“Abramović performed The Artist Is Present, a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum’s atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.”
Wikipedia 

The signs have been there for a while now. That being a writer would not be enough to keep my hungry artistic heart satisfied. Not even now, when I had freed myself up to write only what I really wanted, without ever having to think about how this would make me into a 7-Figure Rock Star Writer.
And without getting distracted by my YouTube channels for this account (The Bon Jovi my life in songs – series*) and my account under my real name where I created yoga videos for my studio.
No more yoga videos.
No more talks on My life in Bon Jovi songs.
It has never been true love between me and video, and I know exactly why that is:
The main reason I did YouTube was because I thought I needed to do that to have a successful yoga studio, or be successful as a writer.
I needed to share my energy, show my face, and give people a chance to get to know me, and interact with me.
If I had been convinced success came from other things than public exposure I would never have been on YouTube to begin with.
And since success never came that way, and I hit my however-how-many-times low, of not wanting to do video anymore, it was done.
Out with YouTube.
If I can detach from the idea of having to make money from writing or yoga, the first thing that goes out are all the activities I made myself do because I thought I needed them.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t like doing them.
Once I was doing them I was usually okay, and I also liked the result.
It was tempting to keep YouTube up, just as it was tempting to keep fantasizing how I was going to become a success after all.
But in the end it wasn’t true love, YouTube and me. It was a fling, not a satisfying relationship. Like an ex you can’t stop seeing.
I quit, so that I could concentrate on my true art.
But then it happened.
And this I did not foresee: The Art itself, changed.
Writing these blogs, creating yoga programs, my art?
No more. The pull, the inspiration, suddenly came from slightly different or entirely new directions.
After visiting a theater, I started toying with the idea of practicing yoga as performance art.
Which reminded me that this was not new:
For years and years, I ve cherished a medium-sized Marina Abramovic obsession. Her older work because of its play with fear of death, and surrender. And her latest work because she makes concepts like meditation and mindfulness, compelling.
I wanted to explore how this could change and perhaps even revolutionize how I taught and practiced yoga.
So that was one side of the Influenced By spectrum:
Theater and performance art.
And then there was the second track.
Because despite quitting my Bon Jovi YouTube series*, I was still looking forward to the concert in June. Maybe you could even say that, although there were multiple reasons of why I quit the channel, one of the underlying reasons was that it was not contributing to a good experience of the concert.
Making the My Life in Bon Jovi Songs – videos was taking time away from what I really wanted: To study the songs they would most likely play.
To go inside the songs, and inside myself as well, so that the concert was already an integral part of me, before I even went.
I feel that is the way to get the maximum out of anything, just like a holiday:
To get into the history of the place, its museums, its unique seasonal things to do perhaps.
So that you know where to start when you’re there.
For example if I look forward to seeing a movie, I ll watch reviews and even spoiler reviews beforehand. And I never regretted it.
I love studying where I am going, not because I want it to pan out according to an exact plan, but because being familiar with the structure or different elements, makes it easier to understand the nuances and appreciate the details.
So I had the intention of dedicating many, many hours to preparing for the Bon Jovi concert.
And in this light, the playlist I had created for the My Life in Bon Jovi series, and studying them and making videos about them, was a huge distraction of what I had set out to do.
And I quit.
With YouTube out of the way, I picked up preparations for the Bon jovi concert. And its impact was way bigger than I expected!
Wow!
Just listening to Jon Bongiovi sing is altering my current use of English, and the way I think, in English. To New Jersey American.
My “own” accent has always been tested as Australian.
I believe both in the way I pronounce certain words, as my grammar. Although that’s not to say, English native speakers cannot find plenty wrong with it.
But I did this language test once, which estimated both your native language as well as where you learned your English.
It said my native language was Dutch, and that my English was tied to Australian. Which makes sense because I am Dutch, and I used to live in Australia, although just briefly.
But I also used to have an Australian friend, who lived here for a few years.
That’s when Australian-ish as my default English probably sank in deeper.
And the last couple of years, I would find it hard to believe my English has not copied many more Australian traits, because I ve been watching Australian born Katrina Ruth videos each and every day.
I have paid programs, but also listen to her free live streams and I m subscribed to her YouTube.
That I was getting so very much out of her online video presence, was one of the prime motivators to stick with YouTube.
I felt a slacker for not sharing my message and my energy on video.
And Katrina Ruth also has a blog! That’s her 362 days a year thing!
So she’s an example that being a writer is no excuse not to do video.
But, however, she does do something that I no longer do: She coaches people.
And she has an online business.
I have decided a few weeks ago I don’t want to offer any services, other than selling books, online/ outside of The Netherlands.
And for the Dutch market I ll create yoga programs, and do in-person or telephone coaching, but it’s not an online business.
Katrina Ruth has been my main source of inspiration for my business and she will keep on being that. Yet I didn’t feel she had a big part to play in this new, unknown path that I was setting my first steps on.
She didn’t match with the theater/ Marina Abramovic vibe, I wanted to infuse my yoga practice with. And she also had no overlap with the Bon Jovi music I was studying or the concert I was preparing for.
But you could see her influence in my patience to sit this out:
The void of not knowing where it is going.
Where my art is going.
Or my life.
And knowing that it is important to not stay busy, or commit to shadow-work, a term she invented to describe doing things that may look like real work to the outside world:
But you know you re hiding.
That you re not speaking your mind, not doing the real thing, writing the book, creating the movement, the revolution, or whatever it is you were put on this earth for to do.
Shadow work is dangerous and evil, because it allows you to fool the entire world and even yourself, that you re on track, when in fact you re throwing away your life away for things that don’t matter.
I didn’t see Katrina Ruth’s wisdom directly influencing whatever art, yoga or even the Bon Jovi concert would turn out to be.
But the fact that I was waiting this new art form to develop and to show itself, was definitely her influence.
And then it happened.
I listened to the latest short videos that were added to her Katrina Ruth channel, and this one turned up:
Get Serious About Your Intent To Live Purposefully…Or You’ll End Up With A Dry Vagina!

In it, she clearly states, and this was probably the biggest Aha moment of 2019, that having that daily release of doing your work as a creator and letting out what needs to come out, is not only crucial to your entire physical well-being (which she had been hammering home for years), and that driven women have a strong sex drive (on her agenda of Points To Be Made since 2018 or earlier), no she was extremely specific this time stating that:
“When you’re a driven badass woman, and you’re in alignment and you’re pressing fully play? You should be wet all the time.”
WHY DOESNT ANYBODY ELSE SAY THESE THINGS?!
WHY DID I MISS THIS?
Why did I, just five days ago, write a blog post about working a day job, and also reserving three hours a day for my yoga, my writing and publishing my books, describing my new lifestyle in the title literally as:
Preparing for life as a monk
Without red flags waving?
Without alarms ringing?
Without an ominous voice barking:
“Hello! Earth to Lauren! Thou art wasting thou life!!”
And not in the Art capital A that you would want to “waste” it on.
That I actually assumed, that the answer to getting a daytime job so that I had artistic and creative freedom, meant micromanaging my creativity?
That is ridiculous.
It s the dry vagina version of creativity! I wouldn’t even call it creativity. It really is a monk’s life.
And I am anything but.
I ve said on more than one occasion, that if I can’t have sex anymore, I will either die or stop writing and probably both.
And I don’t mean that I need a lot of sex, but I need this:
I need intrigue.
Mystery.
Feeling sexual.
Shaving, waxing, taking care of my body AS IF, I m going to have sex all the time. Keeping everything down there in great condition, and yes.
I have wondered, so very often!, until I just stopped caring, and as of today I will just count my blessing:
Why am I wet so often?
I even know that I ve thought I must secretly be lusting then, after the person I am with, making some perhaps questionable conclusions and decisions in my love life. That was a long time ago but still – that I thought a guy who I rationally didn’t find that attractive, was causing my physical reaction?
Eh. No.
This is how I am if I feel happy, and creative and ALIVE.
Katrina Ruth was so right!
And now I see what was missing in all my recent plans. From the monk lifestyle to the acetic Marina Abramovic inspired yoga to the “studying” of the songs of Bon Jovi:
Sex.
Juiciness.
Mystery.
The forbidden fruit, the unexpected, the great story that has yet to be written. The art that is forever changing and unpredictable and violent and perhaps destructive in unexpected and all consuming ways.
What was missing from my yoga, my work, and being a Bon Jovi fan, was Life.
And for a whole week, I risked losing it for my vagina as well. 

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

*) About YouTube

I m not final on my thoughts about terminating my work for YouTube.
My reason for doing it, is that I’m going for a normal job, which means that I don’t have to have a YouTube channel because I no longer need to be successful with my books.
Nor sell online coaching.
These are all off the table, and writing/art can just be whatever it wants to be.
Another reason, tied to this, and I do mention this in my final video, is that when I have a daytime job, I don’t want this intimate information about me floating around in such an accessible way.
I ve always been extremely open, and am rarely misunderstood by those munching through a meaty blog post. Yet the sex-thing, especially when expressed verbally, makes it feel cheap and too accessible when shared on video.
Too vulnerable even.
And in particular if I don’t offer a service or program that’s tied to it. 
Because I m no longer selling international coaching services or programs, I feel I need to be more careful speaking about these things.
Over time, it has been a continuous mostly internal conversation on whether or not to make my teachings on sex and relationships more accessible through video, or not. 
Right now, with a normal job pending, I have decided to stick to my plan to remove all content, but I ve decided to keep the channel on, along with a few older, neutral videos.
The my life in Bon Jovi Songs series, contains many of my signature ideas on sex and relationships, as well as pillars of my personal history.
It will stay up until June 13.

About this blog

This is the seventh chapter of
7-figure Rock Star Writer part 3: Submission

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3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit (Dutch)

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