Last Friday, I set out to write something really simple about mistresshood.
Instead it became this meaty piece, called The Mistress Manifesto: in praise of an unknown sexual preference
that left me feeling shaky and insecure. An inevitable result from being creative, or at least from my writing style.
It drains you.

Which doesn’t mean that I suffer while doing it!

The writing makes me greedy for more and the thrill of self-revelation is so powerful that I always cut deeper than I intended to, because it fascinates me how far I can take this.
But after hitting publish I’m all like:
“Ouch.”
“Good God.”
“Christ this feels awful.”

My lower back hurts, I’m hungry as fuck, and I can barely convince my mind to reunite with my body. And in a pitch dark, cold house, I make a firm resolution that tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow, I will discipline myself by doing yoga in the mornings, taking healthy bike rides in the sunlight, and indulging in some light writing in the afternoon, while listening to Chopin.

And yet instead, I get up and start up my computer with my mouth still full from breakfast to jot down just one teeny tiny thing.
It will only take ten minutes.
And then I get sucked right back into it and am spat out four hours later, still in my pajamas thinking:
“How the hell did that happen?!”

And if I’m lucky, or if I have evening obligations, then “It” grabs me only once a day. But if I don’t have appointments outside the house, it is very well possible that It either holds me hostage to create not one, but two pieces of content, back-to-back.
Or that It hijacks my evening and makes me create something else.

Usually by seductively presenting it as a “quick and easy idea, that will be fun!”.
It is treacherous, the Genie of Creativity.

So tonight I’m asking “It”;
My Untamed Creativity;
My Calling to speak on behalf of Mistresses;
My Purpose to write every single day of my life;
God;
The Universe;
The Forces that Matter AND the ones that don’t but that would like to have a say in this anyway;
Can we PLEASE for the love of everything we would like to create together, keep this short and sweet, and write for sixty minutes on days when it would also be nice to have some sort of physical exercise.
See daylight.
Have proper meals.
A social life.
Work on my new books.
And not make this daily blogging into an all or nothing thing, where I need to fight you off, unless I m prepared to pay your price from anything between three hours to my left arm.

You already had a go at my left thumb two weeks ago, when I got it stuck in the door, on the first night of my holiday after a full workweek, two glasses of wine, and three hours of writing.
I still have this black nail here, reminding me of what You take, (any of you!) when given the chance.

So I promise you, my dear genie of creativity, my muse, my God, and ALL of you;
I will be here to write, every single day, for a rendez-vous of sixty minutes.
And we will still have a good time, and we’re going to conquer the world, but from now on we also have an understanding here;

Let’s keep this civil.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 25, 2020

I just updated this post, 2,5 years later.
And I’m both amazed and shocked; Things have not changed one bit! 
Writing still is this all-consuming force in my life that devours me.
And I secretly still wish I would have something that starts with a B and ends with “alance”.
And create something that starts with a B, and ends with “ooks”.
And I will.
Because the number 2020 is so cool! I want my books to be published this year, and it will be done.

—

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living
final update  (of course I had to leave 2020’s post script in as well!)
Tuesday 27 October 2026

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