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

Dear Sara,

I title this letter “In Bed With Lauren”, because I believe having the best sex of your life, should count as a pretty solid indicator of success.
In particular when you once created an alterego, “Lauren Harteveld”, with the sole purpose of being able to explore and develop your sexuality and to write freely about it.
Without anyone being allowed to bother you with whatever unsettling, stunning or arousing it was you wrote because if you wanted to explain yourself, you would have written about it under your real name.

If you have been protecting the personal and artistic space of your alterego Lauren Harteveld, for over 15 years;
If you have been validating her mission, to create the sex life of her dreams, if you have been validating that over anything you could possibly do under your real name.
And you have kept your professional self alive as a decoy, as a front, a diversion of who you really were (you made people believe you were the person who had your real name), so that you could dedicate every minute off to being Lauren Harteveld, to being the part of yourself most people didn’t know;

In that case, having the best sex of your life, and not having written anything as Lauren Harteveld because you were totally absorbed in the work under your real name;
That, is huge.

I m not going to get into the specifics of the work I m doing under my real name, because what difference does it make?
Our work together has always been about me desiring deeply, to be able to be creative, and have a profession I actually liked.
And I have that now.
I m an artist, would be the shortest way to explain it.
And it comes with the money challenges of being an artist, since I do not want to have a service provider “front”, do not want to offer something tangible for sale since my art is mostly immaterial;
But an artist none the less.

And an incredibly, over-the-moon, beyond-belief, happy one.

Every day I get up, and I spend up to ten hours behind my desk.
Social life, leisure time; I gladly sacrifice it all, to keep up with the work that is structured. It has a daily rhythm.
But also, to keep up with this work that more than anything else, just flows out of me.

I know my work so intimately, that I know exactly what needs to be done. I do not have any to-do lists, because I do not need them.
I work day after day after day, and when I do other things that inspire me, that nurture me, such as the sex, then I am completely IN IT, as well.
And it just flows as natural as my work does.

In June and July, and maybe August but I hope to have made some progress by then, I m taking the time to really let this artistic flow ingrain.
Learning to understand what my work is about, and how I can make it as efficient as possible. 
Not just so that I can free up time, to work for an hourly pay; But also because this is not even half of what I ultimately want to do.
I haven’t made any YouTube videos, although the three weeks of solid work have brought clarity of what it is I m going to do, so that’s great.
I also haven’t written even a word as Lauren Harteveld, which is such a shame. I like being Lauren, I like writing here, as her. 
I ve also not written my pen pal Nikki nor my other friend, whom I also feel is a friend of Lauren.
And not so much a friend associated with me under my real name.
I ve also done nothing for the book I ve written as Lauren 1994-1996, nor wrote for her current diary (Lauren 1997).

Even if I manage to stay an artist, and do not get a job; I want all that work, all those other aspects of myself, to fit in there.
Ultimately, I don’t want to be just a writer under my real name, as has been my dominant art form the past three weeks.
Regardless of how great these past three weeks have been.

So the first time I really understood how well I was doing, was when pretty much out of the blue, I had the best sex of my life.
Sure I can pinpoint what he did, and what I did, in advance, to set it up right. We’re both “good at sex”, we know that. And then if we both have a good day, and even more importantly, both are mentally in a good state of mind and take the time to really play out the date (no rush);
Of course there are new heights to be reached.

But it seemed like there was more.

The sex was so out-of-this-world good, we were so insatiable, and physically we could do things which rarely, if ever, go by unpunished!
It was pure magic.
It was something you would want to think about and analyze, so you’d be able to recreate it a next time.

Except of course, I didn’t.
Because I had my work waiting and that made me so happy, I didn’t do anything with all those great memories.
Not even write Nikki, and I ALWAYS write Nikki soon afterwards.

If you would ask me now: 
“Lauren, what was the reason you had the best sex ever? How did you get there?”
I would answer:
“I loved doing what I was doing as an artist so much, that the sex just came with it. It was a natural expansion of the state of pure bliss, I have been in for weeks now.”

I have never been happier in my life.
And yet when I think of all those things I still want:
– writing as Lauren
– making YouTube videos
– doing yoga
– writing Nikki
– writing the other friend
– and I want to clear out and reinvent my whole apartment in the upcoming month. Two events have caused me to store things in my apartment that do not belong here, and it no longer feels like mine.

When I think of all those things, I really have no idea where to put them. No idea where they fit in. And it stresses me out, because I can see where I can stretch things a bit;
But this is going to require a lot more space than that.

As opposed to my sex life, I have no idea how to make all that go in smoothly.
And unpunished.

Books 

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/