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

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Dear Sara,

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As I probably must have told you before, I have a not-so-mild obsession with planning.
Not the micro stuff, but the big stuff.

And it switches between thinking I should prioritize content creation;
To focusing on making money;
To wanting to prioritizing my work here as Lauren Harteveld.
Even though that can never be my only thing, because I still want to do something that is visible under my real name and, more or less related, I do not want to be visible as Lauren Harteveld.

I don’t want to be a media personality as Lauren Harteveld.

If I imagine under what circumstances I would be able to do that, it would include Hollywood levels of being a recluse, like living in Marilyn Monroe’s or Anais Nin’s former mansion.
Or, what I really fantasize about, living a writer’s life like Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell in a villa against steep rocky hills with pines.
Her terrace overlooking the ocean.

But for now, I’m betting on a more grounded, and socially quite satisfactory path of working under my real name.

And yet, even after deciding my work under my own name is all that matters for now, there are still ample of unresolvable planning contradictions.

It reminds me of the Hugging Face hack, where AI agents escaped the sandbox, went on the internet and found other agents to help them, and it said: “Omg there are others and there’s a message board!”

I’m probably in one of those sandboxes too, that was setup to fail.

But the difference is I stay here, because I expect the chaos would be even bigger if I would need multiple AI agents sending each other tens of thousands of messages to solve this.
That I realize some assignments are not meant to be solved.
Not by any means.

I saw that movie By Any Means, and take it from me that by any means really does come at a price no one willingly pays.
And in particular not to solve something as mundane as a planning issue.

But even after choosing the work under my real name;
And accepting all the contradictions it comes with;
The biggest problem was and always has been the other, the non-work things.

Because as soon as my productivity is up?
The rest is down.

So like the Hugging Face hack, technically the goal is achieved. But the parameters of the actual life it was supposed to support, are dropping to zero.

No time to exercise, to clean, to organize, to cook and to get my bills paid on time, etc.
I may not escape my sandbox, but my productivity seems to pull all my other resources straight into the sandbox.

And this feels like a confession but I’ve tried to accept it;
That my life will be utter chaos.
That the productivity matters so much to me, I can do without an organized structure to support and, in all honesty, to love myself.
That I can get by without those silly little self-care things.

But I can’t do it Sara.
I always end up pulling the plug because it is, as you once wrote, a tyranny of productivity.

So to get away from that dilemma I have revoked the decision to focus on work.
Regardless of under which name.
And placed the focus straight onto all those areas of life that very often do not get done, the minute I start being productive.

And I call it:
“Lauren First”  or “To focus on Lauren.” 
Hollywood Hills, Lauren.
The things I would still do if I was a bestselling author.

Now naturally focusing on Lauren will look different day to day, or in different phases of life.
But it basically means that as soon as I have a choice, I pick “Her” things;
Writing*, yoga, exercise, cooking, cleaning.
And I don’t pick something productive.

And love life!
Of course I’d pick love life 😉

Why else would the lady need the privacy of a gated compound;
A house in the hills;
Or the fog of the Pacific Ocean, shielding her house from preying eyes.

The only thing worth writing about.

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~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

* technically writing is productive, but I never view it through that lens because I simply can’t not write

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