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

Dear Sara,

I have a weak spot for a certain 90s era.
Yet wouldn’t have known about it, if it weren’t for a house in the city where I live, where the interior had been preserved in its pristine 1989 state.

It’s a pattern-rich color pallet with mint, old pink and darker greens as well, and it’s so hard to date because it started in the late 80s but stayed on deep into the 90s.
It was a trend with great longevity,  leaving a mark in both decades. And with people in 2018 looking for dreamhouse apartments for on their vision board. 
I still occasionally encounter passwords of mine that contain its address, although I have grown over the idea of home ownership being a dream-whatever and absolutely love where I live even more now than in 2018.

But that apartment, in its original colors, and a wealthy and generous beneficiary who would buy it for me (better yet: give me a low-rent lease for an indefinite time) could still persuade me to move.
The style has been with me ever since, and it’s my favorite only to be matched by the more neutral 90s (and 50s reminiscent) pallet of beiges and off-white.

So it is perhaps no coincidence that I decided to pick up living in this timeline that I actually already started a couple of times over the past few years.
But I always dropped out because it was overcomplicating things. The only thing more complicated than living in a faux past is living in two of them.

With the addition of the 1990 timeline, which is the follow-up of earlier, and pretty rudimentary, 1988 and 1989 timeline- the ones I dropped out of – I am now living in two reimagined pasts;

1. the year 2000
Background:
Started this in 2019, when I started writing as Lauren1994. We’re six years later so it’s 2000 in her world.

In the year 2000 a 27 year old Lauren is still keeping her diary.
But only on paper, and she/we/I will wait to publish them until two years after it all happened. Or never publish them at all, and let Lauren 2000 be a lived-in timeline, and not a diary-based timeline.
Rule of thumb is that if no sex is happening, I will not bother to publish it.

And speaking of no sex, tadaa!
Here is where the reimagined 1990 timeline comes in.
It’s a spinoff of the earlier story, based on the idea of:
“What would have happened if year 2000 reimagined Lauren, had not chosen her lover Bear in December 1989, but had focused on being her own person?!”

2.the year 1990
Background:
Started this in several iterations (as 1988, 1989), but did not commit to the project until May 2025.

In December 1989, the reimagined Lauren from the 2000 timeline got what would become an eight year long affair with her lover Bear. 
The meat and bones of her diary, which I am currently still publishing at an annoyingly slow pace copy editing, but at least it’s in progess.

The moment she chose for Bear as a 17 year old did not just shape her sexuality, as they would stay lovers for 8 years, but it also made a writer out of her. A diarist.
In 2000 the affair has stranded, as Bear has chosen someone else to build a life with (Lauren and Bear are both in their 20s now) and Bear has moved away and no longer plays a role in her life.

It is here when Lauren2000 thinks:
“Maybe the way to get over this, is to pretend it never happened!”
As she recreates her life.

I think letting this project go through Lauren2000, so through my other reimagined timeline, is what separates it from my earlier attempts.
I can now stay “in character” of Lauren 2000, as I move the timeline even further back to being 17 years old and living in 1990.

And it’s working, Sara! 
And it’s so cool!

I mean, first of all, I m super grateful that all my sexual dreams came true. Similarly to the story of 20th century Lauren I too once took the leap of prioritizing my sex life, and it has brought me more than I could possibly have imagined.
It’s not for the faint at heart, but for those feeling the pull, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Through sexuality you will really discover maybe not the meaning of life, but the meaning of society. You will know of unknown bounds and bonds, of deep fears and of manipulation, you will know treason, unfulfillment and mass hypnosis that are keeping us all nicely walking in line all the way to our coffin.

You could also get the same results being a creative, because creativity activates the right side of your brain and allows you to see through conditioned patterns.
But it’s also what you’ll discover once you start having sex outside of the accepted casual sex or committed relationship dogmas.
Want to make sure no insight is missed, do what I did;
Make your sexual development part of your creative expression.

But I feel I digress.

Anyway, what I meant to say was that both Lauren2000 as well as me, have been defined by a choice for sexual exploration we made a very long time ago.
And we’re both ready to let that go, and the creatively most interesting way to do that is to create a timeline where none of that happened.

Where we were a 17 year old virgin, and although we were very sexual we nevertheless chose to stop pursuing and fly alone. If something happens that’s great, but we’re not going out of our way to meet people nor invest copious amounts of time, emotions etcetera.

We’re going to use the 2025 word/ term “decentering men” here, to describe the road we’re sending this new 1990-version of ourselves on.

And it is so good…. It’s like all my work, everything I found out, it’s all coming together. Because with the sexuality too, I ve always said that you carry that inside of you. The power, the sex, it’s already there. When I was 17 I was not less sexual, just because technically I was a virgin. Having sex cannot make you more sexual, and in the same way not having it (like now, and like Lauren 2000) cannot make it less either.
I’ve always said that.

And now, with this new timeline where I imagine a 1990 timeline, where 6 months ago I gave up my sexual development and made my peace staying a virgin;
I have an opportunity to prove it.

If Lauren 2000’s relationship with Bear did not happen;
If my relationship with my lover did not happen, nor did the 25 years that happened before that;
If my whole history is being wiped clean, right down onto the mint green floral pattern of 1990, then how will I live?

If I take away sex – or at least stop emotionally investing it – the one area of life I fought for the hardest, sacrificed the most, but also achieved more than in any area of my life and which proved to have more for me in store than I ever believed;

Then who am I without it? 

It’s that question, this new 1990 will answer.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living