Up to now I’ve been the sort of person who’s lived a compartmentalised life for the sake of getting things done. Writing always has to be done in the office at designated work times. Reading is done in the reading chair by the north-facing window. Homework supervision could only be done at the kitchen table in homework time. But now it’s autumn: Easter holidays are looming and leaves will soon be falling, yet it feels like next to nothing has been achieved in the good old compartmentalised way. Perhaps life as we know it just isn’t anything like it used to be. Should we even be trying to divvy up tasks any more than we should be taking a horse and buggy to the store for a sack of flour and a side of beef? Why was this miracle of wireless internet invented? If recent observations are anything to go by we’re meant to feel equally comfortable checking emails and eating family dinner, sending surreptitious tweets while sitting in lecture halls, SMSing friends while bathing small children, DMing mentors while stirring mince on the stovetop, absorbing world news from iPhones while running treadmills and talking hands-free while driving the dog to the vet. Okay, so being interrupted by net-a-porter updates while trying to write the next paragraph isn’t all that great for the flow of creative juices or indeed for industriousness in general, but it seems other people are managing just fine. Time to face facts. Modern living demands a seamless integration of all our pursuits. Anyway, even if I’d wanted just to write longhand drafts in the office and read crime in the comfy chair these past few months have kept me away from those refuges for so long that at last the idea I’m sure most of you cottoned onto ages ago, namely of living and working totally wirelessly has sunk even into my technophobic skull. Clang! To be a technophobe blogger isn’t just moronic, it’s oxymoronic.

Well then. Needs must. It’s not called a laptop for nothing-it doesn’t need to sit on a desk to be operated. Hold on a moment… Sorry, just interrupted by a small child covered in sticking plasters who wanted to clarify a literary point about the villain in Spiderman 3. Where were we now? That’s right. Be utterly ruthless and banish these last-century ideas, not just about technology but about work and living and everything else. Do everything all at once but nothing properly ever again. Maybe take the laptop into the kitchen to write? Huh? Write in the designated cooking area? It’s certainly a ground-breaking idea, and it might just allow a bit more blogging to let you know how the technotherapy is coming along, tomato sauce in my keyboard not withstanding.

But where does this leave Virginia Woolf’s ‘room of one’s own’, that hallowed creative space with chair, table, brocade curtains and even perhaps a pinboard crammed with bright ideas on scraps of paper? Well, that room of one’s own has shrunk to a little shelf laden with the bric-a-brac of everyday comings and goings: dummies, tennis shoes, dog leads, purple robots, yet for all that a shelf brimming with inspiration. It’s the first thing you’ll see when you drop by for a visit. Just a bit more practice needed, though, to achieve seamless electronic integration of the all the stubborn strands of daily life. Can it be done? Hell, yeah! Anything is possible.

How’s that, Virginia?