My name is Geoff and I'm a perfectionist. I write these words not to trivialise the suffering of alcoholics, for whom this kind of admission is often the first step on the road to recovery, but to emphasise the possibility of having an unhealthy or abusive relationship with anything that you use as a coping mechanism, however socially acceptable it may be. Just as those with substance abuse issues often use alcohol or other drugs to alleviate deeper anxieties, I find relief from my own insecurities by getting things right. Rather like having a drink in the pub with friends, a desire to get things right isn't ordinarily much of a problem and is often seen as a positive thing. However, in the same way that alcohol consumption can easily get out of control, good attention to detail and a strong work ethic can, given the right triggers, become a paranoid obsession.

Despite having a fairly vivid imagination, I've never thought of myself as a creative person. A practical and conservative upbringing instilled at a young age not only a strong sense of my place in the world, but more significantly how I was supposed to make my way in it. It also instilled a view of creativity which was confined to "serious" forms of art, music and literature requiring a minimum level of skill or expertise (anything else being at best “creative” in the pejorative sense of the word and dismissed accordingly). My great grandfather was a coal miner. My grandfather was an accountant. While I was free to do as I wanted, the direction of travel and the expectations were clear. Given that I can't sing or dance for toffee, was never much good at any of the musical instruments I tried to play at school, and am so bad at drawing that the idea of playing Pictionary makes me more than a little anxious, creativity was definitely not the stuff that careers were made of, nor did it form the basis of particularly enjoyable pastimes. My mum and granny might have described me rather euphemistically as "sensitive" or "artistic”, but that's as far as it went.

If you've read my twitter feed, you might be wondering why a person who talks endlessly about biscuits and otherwise inconsequential matters felt the need to write a number of fairly serious pieces, reflecting on who he is and how he ended up doing what he does. Well, just as you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, you really shouldn't expect twitter, or any social media for that matter, to give you the full picture. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the ability of some people to take things at face value and jump to conclusions, I wrote those pieces to redress the balance and provide a bit of context.

I'm an indecisive person at the best of times and this question encapsulates a conundrum that I have struggled with pretty much all of my working life. I didn't become a solicitor because I felt a vocation or some burning desire to further the cause of justice. I did it because I needed a fairly well-paid job that satisfied my family's expectation that I should "get a profession"; because I was too squeamish to be a doctor, dentist or vet; and ultimately because I couldn't think of anything else. My decision had absolutely nothing to do with what I actually wanted to do, quite simply because I didn't know.

I was never really cut out to be a lawyer, well not the type I ended up becoming. I trained at a large firm of solicitors in the City of London and from day one always felt like a misfit. But how did I get there and stick it for as long as I did? The answer's really quite simple if you know where to look. No-one forced me to do it after all. It was my choice. But my background and upbringing had a lot to do with it.