Author: LS Harteveld

Today I was having a bit of a scatter-brain-day;
It was raining which sabotaged my plans to go for a walk.
And by the time it was dry my day had been so unsatisfactory that I didn’t give a fuck about walking anymore. I just wanted to get shit done. Because I had spent the unwelcome extra hours indoor pondering questions like:
“Hmmm? Should I perhaps take that coaching training? Learn that skill? Work that job?”
Only to then conclude: OF COURSE THE FUCK NOT.
And got completely lost in trying to make money, saving myself, and sticking to my newborn dream. Which at times, I completely forgot about.
I felt like a parent forgetting they just had a child.
Shameful.
Your PURPOSE comes by and that’s how easily you’re offtrack?
Really?
And a nasty voice in my head even wanted to convince me, I might as well take the easier road then, to a life where the bills are paid.
“Since apparently, your dream is not that important to you anyway.”
But of course it is very important to me. It’s just that if three days ago you still thought of yourself as a yoga teacher, and now you know that your future is to become a sprinter/ athlete; you need time to adjust.
I have caught myself making a gagging sound, if Facebook suggests a yoga post to me, that’s how much I ve completely had it with all of yoga. Which doesn’t mean I don’t see myself doing yoga anymore. I just might! Once I ve completely distanced myself from it, anything can happen.
But right now, I m in the: “I can’t believe we let this drag on for so long”-phase.
And it’s just a little hard for me to stay the course, the vision is still so new! It’s not ingrained yet.
But it’s there.
Of course it’s there!
So when I had wasted the good part of my day grasping at straws and not getting any closer to feeling better, I decided I needed to reconnect with my dream. No matter how vague it was. No matter how discouraging, that I had not heard yet from the number one organisation that I was relying on for help.
But this was not their dream.
I wanted to become a sprinter, an athlete over forty. And I was going to monetize that as soon as possible: It was my dream.
And I was going to build it alone, and with my bare hands if I had to.
So I Googled on the psychology of sprinting.
First I encountered a lot of articles on psychology when training sprinters. Which wasn’t what I was looking for, but it did gave me an article that unexpectedly moved me to tears.
It turned out that ever since the eighties, running was explained with the spring model: The idea that like a pogo stick the body compresses like a spring, and then releases, producing an upward and forward running motion.
They kind of vaguely knew that the sprinters had “more of a spring” in their step, but no one knew why.
Until in 2014 science showed that elite sprinters were not working on the pogo stick mechanism.
Elite sprinter aggressively kicked the ground!
The technique was the same among all of the elite sprinters, and not present among any of the other sports men and women who participated in the study.
Like I said it brought tears to my eyes. I was like: “I fucking knew it.”
It resonated with me, because I knew I had denied my own ability to aggressively kick the ground. I had started to believe that what I instinctively did (immediately push back in the blink of an eye!) was wrong, immature, dangerous even. As adults we were supposed to endure. Both in the sense of negativity/ bad things happening to us, as well as that we endured on our quest to get what it was that we wanted.
We didn’t just hit it in the head!
It was as if that sole sentence, that the sprinters kicked the ground, brought up all the strength-and-aggression shaming I had experienced all my life. Or at least had experienced until I had pushed it so far down that I forgot it existed. And becoming a yoga teacher became as good a job as any, since I wasn’t allowed to show my strength anyway.
I was way too fucking dangerous.
I was out of control.
Not civilized.
Might as well go to sleep then.
And I did.
My profile photo on my personal page on Facebook is one where I am asleep, and I have participated with that photo in a bunch of professional groups. Vaguely aware that this would be a good time to switch it for something more professional. And I also wondered why I was so attached to keeping it up.
And I realized the sleeping beauty picture was because that was how I saw my life:
“This is how much I engage in life. It’s safest for everybody. You don’t want to wake me up.”
I was not keeping myself small; I was fully absent. I was literally refusing to participate in life, refusing to show my true self.
Maybe the gagging sounds to the Facebook ads were simply me waking up. And was me not so much loathing yoga, but my own flaky attitude. That I had actually let them win, and coiled back up into hiding between the yoga mats for twenty fucking years, where I wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Not even the ground underneath my feet.
It reminds me of how I ve viewed working for a boss. I have always assumed everybody hated that. That it was simply a necessary evil if you wanted certain perks and benefits. But that you were handing in your declaration of independence in exchange for your contract.
I assumed everybody saw it like that.
Just like I assumed everybody’s first instinct was to push back!
But that they had chosen for the perks associated with being civilized.
Later I did found the article I was looking for. On the psychology of sprinters versus marathon runners. It was a selection method they applied in World War 2, in the UK air force. The ones with a sprinter attitude operated the planes that were to take off within minutes, and only had enough fuel and bombs for sixty minutes of battle.
The ones with the mental makeup of marathon runners were stationed on planes as a team, and their time in battle could last up to eight hours.
The article ended with the I expect supposedly soothing conclusion, that it required both psychological traits, to be a balanced personality. That to be either/or was a sign of Schizophrenia.
But I wasn’t listening. The previous article had already showed me where I needed to my life to go.
Move as fast as you can.
Go alone.
And don’t forget to kick the ground.

Like the fast track?

My life changes as lightning speed.
The Follow button is somewhere on this page.
Have you found it?
Of if you really don’t want to wait for this happy end, you can buy my erotica and diaries at my new improved shop (English books, might have to scroll down)

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Twitter
or Facebook

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

De volgende Nederlandse boeken
zijn ook op voorraad bij boekhandel de Feeks in Nijmegen
verzending gratis v.a. € 17,50

Het Boek Benjamin           € 45
verzameld werk NL en Engels.
Het enige boek dat hier niet inzit is Witte Tijgerin, dus mijn andere Nederlandse boeken zitten hier wél in.

Mango                                 €15
coming of age novelle

22 erotische verhalen   € 15
literaire pornografie in de geest van Anais Nin

Witte Tijgerin                  €5
gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie

It’s already after 10 pm on a Saturday night.
If I go to bed in 90 minutes or so, heart pains and maybe even anxiety will be my fate.
Because I broke rule number one today:
Do your art every day.
And I broke rule number two as well:
do 15 minutes of intense physical work-out, such as interval training or sprint training.
And by writing this blog post, I am cutting that back to breaking only rule number two. But I am breaking rule number three:
Never do number 1 or 2 after 8pm.
So even though I ll have a better feeling about today, writing is no ensurance that I ll sleep.
Just that lying awake and suffering will not be for nothing.

Rule number 1 for creative souls: Art comes first

I can already hear my own objections to this:
What if people have regular jobs?
What if they have to choose between art and sleep?
And so on.
I get it.
And those things are totally cool. Look at me: even though I had the entire day to myself, I engaged in so much walks and relaxation (assuming I didn’t need to create today) yet tonight I have the choice between lying awake all hyped up because I wrote at night time; or lying away because my thoughts are forcing me to put them on paper, so that they can develop themselves further around this topic of How To Live Life.
But the idea to put art first goes way further than just preventing insomnia: Not creating art, makes me hate everything.
The last three days, I ve been on the verge of completely shutting down my yoga studio and my career as a yoga teacher. Twice. Both days I didn’t write for this account LS Harteveld.
I did write copy for my yoga studio, but it is astonishing how unfullfilling that is even if I do like writing there.
But I need THIS.
I need to open a blog post, and not having a fucking clue what it will be about.
If it’s about porn and I get a RT from a porn star I get read by hundreds.
And Friday night’s post was read by six people.
And that too, is totally cool.
Because I write for me. My art is a mandatory daily activity in order to function in the normal world. Even on days that I think it’s not a necessity! On my fifty minute walk through the park, I was so caught up thinking about starting track training, and the psychology of that (leaping, sprinting, high jumping) that I thought:
“This is so funny. I usually have to write if I have so much going on in my head. But this development of me thinking about yoga and athletics is so totally unrelated.”
Oh, yeah. Sure. How the hell did I buy into that story?
OF COURSE I had to write about it. Would have served me well if I had realized that immediately. Instead of waiting until after 10 pm thinking:
“Fuck! I m not able to wind down! I need to release my thoughts or I won’t be able to sleep!”
And meanwhile I had almost pulled the plug on my yoga studio, that’s how unhappy I was with my entire life.
–> HATING YOUR LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T PUT ART FIRST<–
And this has huge implications!
Because I don’t know about you, but my blog posts can take up to four hours to write. You can’t squeeze that in before your 9AM appointment.
yet my advice is still to practice your art daily, simply to avoid starting to hate your day job. Not practicing your art will have you projecting your feelings of dissatisfaction onto your job, your kids, or even onto art itself.
Take care of your art.
Regardless of how many things you have to cancel, or drop out of, in order to make that happen: the ramifications of not doing it, are far worse.
Knowing you did your art will make you sleep like a baby.

Rule number 2 for creative souls: Exercise

I just shared a bit about my current obsession with track training.
Sprint.
Leap.
And aim high.
I m already at the point where I believe that how you exercise is how you live.
Or how you think you should live.
I roughly estimate that half of adults either do no exercise or walk or cycle:
their routine is a direct extension of their life, which is calm or even stagnated, in the case of not exercising.
Then there’s a large group who play games!
Read: like groups and competition.
But the largest group do common sports like: distance running, cycling, cardio, fitness, classes at the gym, interval training.
All forms of working out that train your endurance, and ability to deal with chronic stress and often create circumstances where you can go into some state of trance.
But the percentage of people who do sports where you can just feeeeel the  excitement, is extremely small:
Surfing.
Fencing.
Boxing.
Dancing.
Maybe it’s me, but I m guessing that as an artist you will feel way more inspired to pick up one of those up, than repetitive, predictable sports.
And there is a reason for this too!
Because you know what?
The reason you are even prone to insomnia in the first place, is because everything about being an artist is unpredictable and disruptive. That is the very nature of creative energy: you are leaving the ground, lifting off, trusting that one hour, or four, or one day from now, you’ll land safely.
But you’re not sure.
Your whole life could change during the time you’re creating your painting, writing your blog posts, designing your choreography or whatever you do.
You could come out an entirely different person, and yet that’s the thing you put yourself through every day.
So most of all, you need to do sports that totally occupies you, fascinates you, and that inspires you.
But that’s not what I said right?
I defined it as doing something to get your heart rate up for fifteen minutes.
The reason I put emphasis on that, is that when you create your art, you are letting creative energy, Life, flow through you.
That is MASSIVE.
And you do it with your awareness in your work. Or some other astral plane.
I ve often joked, that my computer sucks my soul in it, when I m writing. And holds it hostage until after I hit publish.
My body needs to go without my soul for however long it takes for me to finish the post.
And even if I do manage to create an experience that is not zombiefying, I still notice the fast, shallow breathing; the higher heart rate.
Your body is going through hell having to channel all that creative energy!
You will want that body trained, and being able to deal with pressure and stress. So even if your sport of choice would be yoga (to name just one!) I would urge you to throw in something intense as well, that will keep you strong and push your limits.
And of course physical exercise is the number one remedy to avoid insomnia.

3. Don’t do 1 or 2 after 8 pm

But you already knew that one right?

It’s midnight now…

So I guess there is a fourth rule.

4. If it’s after 8 pm, improvise and hope for the best.

LEAP Baby

Are you joining me, on this track?
Like I said, I intend to write every day because of rule number 1.
The Follow button is somewhere on this page.
Have you found it?
You can buy my erotica and diaries at my new improved shop (English books, might have to scroll down)

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Twitter
or Facebook

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

De volgende Nederlandse boeken
zijn ook op voorraad bij boekhandel de Feeks in Nijmegen
verzending gratis v.a. € 17,50

Het Boek Benjamin           € 45
verzameld werk NL en Engels.
Het enige boek dat hier niet inzit is Witte Tijgerin, dus mijn andere Nederlandse boeken zitten hier wél in.

Mango                                 €15
coming of age novelle

22 erotische verhalen   € 15
literaire pornografie in de geest van Anais Nin

Witte Tijgerin                  €5
gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie

It ALL makes so much sense now!

My love for action movies.
Where I sport the “pizza and sex attitude” that even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good;
Me attending all Guns N Roses concerts when I was still in my teens. And brainwashing myself with their records.
Year after year, until eventually they broke up.

Last year, when they played the Netherlands, I started listening to their music again. And realized I had been so deprived of this type of energy, I forgot it was a basic need.
Half a year prior to last year’s Guns N Roses concert, I had the same response to discovering business coach Kat Loterzo/ Katrina Ruth. I ran into her Facebook ad and started following her online in December 2016.
Soon I was buying her programs and sucking up every second of her YouTube channel, as if my life depended on it.
And maybe it did!

Because no one seemed to understand that this totally badass woman was giving me what can only be described as a deeply spiritual experience. I could literally feel my energy being ELEVATED!
And unlike every other person I’ve brought Katrina Ruth to the attention, my response was not to resist, to judge, nor to look away or get irritated.
But total fascination and immediate recognition.

Katrina Ruth was mirroring something that had been hiding very deep inside of me. She’s setting an example, that if you let the energy of life flow through you, you become one with Life itself.
Messy, powerful, unpredictable, and triggering as fuck.
Yes!
But also absolutely fucking limitless.

I couldn’t understand that my friends were not equally fascinated by her, but could see that they were not of ill will. They simply couldn’t digest it. It was waaaay to intense!

So seven months after I met her, Guns N Roses came for their first concert, and I reconnected to their raw energy. I intended to keep listening to their music but dropped out of it. And this week Guns N Roses played again, and it was during that concert that I had a powerful flash back to me as a teen long jumping and sprinting on the tracks.
Untrained.
Smoking.
It was just a sports class from school, and we only went to the tracks once. But I was the fastest girl!

Contemplating my life for three and a half hours listening to heavy guitars, brought me back to that speed. That feeling of being amazed at how powerful I was!
And I knew this was what I had been looking for.
That sprinting, leaping, and jumping high, were skills I longed for both mentally as well as physically.
I was about to become an athlete.

I knew it must have seemed unlikely, that this out-of-shape, bored, frustrated, yoga teacher who had just put her studio through transit from teaching groups to privates (so that I could keep the energy higher!) was going to shift gears even further.
I could see myself after a race in a sticky tank-top, all explosive muscle, sweaty, panting, looking for the coach who had clocked my time.
This was the new me.
No question about it, this was my future.

Now of course, I resisted it.
I had already gotten used to the idea that I was now a private yoga teacher, and that my job would be to study more yoga and get better at that; but sixteen hours after the concert I knew there was no going back.
I had to do this.

Seeing a business opportunity, I chose to go all in and immediately started investigating everything I needed to know about hiring professional trainers, mapping out a memberships program, contacting the official organization who manage all the legislation, diplomas, and regulations for renting tracks as a commercial organization.

Since I suspected it could be a bit of a problem, if I was going to make my business model in an area that was used to getting subsidized.
They were probably not even allowed to exploit the tracks commercially.
So I did all my desktop research and today I went out into the real world, and bought my first pair of sports shoes.
I could already feel my heart pumping with excitement, seeing their indoor minitrack to test the shoes!
But just like none of my classmates had liked Guns N Roses;
And none of my entrepreneur friends Katrina Ruth;
And none of my girlfriends action movies;
The shoe salesman predicted the market for my track training would be very small!
“Few are build for this. That explosive power is really something you have to be born with.”

So I still don’t know if I’ll be able to monetize my new lifestyle, but I do know one thing;
I was born for this.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

about “GLOW-UP 2026”

In January, Google has started pushing my old posts.
Unfortunately, my website was one of many casualties of WordPress Gugenheim software updates.
Meaning the layout of this post was completely destroyed and none of the new visitors was able to read it.

Therefor I have decided to run by all my old posts, starting with the ones currently in rotation, and give them a well-deserved update that will do what glow-ups are supposed to do;
Make them better.

—
Subscribe to this blog, and receive my current work.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

It wasn’t until I got my first panic attack that I realized:
“I m actually on to something!”
That me leaving my yoga business of teaching group classes behind, and reinventing it as a private yoga teacher was literally something that was shaking me to my core.
And in a way that was comforting.
Because I had already noticed that I wasn’t going out anymore. Wasn’t seeing friends. Cracking jokes with the one I did still see, greeting him:
“Hello, my social life!”
I just couldn’t be bothered. I was so entangled in making it all work for my new private yoga business. In figuring out a new work schedule including messaging and creating yoga videos for my social media; making all the transfer arrangements for existing groups; closing one location; facing some ancient problems in my yogastudio. Going to a coach and hiring help.
I even put myself on an eating schedule that would fit seamlessly around my private yoga sessions, so that I could work out the kinks if I had to.
And weeks after the decision that I was going to change my yoga business, and took this new direction of teaching privates, I was now in my final week of teaching groups.
And I was starting to feel kind of… I don’t know. Bored?
The social desert, not to mention the sexual drought that was My Sex Life 2018 (I can count our encounters on the fingers of one hand, whilst having spare fingers), the lengthy list of content creation, sales activities, THINGS I NEED TO DO EACH DAY. It all brought me to an honest:
“Jeez! Is this what my life is going to be about from now on?”
I was about to invest thousands in my company, instead of giving it all up and going out looking for a job just to be fucking DONE with “it”. With making money as an entrepreneur. A job would claim me for 40+ hours a week, but at least a normal job would have a guaranteed income and guaranteed free time.
Which meant guaranteed time to write here, as LS Harteveld. Which is the only thing I darn well know is what I need to feel alive.
So if a job was a much surer pathway to create a life that allowed for writing, and I was now taking huge risks betting it all on my company; Then why didn’t I feel absolutely excited? Why was I still so aware of the fact that I didn’t have a social life?
Do normal starting up entrepreneurs have a social life?
Do new mothers and fathers have a social life?
Do writers still at the early hungry stages of their career have a social life?
Hell no.
They know that the first years will be hard. That they will have to give up everything else, in order to make this one thing happen. There is a Dutch expression for this: The tropical years. It’s the hard times at the beginning.
And here I was, at the beginning of my new life, feeling bored and whiny that I wasn’t having any fun anymore. I was fully aware that this wasn’t the right mindset, and yet I couldn’t seem to flip the switch.
Until the anxiety attack.
Two nights in a row in fact.
I might have one tonight as well, I don’t know.
But it was this trembling, and feeling downright awful that gave me the motivation to go all in. Just like the new parents, the hungry writer, any starting entrepreneur and just like I myself had done twelve years ago.
Not for a company but to reinvent my love life.
In 2006 I ended a wonderful long-term relationship, in order to explore my sexuality. As a teen, due to a combination of circumstances, I had developed a hiv/aids fobia, which had prevented me from taking any risks. And had therefor prevented me from exploring my sexuality.
After I had some form of unsafe sex, and I had completely internalized all 80s sex education on hiv/aids so I was quick to find loop holes in safety, I would get panic attacks that could last up to a week.
The only way to deal with it was to keep having new partners as limited as possible, inform them as soon as possible (which I never did, I always waited until I was suffering already), and to then only have one hundred percent safe sex.
Even a fool could see that the chances of my sexual preference being a steady relationship, while using condoms, and not having oral sex, were practically non-existent.
Especially since I had loved meeting new men, and oral sex.
And yet, a risk-free relationship was the only thing my aids phobia would allow.
In my early thirties I realized I was now ready to be single, and explore. And I knew that this path of discovering who I was sexually and relationship wise, a path I had not been able to take as a teenager, would include being confronted with this fear. That the fear was still there.
But it was because of this fear, that I knew I had to do it.
That it simply wasn’t an option, to just let the beast stay dormant, and tiptoe around him for the rest of my life.
So I ended my perfectly good relationship, started reading a lot about sex and relationships, started dating. It was eight years of a few highs, only one real low, but most of all a lot of mediocre stuff.
Emotionally as well as sexually.
But it kept me in the game.
Although I had two panda years – years when I didn’t have sex – I usually chose to have sex in non-perfect situations. Simply because I knew that with my fear of aids, it was unwise to stop having sex.
I needed to expose myself to taking risks, even if they were mild ones.
Expose myself to the decision making moment of not taking any risks at all, for example not giving blow jobs at all. It was okay to chicken out on the spot.
But it was not okay to avoid being on the spot.
And although I had some mild anxiety attacks in those years, it was nothing compared to the ones I had as a teen. It was as if my decision to leave everything behind and confront my fear, had already taken away its power.
After eight years of dating I found my secret lover. The current “desert man” 😉 who I haven’t had sex with for months.
But being his secret mistress gave me the information I had been looking for.
One.
I know now that I am monogamous by nature: my default is having one lover for whom I choose. I am not going to hold back feelings, nor will I play games of non-availability. I will tell a man how wonderful I think he is.
Period.
Two.
I know that I need a lover be non-monogamous. He needs to have at least one partner, and/or give me the impression there is stuff going on, on the side.
If he wants to tell the world we’re a couple, then I’m totally in. But he’s going to have to “bring in” excitement and sexual energy.
I never want to have the feeling that it’s up to me, to keep that ball rolling.
I’ll do love. I’ll do intimacy. I’ll do affection, admiration and I’ll clean him up, and take such good care of him if he comes home after an adventure.
But I will not be the one bringing in the sexual energy.
That’s his responsibility.
One and two are prerequisites.
I know for a fact that there is no way I can fall in love, let alone stay in love, if any of those two criteria are not met.
And then there’s a third. And this is more like a cherry on top desire. But it helps if he is in a steady relationship, preferably a marriage, and he’s risking it all to be with me. If he puts his marriage, his reputation, his financial status, his rights as a father, all on the line, to see me.
I don’t need to have those things.
In fact I ll root for him that he gets to keep it all.
But I want him to bring that in, and trust me with it.
A man who is in an open relationship with someone else, would be way less attractive for me to be with. Because such a man is not risking anything. Just like a single man who’s just dating me. There’s nothing at stake there.
There’s no energy to any of it.
So the third requirement, being a secret for some reason – the most logical reason being that he has someone else, but it could have other reasons as well – that is not a prerequisite yet, should I be looking for another relationship.
Maybe it should be though.
I feel there’s so much energy in the secrecy. So much excitement.
Maybe I was wrong labeling it a cherry-on-top-desire.
But all in all, the three criteria have given me a very clear picture of who I am sexually. And I know that if this relationship would end, that I would be able to create a new one just like it.
I have even come to the point where I don’t need sub-par sex to “stay in the game”. I ve outgrown my phobia to such an extend that I don’t need to expose myself to new men, just for the sake of it.
It would certainly explain my laissez faire attitude to our affair being put on hold by him. I don’t need to do anything to maintain my current level of being comfortable with my sexuality.
It’s like those writers who diligently promise to themselves they’ll write each day. I always feel that’s kind of silly.
Either you’re a writer.
Or you’re not.
You only need yourself make do something each day, if you have not internalized it. Unless you want to grow and achieve higher levels at it. But you don’t need to do it each day to BE it. You either are, or you aren’t.
Just like my love life.
When I knew that my fear of aids was still an issue, and I wanted to maintain my level of handling it, I had to keep exposing myself to dating.
But now that I know exactly who I am sexually, and I know that I will take sexual risks for the right exciting, non-monogamous man, who is okay with me worshiping the ground he walks on?
Not dating, or not having sex, can not jeopardize my level of achievement anymore. This is a locked in level. Even if my lover would end things, and I would not date for three years, I still would not have any aids fears coming back if I would then choose again to be with a new man who meets my needs.
You don’t have to practice what you ARE.
You need to practice what you are not. YET.
So bringing this whole analogy back to my new business, and my lack of excitement there- the moment I started having panic attacks was a relief.
It made things interesting.
It showed that this whole business stuff ran way deeper than a simple financial decision to get a job or to put those hours into my own company instead. And the most exciting thing was that in that decision, I had chosen the path that SCARED me!
I had chosen the thing that gave me the exact same panic attacks that had “convicted” me to safe long-term relationships for twenty years.
The same panic attacks that could have easily made me choose for a real job.
I was having pressure around my heart, couldn’t sleep, trembling, strange nasty pressure in my head, as if my brain was falling out.
All because I had done the exact same thing as twelve years ago:
Walk away from safety and step into facing my fears.
The anxiety attacks proved I had fears around this topic. I was scared of leaving “it” all behind. Even though the thing I was walking away from was in no way capable of giving me what I needed.
My boyfriend and me had started out super great. Even sexually, within the limits of my fear. But after fourteen years my boyfriend was not going to be the one to explore my sexuality.
I waited for as long as I could.
And if it had been up to me, we would still be friends to this date.
But it’s exactly the same scenario with my company. I love my students to bits, but after fifteen years my business is no longer financially fulfilling.
I feel like friends to them and I don’t want to lose it, but at the same time I am no longer going to deny my own needs.
So as of July 1st, their classes will become friend groups. It’s a behind the scene thing, in very much the same fashion as the way I would run them if I really did have another job, and just did it for fun.
And that’s totally okay for me.
We don’t have to part.
But ultimately, just like with my partner, it’s up to them to decide if friendship is enough for them. If they are okay with me developing myself and my business, and with the group classes no longer being my bread and butter.
It’s a shift as profound as ending the relationship, even though nothing really changes.
My boyfriend and I were already behaving as friends before the breakup.
Same thing with my classes: it have been a friend groups for years.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the panic attacks are starting in this week: my final week as a regular yoga studio owner.
So many goodbyes.
Mainly from the location I had to close, but I already had the first student walking out on me because I am stepping up my game outside of class.
Someone who had paid for the whole year, so that’s a costly breakup too, because I am choosing to pay it back.
It’s like my boyfriend walking out, when I basically had not changed anything about the relationship. All I did was saying: “I m taking responsibility for developing myself in areas that are no longer a part of our relationship. But nothing has to change between us.”
So now here I am.
A business owner in transition. Investing thousands of euros into my company. And I am still unsure if this (making money as an entrepreneur) is as important to me as developing my sexuality.
I can’t see myself juggling this for eight years!
I really still might shut the yogastudio down, get a real job, and enjoy my free time writing.
But I do know that the anxiety attacks mean I made the right choice regardless. That this exposure to the insecurity of an entrepreneur, is something I want to learn to deal with. That I would find it so cool, if I get to know myself, my quirks, my strengths, my two prerequisites and my cherry on top desire, in the field of career or making money as an entrepreneur; with the same certainty as I know all those things about myself in love and sex.
That I would nail this to a degree that I can say:
“Even if I would lose it all, I can build it all back up from the ground again. I got this. ”
And that is something so alluring, that I can’t be bothered with not having a social life, or a sex life. Or even if my current students want to stay on as a friend or not.
Because for the first time in twelve years, I am doing something that scares me shitless and haunts me at night.
And that’s always the right path.

See yA!

Want to know how I’m going to juggle writing and my new business…?
So do I!
LOL
Anyway, I do feel writing is my bread and butter for the SOUL! So I am blocking time for this.
You can buy my erotica and diaries at my new improved shop (English books, scroll down) or for my free content find the Subscribe or Follow button somewhere on this page.
Have you found it?

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Twitter
or Facebook

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

De volgende Nederlandse boeken
zijn ook op voorraad bij boekhandel de Feeks in Nijmegen
verzending gratis v.a. € 17,50

Het Boek Benjamin           € 45
verzameld werk NL en Engels.
Het enige boek dat hier niet inzit is Witte Tijgerin, dus mijn andere Nederlandse boeken zitten hier wél in.

Mango                                 €15
coming of age novelle

22 erotische verhalen   € 15
literaire pornografie in de geest van Anais Nin

Witte Tijgerin                  €5
gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie

Yesterday I cycled to an appointment and I felt so insanely happy, it really was impossible not to notice it.
Especially since there was no particular reason for me to be this upbeat.
I have no idea where I stand with my secret lover.
Nor do I know if that really matters, since our relationship has always included having to go without sex for months, and sometimes not hearing from him for weeks.
Which is reason enough, to review if this is honestly how I want to spend the last fertile decade of my life.
My yoga business, in terms of revenue, was still nothing different from how it had been doing the past few years. Years that had almost made me throw in the towel, just a few weeks ago. I was still receiving mailings from “real career” things I had signed up for, and I was aware that most of my friends still assumed I was looking for a job of some sorts.
Instead of committing to the studio.
And this Monday in particular, I also doubted myself because I had just spent the whole day writing. Not just the sales page for the yoga studio – which could still count as ligit work. But also yesterday’s blog post, about writing and journaling.
Which took me two and a half hours.
And definitely did not count as “going all in for the yoga studio”.
So I didn’t understand why I was feeling so smug when even my most basic resolution – to not write for pleasure on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays – had proven to be unfeasible.
And the mess in my love life…. man! Was I perhaps living in denial, about how bleak it looked? Had I forgotten, how in 2008, I had experienced a total melt down when my then lover had cast me aside?
Or alternatively, had I forgotten all the lousy dates I had had, with men I would never have had sex with if it hadn’t been to prove I was over this lover?
That I could live without him?
That I was MY OWN WOMAN?
Had I forgotten about that?
And the truth was; No. Of course not.
I spent some time thinking about my love life. How would I feel, if Mr.Big broke up with me? Or just let it all die out? And how much energy was I willing to spend dating other men, in an attempt to supplement or replace Mr.Big, depending on how much we would be part of each other’s lives.
And the answers were:
“I would be okay. Even if Mr.Big did break up.”
And:
“No, I don’t care that much for male company. In fact I don’t care much for company at all.”
Just a few months ago, I would go out regularly. Have dates with friends in town. But I was now perfectly happy behind my computer, writing. Or listening to motivational audios while doing the laundry. Or watch personal development videos on YouTube.
And on weekends I would visit musea.
If someone joined, that was great.
If not, that was also great.
And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t really care enough about my love life to make an effort to save it.
If there was a hierarchie in “perceived problems” my love life certainly ranked lower than not doing the things for my yoga studio I thought I ought to be doing for the next half year.
But love life? No.
So with that ruled out, I wondered then why did I feel so unbreakable? High? Confident? Worthy of everything? How was that possible, when I clearly had little to praise myself for.
And I realized – and this answer was so simple, and impossible, and it raised so many new questions, but it was definitely the correct answer – the answer was:
“I am so happy because I wrote all day.”
I looked it up: the sales page took me 3 hours and 15 minutes, and the blog 2,5 hours. That’s nearly seven hours of writing. Together with my classes, I worked over 11 hours.
Effortlessly, and with a spring in my step.
How was this possible?
And if it was the writing, then what did this mean for my yoga studio?
Which yoga studio owner could afford to spend so much time on writing?!
Today I am going to a business coach. It’s my first conversation, and technically I have not been accepted as a client yet, but I have faith that it will all work out.
What I really like about him, and I have no idea if this is actually something that will benefit me, or if it’s what will ruin our relationship, is that he is a normal coach.
He has a normal, local, coaching business. And before this he owned a few other normal, local, companies. Until he sold them ten years ago, and became a coach.
But I like that so much.
Because he has everything I desire to have: a small, local, company, with private clients. I do offer super great arrangements for all current group class members! But to new clients I will only be a private yoga teacher.
Charging in quite a similar way, as the business coach does. I knew he was “my” coach, when I heard his fee, and it was exactly what I had set as my rate, and a session was the same duration as well.
I immediately recognized his business as a mirror image of the one I wanted for myself.
So I m going there today, and I hope that we can get some clarity of what is going on. But I do know that that feeling I had on the bicycle, that feeling of being so in flow with life! – that comes from writing.
Not from doing yoga.
And I need that feeling, in order to be able to teach.
Just as I need this blog, in order to be able to feel so happy with my love life, because the most important part of my love life, is me 🙂
When I returned home after teaching my classes, I found a flower in the hallway. Near the entrance to our building.
I hesitated before picking it up.
Maybe because I didn’t know if I was picking it up, in order to clean it up, or to let it float on a dish of water.
I decided to save it, and picked it up.
I admired the flower.
I realized this was just like picking up small coins: it’s your chance to say thanks to the Universe. I went further up the stairs and found another one. This one was more battered, but I picked it up anyway, and said thanks. And before I reached my door I found a third, on the doormat of the neighbor.
I hesitated.
Had this been intentional?
Had I just ruined a grand romantic gesture from my neighbor to a lover, or from a lover to my neighbor? I thought the chances were slim. She didn’t look like the romantic type at all, and was much more the untidy type who would just let the flowers drop from the bunch and not clean them up.
I picked up the last flower, and after I had put them on a saucer with water, I texted her. Just to apologize if I had made a mistake collecting the three flowers.
But in a strange way, I knew I hadn’t.
I knew those few bright pink pedals, and the three flowers, had been The Universe saying:
“Welcome home, Honey.”

See you the next time around

To hear what happens with the coach, my secret lover, or the Universe dropping me flowers, find the Subscribe or Follow button somewhere on this page.
Have you found it?

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Twitter
or Facebook

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

De volgende Nederlandse boeken
zijn ook op voorraad bij boekhandel de Feeks in Nijmegen
verzending gratis v.a. € 17,50

Het Boek Benjamin           € 45
verzameld werk NL en Engels.
Het enige boek dat hier niet inzit is Witte Tijgerin, dus mijn andere Nederlandse boeken zitten hier wél in.

Mango                                 €15
coming of age novelle

22 erotische verhalen   € 15
literaire pornografie in de geest van Anais Nin

Witte Tijgerin                  €5
gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie

A little confession about fine art of journaling, with pen and paper. I haven’t kept a diary since 2006, when I began writing on my computer.
And even before that, when I did use paper diaries, they were never nearly as elaborate, fulfilling and effective, as their digital counterparts.

I would never have been a writer, if it had not been for the computer. Or internet. I wrote my first semi-autobiographical novel offline, but the internet gave me wings. And over the years my posts have become a hybrid between diary entries, columns, personal development and everything in between.
The only consistency was that they came in the same enchanting format:
Write. Edit. And hit that oh so satisfying “publish” button.
But this is NOT the proper way to journal, to write, nor to keep your diary.

Journaling first.
I will define journaling as writing for the purpose of personal development; affirmations, working through unconscious blocks or trauma, changing limiting beliefs.
You’re supposed to use a paper notebook for journaling – because all research shows handwriting is the best way to do this kind of work. And secondly, you’re not supposed to share this raw stage of doing your mindset work. IF you do want to share something online, it is merely something that was sparked when doing your decent offline stuff.
The REAL journaling inspires your blogpost, it is however not your blogpost. Thou Shall Not Journal online.
And this goes for diary writing too.

You can’t simply type away about your real life, and then share it online.
On a side note, diaries in all shapes and sizes are still, decades after Anais Nin made them mainstream (you’d think!), not so much “frowned upon” I guess;
But diaries certainly rank lowest when they are compared to Real Writing.

Having said that, if you do still insist on keeping a diary, you can’t possibly do that online and expect it to work. It’s just not proper.
You clearly need to keep diaries private and then maaaaaybe (again: if you insist!), edit it and share a cleaned up version at a much later date.

Now for Real Writing there are even more Rules In Place. Real Writing is never based on a blog (or a diary) but relies exclusively on a writer having the patience to show up every day for Art, and work on his or her manuscript.
Preferably with the schedule for each chapter pinned to the wall.
After which the finished manuscript is then published and only the final result is ever shared.
Real Writing is the Sign of Mastery.

And I understand all that. All the rules with regard to journaling, diary writing and writing real books. I do. And it would all be great ideas, if I could actually write, offline.
I did do that.
Once or twice.
On an ancient laptop that wasn’t connected to the internet.
Great stuff.
But then at a certain point, almost without noticing it, I dropped it, stopped writing, didn’t go back; And I ended up having to rescue it by extracting it, and transplanting it online so that it could shoot root, and grow again.

It needed air, it needed to be seen, it needed a place to shine.
Offline projects simply die on me.

And paper notebooks too. They just get cluttered with all the things I m supposed to do, or insights I thought I was going to take action on, and then I don’t do any of those things. Until ultimately, and this has been the fate of all my notebooks, I cut out all the used pages and start again.
With the intention to not mess up, and process my notes each night.
And two months later I am again reaching for my Stanley knife and cut it out.
It’s so disheartening.

The only thing that seems to go on by itself is, is my online writing.
Until I stop because I feel guilty for being this overzealous in my online writing, without writing in paper journals first. That I just smack it down, and hit publish.
Or I stop because I feel guilty for not knowing where the story is going, because I don’t know where my life is going I don’t know yet which parts are important. Or which decisions are final.

But most of all I stop my online writing because I feel guilty for spending so much time doing something
a. incorrectly, obviously.
and
b. that is not my job, and that’s not making me any money.
And I don’t even know if I want writing to make me money. Don’t let creativity pay the bills and all that. And if I do want to make money with writing, then I would have to spend time promoting it, or if I want a real publisher then all those conversations and all the noise from feedback on old stuff, might affect my writing time or concentration.

Me stopping writing lasts two, three days or maybe a week at most, before I sneak back to my blog, hit “Create new post”, and dive in as if it are the arms of a lover I haven’t seen in ages.
So all in all; the offline projects including all notebook writing, fails. Even though I would want it to succeed.
And all the online writing goes really well, and I can stop it for a week at most.

But now I m done with this cycle… From hereon forward?
I’m never going to clear up my act, write offline, or invest in another journal to organize my thoughts. Because my thoughts get messed up from that.
My brain gets just as cluttered as that journal, from journaling offline.
THIS is my writing!
THIS is my journaling!
THIS is my diary!
THIS is my book!
* Hits “publish” *
OH MY GOD THAT FEELS SO GOOD!!

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld