Time to go Bohemian

When less than a year ago I decided to quit my salaried job, I did so with sweat trickling down my brows.

For the first time in my life I was not going to have the security of a regular income and the structure of set working hours. My fallback plan over the years, that of freelancing, was to become my Action Plan.

It felt scary not having a Plan B.

Well, I lived. And here I am now, a digital Bohemian. Like a gypsy, I roam free. I work when and where I feel like. My work is done at the hairdresser's, in cafés, at kitchen tables and, at times (sheer bliss!), in my pyjamas. In fact, over these months, I've come up with this theory: If you can work in the clothes that you feel most comfortable in, then you've found your vocation.

Life-splicing is the newly-coined word for this kind of lifestyle: when work and life are intertwined and there is no formal Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. set-up. Because you work when you feel like, the 'Thank God it's Friday' feeling is no more, or the Sunday evening dread of the looming workday. Every day is a weekday and a weekend.

Also, because you're setting your own pace, you can faff as much as you like without the guilt of failing your employer. I do daisy-chains out of paperclips; stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what I came downstairs for; read every single word of the newspaper - including the Classified - before getting down to work. I pootle, dawdle, potter and hang about, but somehow find that I am more productive than I ever was.

In fact, I now think Virgil was uttering sheer poppycock when, in Candide, he said: 'Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice and poverty.' Since my unedited CV is quite erm, varied, I'm quite the expert on 'work'.

I've had my fair share of poorly-paid jobs where I spent long hours staring at a screen, going so cuckoo with boredom as to pick up an assortment of bad habits (such as developing an obsessive compulsive disorder for checking and rechecking the e-mail inbox).

'Travailler moins, produir plus', said a group of French businessmen to the editor of The Idler magazine, Tom Hodgkinson, when after endless dining and wining, he started fretting that the business part of the meeting would never take place. The less you work the more you produce. And the more time you have about thinking about the meaning of life.

Ha! Now that can be unnerving. We'd rather be 'busy' doing 'important' things, such as preparing umpteenth Powerpoint presentations, or setting up a PA system for an audience of two, than 'wasting time' with the silence of our soul for company.

I was recently chatting to a guy my age who told me he has literally worked 24/7 since he left school at 16. He is now a proud owner of a fleet of three posh cars, a luxurious apartment, a yacht, a grand piano, and his own flourishing business.

He doesn't know the meaning of mortgage, loan repayments or recession. But he has never, ever, travelled. He never had time to loaf about with friends, and even gave up his passion - music - to save up: "My idea was to work hard till I got to my thirties and then settle down and have a family. I now realise life has passed by and I never took time to enjoy it," he said.

Honestly, I felt myself age listening to his story. But this friend is just a product of the very fabric of our society: work, work, work. The insane working lifestyle is one of the main reasons of relationship crisis everywhere. No one is taking time to sit under a tree with their beloved and a bottle of wine.

So that's why I think the Bohemian lifestyle, with the flexibility allowed by digital technology, is the answer. Working nine to five is an archaic way to make a living. It's time for the 'post-office' world. It's no longer about the hours you clock up but about the performance output.

It's the third day of the year today. For the remaining 353 days, as Soichiro Honda had it, make work an expression of your own ideas, and enjoy it. If only we all embraced bohemia, what a society in harmonious rhapsody we'd all be living in.

Postscript: Whatever you do, do not eat at your desk. An Arizona University study revealed that when you persistently eat in front of your PC, there may be up to 400 times more bacteria on your desk than on your toilet seat.

krischetcuti@gmail.com