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

Did you notice?
Back to the small square picture, aligned to the right of the first paragraph!
Which means?
That contrary to last post, I found a way to bypass the by now almost-but-not-quite inescapable block-editor on WordPress hosting.

Despite the software-net clearly having closed in just a little bit more (again).

Although I will hopefully always be autonomous in my professional life, and will never be at the merciless hands of an employer (the way I will inevitably have to succumb to the innovation drive of WordPress hosting), I do think that today?
The two went hand-in-hand.

That escaping WordPress’ block-editor once again, and also escaping what would have been the most destructive career and revenue path, and one I didn’t see myself having in a million years until 5 months ago;
Today, I did suddenly see the light, escaping both of them.

It is a brand-new start.
Like the new moon in Pisces, which is also today and together with the 7 planetary alignment of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

An event that will not happen again until 2040, and in all likeliness not in the same 24 hours as the new moon.

Astrologically, this is seen as the biggest reset, probably of the decade…

But I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
Because I had my own things to worry about, because as I wrote you last Sunday, contemplating my choice to plunge into the darkness of a corporate career in order to pay for my art, and I wrote:

“I have also created a way to open more than one door to financial freedom.
To make the hardest most destructive career, just one door.
But to deliberately put in place two others!
As a sign to the universe saying:
“If I’m not supposed to go through that first door (of career), then cast me a boon through the others! Or a husband!”“

A husband who would provide for me, and my art.

In that post I also said:

“I haven’t seen the movie Oppenheimer, but I’m guessing he just wanted to go to art school but his parents made him choose physics.” 

In other words, I stood by my choice intellectually, but I was also resisting it. In particular the idea that I felt in any way satisfied, that as part of my  pain as an artist, I would destroy the world.
Yet I resisted this warm glow of poetic justice, that just like the imaginary Oppenheimer I created in my head, I would not destroy the world accidentally, as unintentional collateral damage on my path to securing my financial future.
But that the destruction was what actually made it bearable.

Last Sunday, the only way to give meaning to the destruction (on all levels) encoded into my new choice of career, that I felt pulling and tempting me to go on it!
That way, was to fully own it.

What I wrote you was that I knew it was the only path that made sense, but that the only way to survive that hellhole was to claim everything that would happen as MY destruction.
My wrath.
From my colleagues being crushed in corporate politics, to any harm big or small I saw happening, to the devastating affects on the environment and the insane amount of cheap resources we devoured;
I would embrace it.

Like a corporate Kali I would not try to contain and downplay the destruction of the companies I worked for;
I would fucking unleash it.

I really thought that the biggest mistake employees anywhere and everywhere make, think is that they can do their job with integrity.
And that the way out is to accept your work is evil.
And that that is okay, because you have bills to pay.

My previous letter caught me trying to get my inner-Kali back into the box!
I wanted to be back to the neutral stance of “This is what I’ll be doing for a decade or so. And it’s not ideal, but it’s okay.”

I knew that as long as I was still in the pitch black darkness of seeing my job as a weapon against world who had taken me away from my vocations as a writer and a yoga teacher;
I was not ready.
I would die, from sheer toxicity alone.

But I was not there yet.
Even rewriting, reliving basically that entire blogpost, and I can see the Dante’s Inferno-esque beauty of it all.
I wouldn’t say that 50 years from now they’d have a three hour Oscar-winning movie called HARTEVELD;
But I wouldn’t have said No to it! 

I was way, and I mean way too close to the flames.

So that is why I wrote that I had opened two other doors for the Universe.
And called out something like:
“If you don’t want me to continue with this unholy plan, then give me a sign!”
Or throw me a boon, or a husband, as I said it in the letter.

And what can I say?
The Universe did….. 
I’m back, Sara!
I’m here!
It is I, your little coachee client since 2018!

And I’m so sorry I scared the shit out of you.
If it helps, I scared the shit out of myself as well.

How terrifying it has been.
I really felt like Frodo at the end of his journey to the fires of Mount Doom, and he doesn’t think he’ll survive.
And no longer cares.
He’s okay dying there, on a rock floating in lava.

So of course I had to write you again.
Sunday’s story is definitely, and thankfully, not the point at which our conversation will start.

Because although the Universe did not throw me a road to financial freedom, it did throw me something else;
My life, Sara.
I have my life back.

Through sheer luck I came into contact with a group of people who will be crossing guards for amphibians, mainly toads, crossing the road very near my house.
Every year it is such a massacre, and I find myself stepping off my bike and picking up the tiny corpses with two sticks, and dropping them in gras in the roadside.
‘Cause that’s all I can do.

But this year the majority of them will be safely crossing over to the other side, thanks to the project which is a collaboration of two organizations as well as a large group of volunteers.

I could not be blowing up the world from my desk, when there are dozens of people saving toads, less than a mile away.
I just couldn’t.

And it reminded me of Anais Nin, and how she had this resistance to car driving because it forced her to be alert at all times.
When all she wanted was to daydream.
She did not want the responsibility of driving in a car that could kill someone. She didn’t want that kind of responsibility.

I think she too would want to be the person who saved the toads. And not be the one running them over.

So today I set my very first fresh steps, in how I can find a job that makes at least my world, a little better.
What it would look like to contribute to this wonderful country and beautiful city that I live in.
A place where in many ways we are so very privileged.

How can I have a paid job that contributes beauty to the place where I live?
And where the toads live, and where 50 years from now people are hopefully still going to the movies, worst case scenario about a failed artist who designed the weapon of mass destruction of the 21st century.

But it’s no longer me, Sara.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living