I never feel this good at work. No one feels this good at work. I started to ask myself the obvious question: do I really have to go back to work?

 

It wouldn't cost me very much to just ride my bike up that hill and lie under that maple tree every day. I wouldn't need to live in an expensive city; I wouldn't need a car; I wouldn't need to eat out at fancy restaurants. I'd have to buy a new tyre every now and then, and I'd probably need a bus pass.

But I wouldn't need to work around the clock at a bank to afford that. A few days a week at Burger King and a small apartment in the middle of nowhere would pretty much do it.

This question comes to mind every time I go on holiday. Do I really need to spend 49 weeks of the year doing something I find relatively pointless and dull in order to do something I love for three weeks of the year?

When I was younger, a lot younger, I was a keen snowboarder. My friends were all snowboarders, my clothes were all snowboarding brands, and all I talked about was snowboarding. Between leaving university and joining the real world, I spent months travelling across Canada and the US, living in youth hostels, hitch-hiking and eating fast food every day in order to ride the hills I had read about in magazines.

At the time I wasn't too bad. I could do some of the tricks that were in the snowboarding videos, and there was no couloir or shoot I wasn't prepared to try. But even though I knew plenty of people who were professionals, I wasn't good enough myself to do it full time. Sports, like snowboarding and mountain biking, are about what risks you are prepared to take, how much you are able to "go for it". I was far too conscious of the danger of flopping down the slope like a rag doll to push it hard enough.

So I became a banker. But if I had been slightly more talented, I may have ended up a professional snowboarder instead. I have a fair idea of what that would have been like. For a handful of people, it is highly lucrative and something like being a rock star. But for most snowboarders, it involves travelling continuously, living in caravans and run-down motels, and struggling to survive when the inevitable injuries strike. Of course you also get to ride fantastic mountains, party and avoid wearing a suit.

Now this does have a certain appeal, and I get to pretend to be a snowboarder for a week every year with my old buddies (and they are old). But when I'm done, I can go back to the safety of a regular pay cheque. The following year I can do it again if I want to, although I could just as well do something completely different next time.

And that's where I come to whenever I contemplate a change of lifestyle. The snowboarder, the guy who lives in the broken-down little place on the beach, the guy who works at Burger King and goes mountain biking every day. What they don't have is choice.

I might have a job that I'm not particularly interested in, and I might spend only a fraction of my time doing what I really love, but I have the freedom to choose what I do next. If I don't want to be an investment banker anymore, I could give it up and go live in a hut by the beach. But the guy who lives in the hut by the beach doesn't have the option of giving it up and becoming and investment banker, or an accountant or a lawyer or anything else. Unless he is related to someone like Rupert Murdoch, that is.

So this holiday I'm mountain biking and wishing I could do it every day. In winter, I'll go snowboarding and wish I could do that every day. Next summer I'll go surfing and wish I could go surfing every day. Even though I never will, just knowing that I could gets me through the rest of the year.

And lying on the grass under that tree every day sure is tempting.