This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara.
Before our coaching call, I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

This message got stuck, started rotting and had the potential to become the most depressive shit I ever wrote.
I had already come to terms that I had no other choice than to show you the raw mess of a disemboweled and dismembered artist life, when suddenly it hit me;
I was NOT lost!
Not at all!

Just Saturday, two days ago, I had gotten an epiphany that had brought me great clarity and changed my life around.
It’s just that somehow on Sunday I forgot.
Maybe because it was all so embarrassing?
I seemed all too eager to forget Saturday’s insights. And was so successful at it, that I honestly  believed I was on the right path trying to build a life from all the neutral scraps and pieces that had nothing to do with Tha Embarrassing Thingy.
Which is (Tadaa!)
I m in love.

Sara – will you please, if I EVER present myself to you in a state of falling apart, ask me if I have been denying being in love? Or if it is otherwise tied to a man?

In 2018 (in hindsight) I believe that everything was caused by my lover having someone else, something I seemed to be picking up on energetically.
I tried soooo hard to look for solutions and explanations inside of myself, when a large part of the reason I felt so messed up was because our affair was in trouble.
I was losing him.

I m not saying that I didn’t have a part in it. After all I do believe that when I m doing really well, he will automatically be drawn to me like a bee to honey and that I will not even care if there is someone else.
So it is a two-way street.
But nevertheless I made the resolution to never look inside of myself for the deeper reason for depression or anxiety, without answering the question:
“Is this about my lover? Am I picking up that he’s with someone else?”

That’s the thing with people like him and me, isn’t it?
Because our attention, our love, is so strong, people can feel it from miles away if you stop doing it. Sometimes I think even Madonna must have felt I stopped being a fan after 25 years. Because I m now back with Bon Jovi.
Who knows.
Maybe we should ask her, if she can feel fans dropping in out of fandom.
Either way  – all just to say, that when I m not doing well, the first explanation could be my lover having his mind with someone else.
Or (option two) I m in love and not acknowledging it.

Or I acknowledge it one Saturday, but then refuse to live my life honoring this inspiration, and set myself up for a Monday where the suicidal thoughts return.

The despair of feeling such a loser for both NOT seeing myself in a normal job – but also NOT seeing myself as an entrepreneur!
The only thing I clearly see is that I don’t belong in society, because I lack basic human survival skills of wanting to fight for your place here. Wanting to make an effort.
I don’t want effort.
I don’t want shit sandwiches (as defined by Elizabeth Gilbert) that come with client contact, work floor dynamics, contract obligations. I even had a severe wake-up call last Friday when there was friction around the yoga studio and I just said:
“I m not going to have this conversation. If this is not acceptable to you, just put your objection in writing and I will leave the yoga studio, because I no longer have it in me to deal with complicated dynamics like this.”
In a way it just felt like a real accomplishment, that I no longer acted like an adult entrepreneur who fought for her yoga studio.
I was simply like: “If you re going to make this difficult, I m out.”

I felt really bad the entire Friday, but then I saw how it had actually helped me. That knowing that you do not want to eat the shit sandwich tied to something, means that it is just a hobby. It’s something you do for fun.
Suddenly it became clear why my undefined, or at least not-acted-upon, plan to get enough private clients to earn me an income – had remained just that.
Undefined.
Not-acted-upon.
Because I don’t want it.
I ll give up the studio in the blink of an eye if needed.
I love teaching the walk-in classes for old-students, but I m sure I could find some other space to give them. As I could for teaching the privates.
But I don’t want to work on my business.
I don’t want to sell people on my yoga.
And from that came a CLEAR vision that “even” for yoga, my work will not be a business model involving client contact.
It will be writing.
It will be YouTubeing.
It will be sharing everything I know for free, and just seeing where it will lead.

Although I still don’t see myself a writer, performance is my true art. But I do see that I am way more a writer than an entrepreneur.
And that writing comes sooo natural to me.
So maybe I AM a writer after all.
Even without trying to be one.

But isn’t that the characteristic of a true identity?
That you don’t do it, you just are?

So where was I?
Okay Friday – shit sandwich studio. Realization I don’t want to give my all to make money teaching yoga.
Saturday: D-Day
Aka the day I realized I am in love.
So if I feel shitty option one is I feel my lover is doing other things.
Option two is: I m in love and not allowing it.
Option 3 – and for future reference I do want to stress this is the most likely scenario –
BOTH!

In other words: me falling in love is linked to him turning away.

If for a longer period of time, I feel I m not getting attention or (just as important) that I can’t give him my attention and love; I survive by falling in love.

In 2018 this was with Christopher. Which took me two months before I had figured that out. Two months in which I lost my company because I kept trying to do something magical with it, that would make the pain go away.
Same way I still try/tried to do something magical with my yoga studio the last couple of weeks, AND the same way I tried to get psychological help Sara!
I now see that me going after a diagnoses was because I was in love!
Wonder if their test would have brought that up, to be honest.

Falling in love, and especially not knowing I m in love, has been the cause of the most painful periods of 2018 and now 2019, because I keep trying to fix the wrong thing!
My finance.
My business.
My studio.
My mental health.
It’s none of those things!
Which isn’t to say that those things would not benefit from some attention, but I can’t fix my life by fixing the symptoms.

I need two tattoos,  Sara. Two things I should never forget.

Tattoo number ONE
Do not eat shit sandwiches when doing PURPOSE WORK

Real purpose work is by definition shit sandwich free.
This does not mean you get a happy end.
You may end up on the cross like Jesus.
Or poor and miserable like Vincent van Gogh.
But eating shit sandwiches is what you do to try to avoid that.

I ve made a really drastic decision Sara… and it has to do with part deux (my second tattoo) too, but I want to drop it here.
Sara.
As much as I respect people who can be artists as well as have a normal job that brings in the money, I will no longer pretend I can do that.
Because I can’t.

The reason I get suicidal thinking about a job, is because I don’t see how I can protect my own mental space to create my art, and fulfill my own destiny (which takes all of my time and doesn’t allow for a job) while doing a job I hate.
This is not because the job is no good: It’s because everyone who feels responsible for a gift, a talent they got, and for bringing their message into the world, would hate any job ever invented in the history of mankind.
You just can’t be separated from YOUR LIFE for 40 hours a week, expecting it to have a pulse when you come back at 6 o clock.

Which means that in the upcoming weeks I will be working like a mad woman completing my books, my legacy.
And that after that I will cease to exist as an artist, unless and until, I can afford to be one.
Giving up on the idea that I will make an effort to stay creative, to stay alive spiritually, once I am incarcerated into work life, has been such an incredible relief…

But the reason I could do that, is because of the second tattoo:

Tattoo number TWO
It’s always about a man

This is the thing you should remind me of, when I feel really bad.
That I probably feel bad because I m either not in love, not acknowledging it, or because I feel bad about what is happening in a love relationship.
Like in 2018 and 2019 when my lover had other women on his mind.
But I have another example.
In 2007 I had a job for a couple of months for a horrible man, but because I was in love I could deal with him effortlessly.
Yet, the moment things got rocky between my then-lover and me, the situation exploded within 24 hours.

As long as I m in love – I can do anything.
I need being in love more than art, Sara…. I really do.
That is also why I could choose to stop being an artist:
All I need to do to enjoy life, is have a good love life.
Which is – of course – my true art.

But who is it Lauren? Who is it?

I had almost finished this letter without mentioning who it is! Ha ha ha.
Well, it’s someone I met weeks ago. I haven’t looked it up, but it may have been 5, 6 weeks.
That’s how long I was in resistance.

I haven’t seen him since, although we texted to wrap things up. He doesn’t do social media, so I don’t have pictures or video. Therefor I can’t be be a hundred percent certain about my feelings, because it’s been so long.
But then again…. how often does this happen?
– he was really good at keeping his cool.
He didn’t flinch!

Reminded me of the one time I was with my lover and we ran into this beautiful blonde on a mountain bike. They chatted a bit, but they were both totally cool.
She was so stunning that any man would have overplayed his hand trying too hard, especially with me next to him.
He didn’t try anything.
In fact, he didn’t even mention her afterwards.
If I would have a conversation with him now, reminding him of it, and asking who she was, I m a hundred percent sure he would not even remember.

THAT is how cool this guy was too.
Didn’t flinch.
– he was professional
We  saw each other professionally, and I was the client. That is all I can say about it. So this also means that if I want this to work, I might have to be the one who makes herself more available/ hints at this, because he obviously cannot be “caught” that he’s harassing me, or coming on to me, because that would be totally unprofessional.

And yet: I don’t want to be open about this at all.
And he has at least one chance in the future, to see me in a casual setting, maybe more. I’m not going to do anything until I see him using that chance.
– he was kinder than he needed to be without being flirty

Which is another accomplishment. Maybe it’s too close to keeping his cool, but he was giving me a lot of space to be myself and to share what I wanted to share.

Which brings me to the last:
– he told me a secret
It was a slip of the tongue, when he talked about his personal life, a past relationship.
It went by so quickly, I think it startled us both a little bit. And it was so intimate, that I didn’t discuss it, because it was obvious that he had not been wanting to share that.

But the fact that he did, and that we both just seemed to fall through the rabbit hole automatically?
That was magical.

Oh and as sort of a PS?
He looks like Slash from Guns N Roses.
Yeah, I know.
Jackpot baby.