THIS week is a pretty big week for me at work.

I have been organising a large public event for this weekend and it has taken three months of planning and coordinating.

Now with just days left until the big day the pressure has cranked up several notches and my head feels like it's about to explode. It is not a great feeling but I know that by this time next week it'll all be over and probably long forgotten by most.

I do about three or four of these every year. So why is it that every time, without fail, I work myself up into a ball of anxiety and mutate into a slightly fraught control freak?

By the time I have done the pages and pages of health and safety, organised rotas for staff and volunteers, worked out who goes to which venue and find all the speakers, exhibitors and contributors, I feel like I have lived, eaten and breathed the project for months on end. That is probably because I have.

The reality of the day is never as bad as the fear of it; at least that's what I have discovered on previous occasions.

I have my trusty God's Little Book of Calm on my bedside table and each night dip into it for comfort and reassurance.

I try to quiet the nerves and the voices in my head going through the hundreds of scenarios of what can go wrong, worst of which would be no one turning up.

Second worst would be too many turn up, third worst would be those that do turn up hate what I have prepared.

In this final run up to the big day my other half tells me that he knows I'm going to be frazzled, irritable and slightly unbearable.

He knows me well, but he is okay with it because it is what always happens at this point in the project.

So you may ask, as I frequently do myself, why on earth do I do this?

Well, in a bizarre, perhaps slightly masochistic way I kind of like the challenge. I also think it is something akin to giving birth.

You forget all the pain and drama, the discomfort and trauma; otherwise why on earth would you go back and do it again and again and again.