Avoiding Responsibility

So really, I do have a big question to ponder, and I would be interested to hear what me loyal readers have to think about it. Here is my quandry:

I set up avoidingresponsibility.com at the end 2001 when I left Australia after I finished uni. The whole point, if you missed it, was that I wasn't ready to get old, settle down and die. Hence the 'avoiding responsibility' bit of 'avoidingresponsibility.com' (the '.com' was just so I could say that I owned a dot-com. Impresses people to no end!) Anyway, I have remained pretty loyal to that ethos, with stints in London, Canberra, Dublin and now Glasgow. I never intended to settle down in any of those places, I was still of the vision that 'I'm a backpacker, just here for an extended stay.' (and yes that includes Canberra, my former employers will witness that my dress standards were commensurate with this mindset).

Now for the problem: I have recently accepted an offer to join a small law firm in Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands of the north coast of Scotland. Where you say? Well, follow the link to Google Maps to see.

First Question: Why there? Well, my wonderful girlfriend Lisa scored a job there as a teacher, so as is the way of these things, I'm heading up there as well. It just so happened that this particular firm were looking for someone, and so fate and email interveened and here I am, staring down the barrell of my future: as a lawyer. Not just a lawyer mind you, but a small, general practise lawyer in a small town, on an island, in the North Sea.

There is a bit of 'full circle' thing going on here: I have been avoiding going into the law for sometime now, but the first experience I had with the law was in a small, general practise firm in a small town, in the tablelands, in the Australian Bush. Ok, not so much a circle as a squiggly line.

So anyway, getting to my point: after much study and arguing with various professional bodies, I will be registered as a lawyer in not one, but TWO jurisdictions (does that make me twice as much going to hell?). I will be doing lawyerish type stuff, the real stuff to, like transferring property and writing wills and stuff, not just the other lawyery stuff like insidious laughter and large quantities of cocaine.

And now I hope you appreciate the life-altering magnitude of this decision: there is a chance I will actually have to take responsibility for something. My 'no care, no repsonsibility' work ethic isn't really applicable here. Even if I did still retain that ethic, the aforementioned professional body will hold me responsible if someone loses their home or misses out on an inheritance or goes to prison for an extra 10 years (which I think is unfair, cause if you haven't done anything wrong, why would the police be after you? They would never make anything up! Isn't that right Chris? :P)

So this is the dilemma: can I continue to run a website called avoidingresponibility.com in good faith whilst taking responsbility in my daily life? By even contemplating such a question, am I taking responsibility for my ac tions and not trying to deceive people. Have I been living a lie all this time?

Ah fuck it. If you think I'm selling out, I refer you to my good friends the 2 Live Crew: 'Martinez' wife, you know she sucks a mean dick!'

Sorry for the bad words mummy, you can wash my keyboard out with soap when I get home. Which, by the way, will be in a week. How's that for a way to get a new laptop! :)