Lauren writes about her lover Mr.Big, because she can’t share anything about her BIG SECRET.
Then she drops from the radar for multiple days.
Before admitting she’s got a confession to make.

I wish I had done this when the story was still fresh, and I felt excited about starting a new life under a new name.
Because last Thursday, after giving serious thought to look for a real, normal job, I chose to become an entrepreneur again!
Even though I had sworn to never do that again, because A it was not necessary in order to sell my own books.
And B because I figured it didn’t make sense to register if I didn’t know what to sell.
Better get a normal job.
I had my own yoga studio for 15 years and knew very well there was little more frustrating than a company that didn’t “work”.
And yet Wednesday night I knew I had to do it!
Because of a number of reasons really.
First of all, because I figured that if I actually had a chance at getting the type of job within a company which I aspired?
I was better off doing it freelance, and not being on the payroll.
Secondly because I felt naked without a company.
And thirdly, because this was the quickest way to consolidate my new name Lauren Harteveld.
In the Netherlands you re not allowed to change your name. Not as some sort of vanity project anyway. But I had already decided that I was never going to work another day in my life, under my real name.
Whether it would be on payroll or independent;
My real name needed a break from having to meet anyone’s professional expectations.
I couldn’t change my name legally, but I could start a company in that name and voila! Lauren Harteveld was born.
I knew I had to do it yet I wasn’t up for difficult questions or explaining myself, which is why I told no one. Another reason I didn’t tell anyone was because I had no idea if you could name your company after “someone” that wasn’t you.
So I wasn’t sure my plan would work.
Short version of the story was that I barely slept for three nights surrounding this decision, and the aftermath of it. That’s how stressed out I was.
On Friday, Saturday, Sunday I didn’t work.
All in an attempt to calm down, get my heart rate back to normal. Get a decent amount of sleep.
And it worked.
Partially, that is.
I did sleep 8 hours last night, and I enjoyed all these days of seeing a lot of people, doing a lot of things.
But I realized that costs energy too!
I m pretty prone to feeling like I somehow failed at being human, a friend, a family member. And if I have then not written in the morning, because I ve given myself off from work – that’s when I start to lose my ground.
My certainty.
You can be in a conversation, or doubting if you’ve done the right thing, said the right thing and so on; which is all bad enough,
But if you don’t have that knowing that at least you wrote a good blog post today – you get adrift.
It’s hard to say exactly when this happened….
In a way I know very well that I did needed a break. It was a good decision.
But the three days of being social and not working did result feeling hopelessly inadequate, and a mountain of clutter in my hallway from going in and out with five different bags to five different occasions from travel, to working the land planting trees.
I still have to empty my kitchen tonight, because tomorrow they start a three day renovation project there.
I have seven journals, notebooks, planners which I have been carrying around almost everywhere I went, because I was hoping to find the time to weed them out.
My sexuality could very well die of neglect.
The heating, which was reinstalled two weeks ago, is still not working properly, so I heat my house room by room with an electric heater that creates so much noise my ears are buzzing every night I go to bed.
And I ve cycled or walked or worked the land every day, getting a ton of exercise and daylight – and yet I feel like total shit.
It’s Sunday night, 8.30 PM, I have a ton of work to do (mainly clear out the kitchen) before I can go to bed.
But that’s nothing compared to the amount of work I have to do to get my life back on track.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

The act of contrition is the forty-seventh chapter from Project M. 

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