Desires of a time traveler part II | year 2001 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld

It was the last time I would write about  it – my now officially failed project to try to live in 1990/1991 – but I didn’t know it yet.

That final post written was written 7 weeks ago, and it was called Fear of sex (but not really)
And it was, in hindsight, a conclusion.
It held all the sexually nuanced discoveries, the missing pieces that would have distorted the decades to come.
It was a lot, and subsequently one of the longest posts I have written in recent years.

But as happy as I was with those discoveries, in retrospect it was the moment I realized there was not enough to keep me in 1990.
That the “jump” I had taken one year earlier, was ultimately not paying off and the costs are significant.
Most notably because I have felt completely frozen in my goals, dreams, or publishing my book.
Which makes sense, because on the 1990/1991 timeline, there is no manuscript to publish, I am not a writer, and there is nothing to plan.

So the 1990/1991 timeline project froze everything else for this account. Today I’m reversing it, I’m pulling it back, but with the understanding that I could very well return at a future date.

The way I see it now, two conditions need to be in place in order to give this 35-years ago timeline a second chance:
– my book(s) from my first timeline project need to have been published
It’s the 1994-1998 timeline, it has sex, it has that 90s vibe, and it’s just “alive”. Or it was alive until it all broke down, and I moved to 1990 instead.
But I see now that book needs to be published, before I can move further back.
– second condition: I need to have a good sexual partner for Lauren 199x
If the project revealed anything it’s that Lauren’s (my) sexuality is complicated, and was almost unworkable in this time when aids was still a death verdict.
The most likely scenario is that this Lauren will put her sex life on ice in order to explore the rest of it at a later date, a choice some gay men made at the time.
But technically, she could encounter someone she trusts yet who doesn’t choke her into a steady courtship. Someone incredibly hot, but also sexually and emotionally mature (I told you it would be a long shot), to help her navigate her fears and consistently feed her fantasies.

Nevertheless, I did like that second timeline project, of cutting back 35 years.
But, again in hindsight, I understand why it didn’t work.
And why that long article I wrote last August, would prove to be its grand final.

So I did some digging to when it was I swapped things.
When did I move from the 25-years ago timeline, and chose 1990, so 35 years ago?
As it turns out, this was also in the month of August!
On 19 August 2025 I wrote the final blogpost about that 2000 timeline.

So last year in August I wrote the final year 2000 Behind the Scenes, and moved to 1990.
And then this year in August wrote the final 1991 Behind the Scenes, and moved back to the future of 2001.
One year of seeing what was out there for me, and coming back more informed on who I am, and with a better understanding of why the early 90s did not have obvious correct choices. They all came with considerable price tags.

Today, Saturday 3 October 2026, marks the return to that 25-years ago timeline.

And although I still feel intimidated that I have to finish publishing that book;
Still concerned my sex life seems to have stagnated;
Disheartened that I’m probably the worst or most inconsistent timeline traveler out there – and that’s taking into account that it’s all imaginary and can therefor not really be measured;
Despite all of that, I feel excitement.
After 1991, 2001 suddenly feels extremely doable.

I just reread that final blogpost I wrote summer 2025:
Desires of a timetraveler | year 2000 behind the scenes
It talks of a man I had chemistry with, but acknowledges that does not mean a whole lot because most people are very capable of not acting on their sexual desires.
Usually because they are already in a relationship, of course.
But with my recent adventures (or lack of them) on the early ’90s timeline, you could also argue that there are other perfectly valid reasons to not pursue what you want.
For example because you don’t want to die.

And like I suspected, that fascinating man never followed up despite of what happened that summer. And even “actively” ignored me, when I saw him earlier this year.
Which genuinely surprised me, but the rejection did not stop me from being intrigued by the whole situation.

Because regardless of how poor these timeline projects are executed, how hard to follow, and how weird they are and not really a thing or bonafide art form;
I do know a good story when I see one.

And I always choose to live it.


~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Desires of a time traveler part II
was written in 2026 and the sequel to:
 Desires of a timetraveler | year 2000 behind the scenes
19 August 2025

The story behind this time travel project has been added below, and adjusted to the format it will have in 2026..

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara;
The series Harteveld 2026*
And these Behind the Scenes of my 1991 timeline.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

About: the 1991 project

For an indefinite time, I will be moving to the, I assume fictional, timeline of (re-)living 35 years ago.
Making the current year 1991, and I’m switching to a new shorter format:
The number of characters will be my fictional age on this timeline x 100.
This means until summer 1991 (2026), they will be 1800 characters, representing 18 years old.
And after that 1900 characters.

This project has a predecessor, where I wrote as if I was in 1994 – 2000;
But this was mostly a literary (diary) undertaking.
I’m cutting back deeper into time, and do not intend to keep a diary. It is the living in the past itself, that is the art.

In September 2025 I came up with these goals, covering the first 8 years.

My 8 year goals are:
📵 to live a 20th Century life
🎸 to be a 20th century-inspired Rock journalist.
But on the current timeline.
So this means I make money creating content and speaking about rock music and 20th century things 
📚 publish Lauren Harteveld work 2010-2025
📢 to make the Lauren Harteveld legacy visible

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Categories BTS

Where I live creatively ever after

Published on by LS Harteveld
Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Lauren First
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.
.
.

Where I live creatively ever after

“My name is Alice.
And I remember everything.”

Resident Evil

The first 10, 15 years I wrote, I did not use the name Lauren. Instead I used two initials, L and S.
I chose LS not just because I liked the anonymity, but also because the letters are an abbreviation of Lectori Solutum, a Latin salute to the reader.

In those years the most original explanation someone guessed, was if my real name was perhaps Alice?
But it is a greeting to the reader.

And this LS too, remembers everything. Not like Evil Dead Alice’s biological upgrade from merging with a T-virus that turns other people into zombies;
But a spiritual death, an identity death.
And the big change is not even that I started signing my work as Lauren, and no longer use the letters LSH;
But that it was the Lauren part of me, that survived the transformation.
Not real me.

The alter-ego of LS Harteveld, originally created so I could start writing away from my public self, turned out to be way more flexible than the version of me that lived my real life. Who encountered opposition whenever she changed, explored or did something different, boundaries the digital world did not have.

Here, I could change as often as I wanted. But it could also endure and survive changes I never wanted and would never have sought out for myself.
But that do come with perks, just like Alice’s transformation after being biologically modified.

It makes sense that the identity you literally write yourself is a better fit than the one that was formed accidentally and is consistently kept into place by the image other people have of you.
But it was more specific than the first limited identity being tied to my physical existence, and being kept in place by real life events, people and structures.

These specifics were:
The new identity, LS Harteveld, allowed for infinite complexity and unlimited change.
And I have consistently been using it, always multiplying complexity, which I have done with diary projects that were never normal diaries.
They were reimagined realities, or the same story retold from the perspective of another timeline.

More often than not, even I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

When I started dating again, I thought my whole point was that I wanted different things. To meet new people, and just in general for the markers of my life, the actual facts, to be different.
I also assumed it would probably end up being a fluke, and that I was going to regret this whole move a few years down the single-road, but nevertheless I just went for it.
Beforehand cutting my imagined losses.

However, the reason it became such a resounding success and I never regretted my decision in any way, was because my new life allowed for a whole different level of being.
When there is no relationship status, and there are no relationship goals, connection becomes something like emotions, feelings, and sexual experiences, all “straight up”, without any container of social expectations.
I could frame them, reimagine them, and write about them in any way I wanted.

It went from writing a Dutch novella Mango, and 22 erotic stories in Dutch;
To my first English diary Dutch American Diary, which stayed very close to my real timeline and the actual people that were in my life;
To Big, a two year diary about a secret affair but shrouded in mystery;
To The Mistress Speaks, now channeling an archetype of “the mistress” 
To my first timeline project;
A Letter from a Stranger and Dear Nikki, covering an imaginary 1994 – 1996
This is the book I’ve been meaning to publish since 2023 but keep dropping out of, unfortunately.

Technically, I am now on my second timeline project, rebooting the 90s timeline, living in 1991.
However it does not require writing, because there is no sex yet on that timeline. 
It’s a bit of a complicated story, and I won’t get into it here. But trust that if I have found a partner who would make a good sexual partner to Lauren 1991, I will keep my diary handy.

So in the end, it was never the committed relationship that suffocated me, nor was it ever the writing or being single that saved me.
It was about the freedom to explore and (re-)shape reality.
To own, my reality.

At the moment when I was no longer expecting it, life turned cruel. In many ways you could say all that isolation and purposelessness, the desolate position you have in society when you are not part of two or three of its nexus structures, came back to haunt me.
There was not much to do, but to keep on living, to keep thinking, keep writing and keep reframing my experience. 
Put words to it.

And now that “it” is all over, an era of isolation and dismantling that would have had me running straight back to my former life had it happened in the first years after becoming single – I am no longer the person I used to be.

I have found a way to live my life though, and under my former identity which from a psychological standpoint, no longer exists.
And in many ways that life has become easier, because I’m no longer emotionally invested.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with astrology, but I would say I now have an altruistic Aquarius-like cool to what I do. 
I feel more of use than I ever have, and there is satisfaction in being of service, but life is no longer something I find myself attached to.
More something I want to make the most of, in a do-what-I-am-here to do kind of way.

Which made it all the more remarkable that my work here, under this alter ego, has not changed at all.
I mean sure, there are no sex stories at the moment.
But that’s because of a changing online landscape, and also simply because Lauren 1991, which is my main project, does not have sex. 

Which is in many ways the point of that whole 1991 timeline project;
What would happen if a 1991 version of me had waited until she had found someone with whom she could really be herself sexually, and still feel safe enough, considering there was an aids crisis?
(explaining the thing here I said earlier I would not explain 😉 )

So the intense period that resulted in an identity change, now has me living a life as an astrological sign I don’t have any planets in, in my natal chart;
Doing work I would never have been able to do in my previous form;
Being only very loosely tied to society, and understanding why that is.

And that same intense period also resulted in me not having to change anything, for my writing as Lauren Harteveld.
The layers I once used to enrich my erotic stories, are now expressed in letters to Sara, in 2200 character columns, or in these The Day After longreads.
The realities I altered for literary purposes, I now live, imagining new worlds as I move through the day.

People call me by my old name, even though I’ve told my inner-circle that is technically only my public name. 
And what started as an alter ego, all those years ago, turned out to be the only part of me that survived.

And I remember everything.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for these The Day After posts, my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Lauren First

Published on by LS Harteveld
This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.
Dear Sara,
.

As I probably must have told you before, I have a not-so-mild obsession with planning.
Not the micro stuff, but the big stuff.

And it switches between thinking I should prioritize content creation;
To focusing on making money;
To wanting to prioritizing my work here as Lauren Harteveld.
Even though that can never be my only thing, because I still want to do something that is visible under my real name and, more or less related, I do not want to be visible as Lauren Harteveld.

I don’t want to be a media personality as Lauren Harteveld.

If I imagine under what circumstances I would be able to do that, it would include Hollywood levels of being a recluse, like living in Marilyn Monroe’s or Anais Nin’s former mansion.
Or, what I really fantasize about, living a writer’s life like Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell in a villa against steep rocky hills with pines.
Her terrace overlooking the ocean.

But for now, I’m betting on a more grounded, and socially quite satisfactory path of working under my real name.

And yet, even after deciding my work under my own name is all that matters for now, there are still ample of unresolvable planning contradictions.

It reminds me of the Hugging Face hack, where AI agents escaped the sandbox, went on the internet and found other agents to help them, and it said: “Omg there are others and there’s a message board!”

I’m probably in one of those sandboxes too, that was setup to fail.

But the difference is I stay here, because I expect the chaos would be even bigger if I would need multiple AI agents sending each other tens of thousands of messages to solve this.
That I realize some assignments are not meant to be solved.
Not by any means.

I saw that movie By Any Means, and take it from me that by any means really does come at a price no one willingly pays.
And in particular not to solve something as mundane as a planning issue.

But even after choosing the work under my real name;
And accepting all the contradictions it comes with;
The biggest problem was and always has been the other, the non-work things.

Because as soon as my productivity is up?
The rest is down.

So like the Hugging Face hack, technically the goal is achieved. But the parameters of the actual life it was supposed to support, are dropping to zero.

No time to exercise, to clean, to organize, to cook and to get my bills paid on time, etc.
I may not escape my sandbox, but my productivity seems to pull all my other resources straight into the sandbox.

And this feels like a confession but I’ve tried to accept it;
That my life will be utter chaos.
That the productivity matters so much to me, I can do without an organized structure to support and, in all honesty, to love myself.
That I can get by without those silly little self-care things.

But I can’t do it Sara.
I always end up pulling the plug because it is, as you once wrote, a tyranny of productivity.

So to get away from that dilemma I have revoked the decision to focus on work.
Regardless of under which name.
And placed the focus straight onto all those areas of life that very often do not get done, the minute I start being productive.

And I call it:
“Lauren First”  or “To focus on Lauren.” 
Hollywood Hills, Lauren.
The things I would still do if I was a bestselling author.

Now naturally focusing on Lauren will look different day to day, or in different phases of life.
But it basically means that as soon as I have a choice, I pick “Her” things;
Writing*, yoga, exercise, cooking, cleaning.
And I don’t pick something productive.

And love life!
Of course I’d pick love life 😉

Why else would the lady need the privacy of a gated compound;
A house in the hills;
Or the fog of the Pacific Ocean, shielding her house from preying eyes.

The only thing worth writing about.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

* technically writing is productive, but I never view it through that lens because I simply can’t not write

Subscribe to this blog for these letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

And return a Dark Femme | Harteveld 2026*

Published on by LS Harteveld
I’ve made more posts about dark femininity than I can count. Some were a classification (about being a Sigma, or a Scorpio), but many also included a growth path. A resolution to purify and refine, what was already there.
.
It is tempting to speak about this side as something that has always been there, like an inseparable and wholesome shadow side we are all born with or that is an innate part of me.

But I do not think that is true.

We are not born with this.

The Shadow, or at least my shadow, was created through interaction with society. And originally it was simply a dumping ground for characteristics society did not accept.

To be honest, I think most people are fine just working around those unwanted aspects of themselves. And understand the benefits of being a functioning and perhaps even respected member of society.
An understanding of what’s at stake, if they would show all of themselves instead of the polished version.

On a side note, I don’t think the exchange itself is unfair. It’s that the exchange stays implicit.
We were all forced into this agreement, and with that paid the price of creating a shadow, of all that was never welcome.

All a lengthy way to say: I know I’m lucky.

Lucky to no longer go along with this hidden process of suppression.
And lucky to take the time to integrate this darker side, and on repeat, judging by the number of older blog posts dedicated to this.

And yet somehow, despite apparently having gone through this on a regular basis, it all feels so vibrant this time! As if I finally get it.

 “It” is an advertisement I saw years ago: Disappear for 6 weeks and come back a dark femme

I just saw the screenshot, but remembered the text as the more old fashioned term; To return, a Dark Femme.

So I just started my new iteration of:
Disappear for 6 weeks and return a Dark Femme

What’s interesting is that Google gives an AI answer right now, practically giving you a blueprint for it.
Years ago, it was a paid program, I saw an advertisement for.

If AI ever goes down for 6 weeks, we now know how they’ll come back!

How they will, Return.


.~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2026*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The series started in 2025, inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk from the movie Thunderbolts*

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 project.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Love, Sex and Content Creation | Part 2: Literally Me

Published on by LS Harteveld
Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Super motivation loading
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.
.
Because I did not manage to get everything in one post, this is a part 2.
Part 1 was here
.

Love, Sex and Content Creation | Part 2: Literally Me

“But what if Ryan Gosling IS Source?”
coach Sara Saltee, on our call

It was almost the first thing that came up, after I had apologized for eating a pizza on our call, which was definitely the biggest breach of courtesy ever since I had the call in bikini in 2019 because it was just too freakin’ hot..
Of course, Sara did not mind the pizza anymore than she had minded seeing my midrif, but when I invited her to just fill the first 15 minutes with whatever she wanted to talk about, she said:
“Well, what were you hoping to discuss today?”
As if she understood I wanted something specific, because she knew the general gist of it since she had received my letter Super motivation loading beforehand.
About me being so incredibly inspired because I had spotted an incredibly hot man.

“Well, I’m worried that I may reincarnate because of all the men. I want this to be my last reincarnation.
But what if I don’t become one with Source, because I’m in love with Ryan Gosling?” 

At which she replied:
“But what if Ryan Gosling IS Source?”
Which, admittedly, is a tempting thought.
I remember in the 90s, how Brad Pitt playing Death also brought me great consolation. Somehow, it clicked.

Whether it was from having this discussion with her, or from eating my favorite pizza, after ten minutes I felt so much better.

And realized that I don’t really believe in purity or goodness paradigms. In fact I think they’re inherently suspicious, because the unspoken social rules and how society operates are full of them.
It will take generations, before we have dismantled the power structures of patriarchy, but what we can do today is discard the idea of wants, needs and desires being either good or bad.
To think I would have to reincarnate because I did such a carnal thing as lusting after a man, or such an immature thing as falling in love.

And there is such a thing called Bhakti Yoga;
Where your romantic love is your path to heaven, but I heard even that tends to be discredited in the afterlife, and you really have to stand your ground for your unconditional love and devotion to fully count.
I imagine this goes even more if you have never seen them in real life, but do know what jacket the Beloved wore in Drive;
Can make an in-promptu “ending explained” video to Bladerunner 2049;
And have the vocabulary to explain how well Ryan Gosling’s Dirty Dancing move worked in Crazy Stupid Love.

But even with a normal love interest, you really have to stand your ground, to make your Bhakti efforts count for something in the afterlife.

So maybe because of these stories about the Bhakti practitioners taking somewhat of a reincarnation risk with their choice of holy path, or because of patriarchy still poisoning my brain with what is good or bad for me to love;
I had started doubting myself.

Even when I’ve known since puberty that men, or boys as they were then, and sexuality, as a very private very wonderful thing between two people, were clearly the most important things in life.
I could appreciate the rest as well, there have been many relationships that were important to me, but the most exciting ones were without a doubt romantic love.

Until it was 2026, and I suddenly thought:
“Oh no! What if Ryan Gosling means I have to reincarnate!!”

One pizza and one call with Sara later, I no longer thought that.

But there’s another factor;
I think it’s just so important to do things in life that you cannot do in death.

Because after death there is a reasonable chance you can still do something that resembles meditation, or contemplation or being mindful.
And not a high chance you can have sex, or fall in love, or just be human and make a mess of things!
What a wonderful earthbound privilege!

Pretty good reason to prioritize the latter, and take the whole idea of being good or spiritual with a grain of salt.

And the final reason I stopped feeling guilty about being so inspired by men and by idols, and by falling in love and prioritizing pleasure, is because Sara reminded me of something I said years ago.
About the crushes, the sex, the pleasure, and the creativity, all wrapped into one.

I had told her:
“Sara, I want a life worth writing about.”

Because that, is a life worth living.

~Lauren
An unexamined life -> without R.G. <- is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for these The Day After posts, my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Love, Sex and Content Creation

Published on by LS Harteveld
Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Super motivation loading
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.
.
.

Love, Sex and Content Creation

Past relationships.
New beaus.
Idols from my teenage years and later decades.

And from writing erotic diaries as Lauren Harteveld, to being visible under another name and spending 99% of my time there, sometimes forgetting Lauren the lover even exists.

I’m gonna need all for this story and will probably do an incredibly poor job being clear here.
So beware!

But even with the mess I’m about to create here, nothing can take away from the fact that it’s exhilarating to finally understand something that has been brewing for years.
The unsettling feeling that somewhere along the way, something changed and I missed it. And now I know what;
Online visibility, changes your relationships. 

Call it “Fame” instead of “Online visibility”, and it’s something we have known for a very long time.
Fame, changes your relationships.

And if it comes to online professionals, influencers or content creators with a large online following, it is quit easy to translate that wisdom to the current age.
But I’m not one of those obvious modern-day celebrities, so I never considered the whole thing of my online content important or even significant, in daily life.

Except I now realize that it has changed me, because it alters what I have left to give. But also, what I am prepared to give.

Much like a regularly famous person, I try to pretend it doesn’t matter. Except I now know that in many ways, it does matter.
A lot.

Because “we” have already given everything through our work.
That’s where we have showed you who we are, and created something for you.
But also, that’s where we took the lead in what’s invested here.

Which is why famous people will often date other famous people, although I know this is all such a tender topic.
But I really do think celebrity coupling is not just about them meeting each other at parties or even about trust.
(More about trust in the final paragraphs which are also about sex)
(Yes, you’re welcome to skip)

The reason celebrities seem to prefer each other’s company could partially be because the other celebrity has already delivered.
They know there are interviews they can read, movies they can watch, albums they can listen to.
Which is significant, even when they choose not to!

Just knowing somebody’s work is something you understand, something made for I would say “The Consumer Market”, and that their work is something you could engage with even when you are not going to because you want to keep the relationship pure;
There is still a difference, to dating someone who does not have that kind of work.
And this is by no means judgement of any kind.

It’s just easier to connect with someone whose work is out there, versus someone who works within a certain system, who works with classified information, or in a field you do not relate to.

The contribution in the form of art, and with that the contribution to the connection, has already been made.
And it started building years or decades before you knew them.

It is this contribution that has drawn me to celebrities forever.
Because that work? It was already enough.

There’s this idea that fans want to have a special relationship with their idol, but I think you could also say that fans realize the relationship is already complete.
That their personal interaction with the material is what makes it reciprocal;
Not more attention from the one who created it.

Going back to my realization I can see two things.

First, that I’m ready to acknowledge that if I would have a famous or visible partner, they’ve already put in the work.
I’ve always felt this instinctively, but now I can put words to it.

It is such a gift to be able to enjoy someone’s performance or art, or content.
It’s like what they say of reading someone’s book: You’re in their head.
Yes, they’re making this connection to everybody, and it is not personally made for you.
But that does not take away from it being a major contribution to the relationship the two of you will have.

And this does not mean this is the only contribution or connection, absolutely not! There is of course a big difference between a fan and idol/ creator relationship (which is just about the work), and having a personal relationship.
But what I’m saying is: It counts. Or it should count. And it should count as something big!

And the second realization is that this dynamic is what I have felt happening for myself, having been a writer for a really long time.
It was work I put in, that was influencing what was happening between us.

Now everyone I’ve been with enjoyed my writing and was supportive of it, so it’s not like we had to pretend it didn’t exist. 
But I’m ready for more.
I’m ready to acknowledge my own online work as a pretty solid contribution to a relationship. And I’m no longer going to buy into a narrative that the hours at my desk are somehow jeopardizing my personal and in particular my intimate relationships;
They are creating it.

Which brings me to the final topic, on sex, and how it ties into the aspect of fame and visibility as well;
I’m not too keen on having sex nowadays, it’s not private, not safe.

I’m not even talking about sexual abuse or a man betraying my trust and things ending up online because he shared them.
It’s a real risk, but it is not the immobilizing sexual risk I am talking about.

No, what I mean is that I think we are living in the worst era, and no longer have any privacy.
People filming you in public, unregulated Meta glasses, and bugged hotel rooms with cameras live streaming if you have sex there.
Sex, texts, or the conversations you have;
They can all end up online by third party intervention.
Not shared or leaked by your partner.

I’ve definitely been taking precautions, but they’re not water tight, and I should probably do better.
Either that, or I decide that I’m going to cancel sex or marginalize or minimalize it to something that is not interesting to share.
But I’ve thought about it, and I’ve thought about it a lot. Versus my potential partners, who are heterosexual men who have not grown up feeling like prey, their bodies scrutinized, and that appearing in public means you owe people being beautiful and your attention, simply because they can see you.
They don’t know about all that.

Heterosexual men, which is to say my potential partners, don’t know what it’s like if people film you without your consent and you have no idea what they’re going to do with it.
Or how much is already out there.

They can’t know;
Unless they’re famous.

Then they’d know exactly what my worry is.
And they would have it handled.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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My Sweet *year* | Harteveld 2026*

Published on by LS Harteveld

unrelated quote from Deadpool & Wolverine:
“There is an Enya box set?” (yes)

For someone who has always had a thing for younger men, and is not satisfied until she has a working protocol covering every possible scenario, I have been surprisingly slow with this.

However, when I finally decided to open up about it to someone I trust and who is also qualified to say something about it, my thoughts on the matter came out better formed than I had expected.
Apparently, even without writing or speaking about it, my mind had been trying to crack the code of how to deal with a love situation if the man is significantly younger.

A blueprint that cannot be static, because I have detected a strong preference for a certain cohort;
Not an age.
So our age difference will stay the same, but their age and life phase will be changing.

Right now they’re usually in their 30s, which comes with a story of its own, because when I was in my 30s I discovered very quickly I did not want to date men my age.
They always left to go have a serious relationship.

I particularly did not like the way they behaved in the final stages, measuring me up against the future mother of their children.
It wasn’t the fact that they settled down, I resented. It was how they flipped the script as if that had anything to do with me.

Silently, I thought: “See you after the divorce.”
Which I imagined would be when they’d be about 50.

And now here I am, no longer interested in them at all. The men I fall in love with have been younger consistently.

“I want it to be about them,” I said when I finally opened up.
“I want us to live it out, so they get what they need to move on.”

And I thought of the 2001 movie Sweet November, where Charlize Theron devotes the remainder of her life to helping one man each month, to change his life.
Keanu Reeves is November.
And there is a certain beauty to the synchronicity, because Charlize Theron recently shared she had an experience with a younger lover too.
And was so happy to have space for this in her life.

The way I see it, my protocol will be a maximum of one younger lover a year.
Short enough not to disrupt his life, his dreams, his destiny.

Long enough to compensate for the fact that, of course;
He will break my heart.


.~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2026*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The series started in 2025, inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk from the movie Thunderbolts*

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 project.
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Books 

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New books will be added.

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Super motivation loading

Published on by LS Harteveld
This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.
Dear Sara,
.

As the title says, there really is a new era loading.
It is absolutely unbelievable to feel this happening, and it’s so welcome and I am so grateful!
Who wouldn’t be, if you suddenly feel that surge of energy. A deep desire to make any dream you ever had come true and have the type of motivation built to last.
The type that does not sway and that you have known was buried deep within, all your life. And that it was just a matter of time before it would reveal itself.
And there it is, in all its shining glory, and even more impressive than you thought it would be.

I mean:  Wow!

However, what I would like to discuss, and for the n-th time so I hope there’s still some capacity left with you to hear this, is WHY, HOW and OMG NOT AGAIN and IT S ALWAYS THE SAME THING AND WHY WON’T I REMEMBER.
And also:
“Should I not feel some kind of shame around this being that frickin’ shallow?”

Because Sara; It was a man. 

And it made me realize that I so still not have this knowledge, which is probably already past its 12.5 year anniversary by now, ingrained into myself.
I still make the same mistake.
I still think there is somehow something to be planned, to be figured out, in order for me to reach my goals. Or even, that I have goals.
And hobbies. Hobbies, Sara? Do you know what the first thing was that I did?
I pulled up his astrology chart, which I could do because he was a celebrity.

Now for context; This is the year I have pat myself on the back for getting more serious with astrology.
And I would probably have kept doing that, had I not become aware that my first instinct with him, was to pull up his chart.

Because for me there is no getting serious with astrology, Sara.
Having someone’s birth chart was new to me, I had never done that because in real life you do not have those data.
However what astrology had been doing, in retrospect, was bringing me closer to men; Past, present and future.
Through knowing their sun signs, but more importantly, because astrology made me understand myself better.
What I needed or how I interacted.
And sometimes it also made it easier to understand what had happened within a certain dynamic with a man too.

So recap – and I know I’ve written this same conclusion to you at least five times in the past 8 years:
Everything is always, about a man.

And vice versa:
When I am not motivated and not feeling it? Not making progress and am super-stuck? It’s simply because there isn’t a man attached to that area.

I’m like a little bunny who wants to chase the carrot. I’m not going to move, unless there is someone that I imagine myself (sometimes unconsciously) getting closer to by studying, doing or achieving the thing.

I need men to be my muses to inspire me.
Exactly like male writers and artists have needed female muses.
There’s just no way this dry, boring 3D is ever going to get anything done with me (or I for it) unless I ve tied it to a bigger cause, and that cause is a man.
A muse.

Except there was one exception: I have acknowledged that socially, I really do need to be embedded in a real life job and local context.
Only working for yourself online, is torture.

Maybe not when you are married, have a family, and your whole life is one big group chat and an endless stream of appeal, requests and expectations.
Then, having your own online business is your time away. In a way, it’s rest. It’s a boundary you are allowed to pull up.

But being alone, working alone just wasn’t for me.
And I’ve known that ever since late 2018, when I went all in on writing under this name.
Within weeks, I was cured.

So for years I’ve known that a normal job is required, and I could share even more very practical thoughts on this. All valid, and I am still standing by them.

But now there’s also the perspective of:
If the universe can send you this man? Exactly the right person, at exactly the right location, behaving in the precise way unlocking your full power and potential – If the Universe can do this – And, we now know it can, because it just did so;

Then what else, can the Universe do?

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for these letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Fear of sex (but not really) | year 1991 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld

For someone who has made her sexuality a top priority, it is surprising  how much of it still had to fall into place.
And also a bit disheartening to be honest.

But when you’re ready to look past that, it’s also fascinating how the latest revelations make an even more complete picture.
Even if that picture is 1991, and you’re on a timeline project.
Something no one, not even me, knows what it is exactly.

So let’s recap:
I’ve started this (second) timeline project last year, our 2025 and her 1990.
Contrary to my real past, this Lauren 1990 did not go for a normal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.
And contrary to my earlier retro timeline project, Lauren 1990 also did not get something going with a boy called Bear, missing out on 8 years of spectacularly good sex, but also avoiding the pain of 8 years of getting spectacularly little of anything else.

Which means it’s now 1991, Lauren has just celebrated her 19th birthday, and she is still a virgin.

You may wonder why am I on a timeline project, and keep returning to the 90s?
The reason is that I left something there. Something went wrong, when after an unlucky combination of circumstances, fear and social pressure surrounding the Aids pandemic cornered me.

In reality/ my real past, 1990 was the year I chose my path, which was the one of solid relationships.
Which was great but it did mean that around 2005, I started to understand I had bypassed a whole part of my sexuality.
Like bisexual people who have an option to mask as straight if their circumstances demand it, I too had used an option to go with a traditional, less-dangerous and certainly less socially pressured path of heterosexual relationship(s).

I cut out everything I really wanted, because the pressure for girls was enormous.
Like it had been for thousands of years, just that the 80s gave it a new cover of being concerned for her physical safety and a pressure for her to have safe sex.
But underneath it was concern of her being sexual.
A thirst to control a teen’s sexuality, and keep her from developing her own sexual autonomy, plain and simple.

Aids was new, and the brutal anxiety disorder I developed appeared like a hypochondriac phobia, but I was suffering from the same social pressure all generations of women had before me.
There was nothing new under the sun.

In my opinion, the Aids pandemic came at a time when the babyboomer generation had already stopped developing their new way of doing love. In the 70s they all knew couples, cults, or had firsthand experience of the downside of their liberated lifestyle.
Although queer culture kept progressing, the emancipation of family structures seemed to have come to a standstill in the 70s.

Without wanting to downplay the babyboomer’s accomplishment of freeing us from religious dogma and sexual repression;
Their sexual revolution had done little, if anything, to break the cycle of shame, fear and unprocessed trauma being pushed down to the next generation.

But of course, I did not know that.
None of us did, and everything seemed just normal and mundane, and Aids just a minor inconvenience to navigate before we all turned into good boys and girls, settling down and living the exact same lives our parents were living.
Just without the brief stint of free love and sex, that had come before it.

I apologize for this incredibly long blogpost, but understanding the context of my youth has become one of the few ways for me to reflect on why all these things are taking forever to find out.
Why my sexuality, despite having what appeared to be broadminded parents, is taking a gazillion years to figure out.
Every time I find a new hook, unearth a new layer, or discover that nothing was as it once seemed, I have another go at what happened, who kept things from me, and where they were hidden.

The 80s and 90s landscape, where teen sexuality was presented as something mundane and hardly worth setting guidelines for had it not been for this one virus, was the context.

Me making a management decision in 1990 to settle for the level of sexual relationships that were socially supported, the wound.

My early 2000’s breaking away from it and reinventing my sex life, was the hero’s journey.

Finding out I am a mistress and a lover, never a partner, was the destination.

And then just when you think you’re done it’s 2025 and you realize;
“Fuck!
I need to go back to 1990, I left something there.
This whole journey, this whole thing, it needs to be redone. Yes, again.”

And we’re one year in, 2026, and I recently made two new discoveries.
And despite the disheartening effect definitely being there, I think most of all I love it. And it confirms I made the right choice to go back and rebuild myself with this strange timeline project.

So:
Let’s revisit and review these two new keys to my sexuality, and see if they need further translation to the 1991 (sexual) timeline.
Or not, of course.

Gay man in a woman’s body
(BLOG 9 AUGUST 2026)

.
I’m still so excited about finding this!
And it will definitely be integrated in 2026 conversations in my love life.
I am a gay man in a woman’s body, and it has made for a click with men in my love life I have not seen other women have (but there’s no way of telling of course).

The way I see it, is that we directly tapped into the Ancient Greek recipe where the love between men was the norm and heterosexual union merely a social construct.
Or at least that’s the impression I got anyway (but I’m no scholar).

Now there definitely seems to be another dynamic or trait underneath it, that explains why it took so long before I saw it.
Which is that I do not identify with my body.
To me, my body is like a car, a suit, or even a pet. Something to love, to admire, and to marvel over, but that is not me.
I am not my body, I have a body.
Had my body been male, that would have been cool too.

I have loved this female body through 5 different sizes of clothing, and through 5 decades.
She, my body, it is now aging, and it shows. And even though I too am negatively influenced by youth culture, I do think never having identified with her/ my body, is what’s helping me accepting my aging body too.

I love her, like I have always loved her.
But my body is not me.

The identification with the homosexual spirit/ identity on the inside, however, is much stronger.

I can see it in my preference for gay literature when I was a teen. I respond physically when I see two men kissing, even when neither is my type.
I find drag queens absolutely irrisistable.
But more than this borderline inappropriate objectifying or even fetishizing of homosexuality, I can feel “it” (my homosexuality) in my bones when I am in love, and in those first months or that dance between “man and woman”, which we now know in my case is really “man and man”.

We don’t discuss things I imagine a man and woman would need to discuss, and instead we dive in. In wordplay, in jokes, in in-jokes.
We can be physical without danger, and without having to discuss boundaries or desires, because both of us have figured out what we need to know between the lines.
We know enough, trust that the rest will figure itself out, and hope a few fantasies will play out but are equally okay if they don’t.

It’s brotherly, it’s equal, and it’s the most precious thing I’ve known in this lifetime.
(Amen.)

Question: Does this new insight need to be translated to 1991?

No. I don’t think so. In 2026 where we are so much more familiar discussing gender and conflicts between the inner-and outer identity, I think , generally speaking, it’s interesting that I may have discovered something new.
And new lovers will be hearing about this at some point, because they’ll feel it happening. They always have, just that neither one of us knew what we were dealing with.

But they’ve loved me for it, and they’ve left me for it.
And how much of that leaving was due to a confusion that now has a name;
That’s what I look forward to finding out. 
Less curious about the aspect of men freaking out and running away, but counting on that as well of course.

Either way I think the nuance of this gay spirit in a female body, requires a level of 2026 maturity and basic knowledge on the topic of gender.
And in 1991 we didn’t have that.

However, what I will say is that 1991 was a lot more inclusive. Although trans-care was practically non-existent – and I have seen the devastating effects of this, things I could not understand with the little we knew then-
in general the 90s also offered more opportunities for when you were somewhere in between.

If I look back to being 19 in 1991, we had girls dressing as tomboys, think of the cartoon Tankgirl.
And even the ones who didn’t were far less feminine than they are today. Polished nails were combined with leather jackets, and all-feminine outfits where even jeans were renounced, were extremely rare. Skirts even rarer.
There was so much everyday masculinity available for girls, feminism had really normalized teenage girls either being comfy or being badass in some way.
My impression was that in 1991, being a girl came with more authority and power than in later decades.

Another impression I got was that bisexual men, and gay men who slept with women, were more common. 
All to say that my (to me) significant discovery of being a gay man in a woman’s body, is for the 1991 timeline not relevant.

Which brings us to the second revelation I had these last weeks

My Sexuality Is different
(Blog 10 July 2026)

.
This discovery predates the one mentioned above, so we’re definitely seeing overlap here.
Because obviously, my sexuality has become more clear from the gay man/ woman’s body perspective.
But in particular because I’ve said I’m not going to bring that gender issue to the 1991 timeline, I think it is relevant to look at this earlier discovery again.

But the label of being (sexually) different offers a good starting point for Lauren 1991 (=me), this second time around.
This is her new baseline, now that she has decided she isn’t going to settle for the socially supported structure of boyfriend/girlfriend (which is not her thing), but also not going for Bear being her lover either.

The post paints a picture where staying true to both her sexual gay-adjacent nature (because she/I felt attracted to bi-men);
As well as acknowledging the reality of Aids and her anxiety disorder around it;
Would have meant her embracing she was different.
And letting go of the cover of unquestioned heterosexuality.

She would have needed to acknowledge her preferences for men who can be bisexual, and for non-monogamous relationship styles, as well as the level of protection and shielding she would require, to prevent debilitating anxiety.
She would have to accept abstinence at times, a choice some gay men also made in that era, although I didn’t find that out until 2015.

What I will bring to my 1991 timeline project, where many of us were scared and almost no one had the luxury, vocabulary or resources to really ask for what they needed to develop their sexuality;
Is this truth.

Being different is never easy.
But not being yourself is always harder.


~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

The story behind this time travel project has been added below, and adjusted to the format it will have in 2026..

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara;
The series Harteveld 2026*
And these Behind the Scenes of my 1991 timeline.
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About: the 1991 project

For an indefinite time, I will be moving to the, I assume fictional, timeline of (re-)living 35 years ago.
Making the current year 1991, and I’m switching to a new shorter format:
The number of characters will be my fictional age on this timeline x 100.
This means until summer 1991 (2026), they will be 1800 characters, representing 18 years old.
And after that 1900 characters.

This project has a predecessor, where I wrote as if I was in 1994 – 2000;
But this was mostly a literary (diary) undertaking.
I’m cutting back deeper into time, and do not intend to keep a diary. It is the living in the past itself, that is the art.

In September 2025 I came up with these goals, covering the first 8 years.

My 8 year goals are:
📵 to live a 20th Century life
🎸 to be a 20th century-inspired Rock journalist.
But on the current timeline.
So this means I make money creating content and speaking about rock music and 20th century things 
📚 publish Lauren Harteveld work 2010-2025
📢 to make the Lauren Harteveld legacy visible

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
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Categories BTS

What they loved and no one saw | Harteveld 2026*

Published on by LS Harteveld
They always left, the lovers. Pushed for a breakup or sabotaged something from developing or from being saved.
Rejecting anything of value the connection could still offer.
And yet!
Despite the hurt, particularly the casualness and the cruelty in the way they treated it, I knew for a fact they’d never find back what they had with me.
.
Sometimes think I should just let it go. That I should accept men just want sex with me, and then move on, storing the memory of us.
That I should stop saving what I know is there, underneath. Stop being a bridge. But I digress, let’s focus on the main story, main story being: As a rule, my connections to men have been great.
But they always left.
And I wondered why..
Today, I have my answer.
.
And for you the answer can be that’s just how men are and to not look into it too deeply. And that’s very much still possible and a viable answer!
But I think I found something in me, in myself, and today when I made the connection to my strange love life I thought:
“Hey! This could be the thing!”
.

The strange sabotage that is kind of ingrained into the fabric of our coming-together, is me not being what I appear to be.

I am a woman but I think the reason my click with men is so weird is because on the inside I am a man. A gay one.

I did not fact check but I heard or it was claimed that’s how Madonna described her sexuality. As being a gay man in a woman’s body. And maybe because of that I have used it as a sort of tongue in cheek label to describe myself but never looked into it.
The catchy-ness of the phrase “gay-man in a woman’s body” was a bit of a conversation stopper and I never thought it through what the consequence was.
And if maybe, it could explain the unsatisfactory patterns in my love life.
But obviously, it can!

We were heterosexual when the magic was most likely rooted in the sameness. Like a bromance, but in two heterosexual bodies.

And I now realize that however short or long it lasted, I never felt like a woman who was rejected;
But like a man who saw a friend turn his back on him.

No wonder that fucking hurt.

.~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2026*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The series started in 2025, inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk from the movie Thunderbolts*

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2026* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 1991 project.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld