial.

Take the quarterly New York State Disability Coverage report employers have to submit. It took me about two hours just to start filling out the first one I had to submit. None of it made sense, especially the part where I was asked how many male and female employees I have on a monthly basis. If you have four employees, two male and two female, it's counted as 12 employees working for you that quarter. I hope the unemployment rate isn't calculated that way.

Maybe it's just me. I have trouble filling out forms -- any forms. I even mess up product rebates, crossing out stuff I don't need to enter. By the time I'm done, it looks like a football play sheet with arrows and circles directing the person reading it to the correct information. If I ever had to do my own income taxes, I'd be behind bars for tax evasion.

What a time I had trying to understand how payroll worked. Fred had to literally walk me through everything: "Gross, for example, doesn't mean obscene. It means the whole amount. And net, well, net is what you're left with in your pocket." Oh, I get it. So net means "almost nothing."

And forget about understanding payroll deposits that I had to make so I can pay the government its share of my revenue. I'm still befuddled by the formulas. Good thing I hired a payroll company to take care of that side of things.

Actually, I consider not knowing this stuff an advantage. Ignorance is not a bad thing to have when you leave a great-paying job to start your own business. Not knowing what lies ahead has probably helped me implement some risky, but ultimately, successful strategies. I look at it this way: Being fully aware of all the consequences of a decision would not allow my gut to take over. When you're an entrepreneur, your brain can cause major damage, especially in the ramp-up phase of a venture. It's kind of like a computer hard drive. If you give it too many commands, it crashes. I honestly believe that the mind is programmed to make automatic, almost instantaneous decisions based on life experiences. And once it's asked to think about different scenarios, it starts from scratch.

Talk about automatic pilot, this is my first week back from a long, overdue vacation, and my brain has completely shut down. I'm working on total instinct, unable to focus on any one thing for more than a couple of minutes. Someone told me it's the effect of being away. I don't know. I think all of those Caribbean martinis had something to do with it too.

George Giokas is the president and CEO of StaffWriters Plus, a specialty agency that places writers in temporary and permanent positions with corporate and other employers. It also provides editorial consulting work. His database includes 2,500 writers and editors specializing in more than 60 categories. His Web site is located at www.staffwriters.com, and you can E-mail him at george@staffwriters.com.

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