Category: Dear Sara

My missing piece

Published on by LS Harteveld
Madonna and Sean Penn photographed by Herb Ritts

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

Dear Sara,

This email is going to be even shorter than last, because I only have 45 minutes at most. 
My late hour for this email (I usually write you over the weekend, and it’s Monday evening here now) is symbolic of the absence of writer energy as a whole, in my new life. Now that I am actively an entrepreneur.

I have put writing, in particular writing under this alter-ego LS Harteveld, at the top of my priorities half of the time; 
And in the slipstream of that, to live a life worthy of writing LS Harteveld stories about. A life with sex and fun and adventure.

And the other half of the time I have put my body, picking up my yoga practice, recreating my yoga teacher body or even teen or 20s body, at the top of my list.

But I can put at the top of my list all I want;
The past half year all that I have really done is setting up my business.

And it is now that the daily rhythm of marketing, selling and working in my business is finally taking shape, and the smoke of the startup is clearing, that the reality of the rest of my life, and those top two priorities only deeper buried in dust than they ever were, covered with more guilt than I had 6 months ago:
It is now, that I both feel intense sadness for all the lost years, and the understanding that I never stood a chance to begin with.

That my social life, my friends, my love life, all hung by just a thread that losing my business in 2020 cut like a knife through butter.
That my entire sense of normalcy, was wrapped up in that simple local identity of I am a yoga teacher.

My business was still in transition when Covid hit;
To this day I am convinced I could have rebuilt a profitable business back. There was a lot at stake, but I also knew a lot, including how to built a healthy business.
Spoiler; It is never, to just blindly take on the business model your industry has come up with.
Maybe there was relief when late 2020 I ended the lease of the yoga space and gave up.
I have been carrying the grief of not being able to build a profitable yoga studio, for a while now.

But now I am at the phase where I realize that my not-profitable-enough studio, was precious. The people, were precious. And now that I have felt loneliness for years on end, so intensely, so dramatically, and can see more than ever, that maybe even if it had cost me money;
Maybe I should have kept it on.

Teaching yoga as a social club for others, and as the foundation for my own social life, was an idea I never took on.
I didn’t allow myself to.
Also because I felt frustrated for it not bringing in what it should, to call it a career or a healthy business.

But now that I have my new business, that is designed in a way that it generates money in a much more straight forward, sustainable way than being a local yoga teacher could ever be, I find myself thinking;
“Damn. I wish I still had those Tuesday night groups.”
Tuesday was the night I rented a big venue, so it cost me extra, hundreds of euros per month.

I quit that venue in 2018, a month before I started working with you, and had lost almost everybody from that night, because few transitioned to my inner-city studio.
But now that I don’t have that inner-city studio anymore, I fantasize about how wonderful it would be to have such a rich social life, of those big groups.
Meeting people at the supermarket who take your class.
That sort of thing.

I realize that as a social activity, it was precious to me. But that I did not allow myself the luxury of indulging in teaching yoga as a hobby.
I needed more.

And I get that.
Even today, I will not start anything like that until I make a solid amount (I know which one) per week.
That just like in 2018, I am frustrated but unwilling to put pleasure and leisure before building a business.
And a big one.

Just that five years later, I see what I have sacrificed.
What I have already lost, in pursuit of owning a business that makes enough money so that I, a single woman, will be able to buy an apartment and sustain myself into old age.

I want a business that keeps feeding me, my retirement fund, my savings account and my investment portfolio for decades to come.
Put the big bricks first, and that is mine.

So there is that, the sadness of seeing I have not been able to hold on to those groups, to the yoga studio, and that in a way I have destroyed that social structure that was also a lifeline to my normalcy.
To feeling I belonged.

And then the title of this blogpost, the missing piece;
I feel I have lost my lover.

I have seen him, and we are still precious to each other. I know that. Nothing has changed between us. But I imagine his circumstances have changed, he has moved away from me energetically and we are no longer sleeping with each other.
I suspect at some point he will tell me we will no longer be having sex, as if I cannot see that myself.

Like the yoga groups I feel I lost him, because I could not focus on two fields at the same time. I could not invest in our beautiful affair, our amazing sex life, the sex life of LS Harteveld, and also build a business.

And I could not invest in my yoga practice and in my body; The body that I had  when year after year, we had those exciting, intimate encounters, that nourished us both so much.
That were valuable, like my yoga groups were valuable just not from a capitalist, financially independent woman perspective.

My body, my yoga practice, my life of fun and adventure and my writing;
My social life, my life teaching yoga, my identity as a yoga teacher;
I put it all on the backburner, for the dream of having the business that will be able to sustain me, when I grow old.

Because I don’t want to be dependent on a man, nor on a community to sustain me, when I am older.
I want to be financially free, and feel it is my responsibility to lay that foundation not just for me, but also for the people who socially or sexually have a relationship with me.

I don’t want to be anybody’s pity case.
Not now, not ever.

But the price, is high. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

This show hit the road

Published on by LS Harteveld
Madonna 1984 photo shoot Like a Virgin album

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

Dear Sara,

I know that every time I announce it’s going to be a short email, it ends up being a not-so-short email.
But this time, it’s really going to be a short email.

Because everything is just so sweet, gratifying, and above all expectations.
It is of a perfection, that I had no idea was possible. Even though I sacrificed, let’s be honest, five years of my life if not more.
And a fortune in missed income and opportunities, because I knew I needed to get all the way to the bottom of why my life and career had ended up in shambles.
Why, I had been so intensely unhappy being a yoga teacher, even though I loved being a yoga teacher.

Yet still;
What an unexpected and sweet reward to then see what you created, working. Rolling. This show, my new company, is on the road.
A coaching company for business owners, artists and the biggest rock stars of the world.

And I could not have done any of it, if it had not been for all those so called wasted, unhappy years.

I used every bit of knowledge I acquired, every experience that enriched me, every tear I shed and every love I cherished; I took it all and built a three-layered company, that will satisfy me financially, spiritually, intellectually, socially.
And that now that it’s done, actually requires me to actively focus on my body, health, and sexuality; The areas I have neglected and have established so very little . Although as recent as first half 2022 I had the best sex life ever!! But it seems so long ago.
And I do know that in those areas, I have been trying to make headway for years, since I stopped being a fulltime yoga teacher. 
Nothing takes care of your body like teaching 10 classes a week.
And I didn’t have the discipline nor the inspiration, to replace it sufficiently.

Considering the firm body-care foundation of teaching yoga dropped out, and being middle-aged, I got off lightly.
I’m not sick, I’m hardly overweight, my condition is good, and I still move around by bicycle and take long walks frequently.
But it’s not consistent, and it’s not enough.

In my last letter to you, I announced to drop the idea of doing yoga privately and to start teaching yoga on YouTube.
That is still the plan.
Maybe I will add a private yoga practice, but only for a limited time, like 100 days or so, and then switch to teaching privates or one-off workshops.
So to monetize the practice, instead of trying to timeblock for yoga in solitude, which I know is not my future.

The past five years, I’ve had more solitude that I ever hoped to have in my whole life.

So the future is social: And I know my company has got that one covered.

But the future is also physical;
An area which I feel I need to reinvent first!

In my new professional life, my company, I use all the knowledge and experience;
My business degree, 15+ years as an independent yoga teacher;
Studying marketing and sales intensely;
My love for writing, pop-art, and personal development. 
And all the things I thought, the things I did, and everything I found out being a woman who had to get her sex life and sexual identity on track and on point, after being knocked off-track so hard in the 80s, by the aids crisis;
And it all led me to this point where I can see nothing was wasted, because it all led me to being able to build the business I built this year.

The show is on the road, and I can see this running for the rest of my life. This show, this company, is what will take me around the world, bring me places.
It is how people will know me, and will work with me.

But now, the time has come for that final area, body.
Or two areas; Body and sexuality.
The next level of sex.

It is time for the star of the show, to step into her power.
And become the Rock Star she came here to be.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

A Retro Writer’s Guide To A New Life

Published on by LS Harteveld
Writer Carrie Bradshaw in her apartment, Sex and the City.

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

Dear Sara,

Initially I thought I had forgotten all about our last conversation.
That I had made a fuss about having to recover from my personal early- and late Dark Ages, respectively January 2018-February 2020, and March 2020 to March 2023;
Only to then forget all about it.

The very last of the C. measures were lifted last week, on Friday 10 March. The official ending, both of the pandemic as well as of my personal Dark Ages.
Two eras that seemed never ending, until just like that, they did.

I still praise myself lucky I am a middle-aged woman, when these darkest years hit me. That I have decades and decades of normal, healthy life to look back on and to get back to.
I have an understanding of what went wrong these years.

What went wrong, partially due to personal circumstances, but predominantly through global ones. And that what went wrong was in all probability inevitable, because life could not have unfolded in a different way.

Just like when I was 30 and became a yoga teacher; A profession that at the time was not taught to young people.
You had to be in your late twenties to start the education.
Had I known I wanted to be a yoga teacher earlier, it would have been hard to start training and none of it was government funded.
So spending my early twenties at university was a great choice both socially as well as professionally, because it gave me the foundation for my life as an independent because I studied business.

But in terms of career, I had to start all over again, in my late twenties. Professionally, my early twenties had not computed to anything lasting.

I try to go about my Dark Ages in the same way;
They were not wasted, just that they did not lead into a clearly defined career  or skills, anymore than my university degree did.
And they lacked the renaissance spirit of college years, and were indeed more like Dark Ages, where life went around in circles.

Yet ultimately those 5 years were inevitable or necessary, none the less.

So the past weeks I got a new perspective on them, which was already helpful.
But I also did something that came so naturally, I almost forgot it was something that was in sync with the intention to mark The End Of The Era, to heal, integrate, and most of all;
To get the f on with my life.

I dated and organized all my cds, dvds and all my 20th century books. They are now visually dedicated to my Lauren 1998 project;
To living 25 years ago. 
At a glance, I can see all materials I, Lauren, would have had access to at the start of 1998, and I have marked anything being issued in the year 1998 itself, with the date it was released and Lauren 1998 would have been able hear it, read it, or see it in cinemas.

And furthermore, I have split these collections into two separate time capsules;
One for my Sweet Sixteen self, to bring back the remarkable productivity, the stunning health, and the tremendous calm of the 80s. 
And one for my 20s self, for Lauren 1998, who is still struggling to juggle her ambitions as a diarist with her freelance work.

There are still hurdles to take, because just like Lauren 1998 I  struggle keeping even more balls up in the air, starting my new online business (I’m back to fully online, and will write off the money I spent on three months at the local business center. It was driving me nuts to even think about real life networking) and setting up a sustainable marketing for ALL my creative outlets.

I can’t post a few inspiring memes, and start selling my online coaching. I am NOT that kind of business owner.
I will always be a creative because I coach creatives and am creating a whole Rock Star Universe for decades to come.
You don’t Content Calendar yourself out of that, I need to keep creating!
I need to keep writing.

And not just for my real name, but for this name, Lauren, LS Harteveld as well.

But one ball didn’t make it.
It slipped and I know I cannot pick it back up;
My yoga practice has completely flatlined.

It is just undoable to be a writer under two names, run a company, do my marketing, make yoga videos and other videos, get daylight, exercise, and do interesting things to live a life worth writing about-
And to also have a home yoga practice.

I need to give it up, and move to “All yoga is for video”.
I need to be an online yoga practitioner, not an online teacher.
Which feels more vulnerable, yet in a strange way, also more exciting.
But it was not how I had envisioned it. I thought this year I would become a strong, offline, yoga practitioner again.

Now I know that all yoga will be teaching it.
Period.

The coaching company which I started in February, has been an incredible blessing, I feel that is what is the biggest difference between the Dark Ages and now.
That I now have a monetizable purpose.

But because I also want to build my yoga channels, and do all my writer and storyteller work, under two names, it has also revealed something has got to give.
And I know this is the offline, private, non-monetizable yoga practice.

I know not having a yoga practice is risky.
That after a 5 year midlife crisis of strain, stress, tremendous losses, frustration and major changes in every and all areas of my life (bar my love life, which has been surprisingly stable considering its “loose” setup! 😂) something that can serve as a physical form of therapy, would be the wise thing to do.

March’s changes of having a company and building yoga channels, two things I would have loved to have had over the past 5 years, will come with a sacrifice of my personal yoga practice.
There is no other way, since I prioritize writing under two names, marketing, publishing books and giving Lauren an offline, 20th century life worth writing about.

So from my previous letter to you, a realization that I need to implement something to undo the damage of five years of Dark Ages, I am moving to an understanding that my way of getting over my 21st century Dark Ages, is not by moving forward. Nor by moving inward.
But by moving outward, into the world.
And back, into creating an offline 20th century life.

Which makes sense, because despite all the drama, what I experienced more than anything in those five years, was being forced to stand still.
To stand still and to see what I called a life, crumble away, die, move out, or otherwise slip between my fingers.

It was the hell of seeing my whole life disappear into a five year void. Leaving behind only loneliness, and old age.
The year I turned 50 was the worst year of my life.

Therefor my path out of the darkness can never be contemplation.
Not the solitude of a daily yoga practice.

I need to run this new, 21st century online business; Yes.
But all my free time will go to giving Lauren 1998 a richer, fuller life!

A 20th century offline life;
FILLED with professional, personal and sexual adventures.

Adventures, worth writing about. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

How do you recover from the Dark Ages?

Published on by LS Harteveld

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

Dear Sara,

The good news is I haven’t changed my plans, or what I want for weeks now. Just details, but nothing big. I feel secure in the commercial or official company I will be starting tomorrow, and in the understanding that I will bring teaching yoga and writing under the umbrella of the company, in future years.

It is doable, it is clear, and I like not having everything in there at this phase. I can really focus, on monetizing and selling just a selection of services, and it is breaking the cycle of loneliness.
It is a first step to recovering from what I will call my personal dark ages.

Like the real dark ages there is an early dark ages and a late dark ages. I think you don’t really see what the early dark ages are, until you are sinking even deeper.

I didn’t recognize any part of the dark ages, for the longest time, because the early period was set off by my little cat Maxie dying in January 2018.
I lost all my joy or interest in my work of teaching yoga and quit teaching that summer.
I picked it up early 2019, after my renovation was done, and I started teaching yoga to friends.

Late 2019 I had started developing Rock Star Yoga, and I am convinced that would have been how I would come back to teaching, if it had not been for the obvious 2020 reasons.
I ended the lease of my yoga space late 2020.

All in all I thought my misery was circumstantial.
That it was the result of not having cats for the first time in 15 years, and of a renovation in my building late 2018 and early 2019.
Workers coming into my house, the heating being turned off numerous times, and two weeks where I had to leave the house because it was unlivable and then the alternative housing was hardly better because they had started renovating there too, and everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

By the time it was all over I adopted two cats and 2019 was the year I started designing my new life!
There were some major changes but I knew it was me getting back on my feet.

So when in 2020 I started feeling miserable I didn’t think much of it either because everyone was miserable.
And because I was healthy, lived alone carefree and didn’t have children that needed homeschooling, I did not have the heaviest burden.
But I found the pandemic magnified the inter-human expectations that it was my task to make sure somebody feels safe with me.
A fear at the heart, of my social phobia.

I feel I still don’t trust people the way I used to, because in the past at least I thought it was me.
That I was exaggerating, and too sensitive or even seeing expectations that were not there.
But now I believe it is even worse than I imagined.

During the pandemic I saw a wide array of blaming, of not taking responsibility that we live in a free country and this entails several rights and risks. Our government demonized people who did not behave the way they thought was appropriate, and judging by the lack of protest that was apparently okay.
When now, the people who are vulnerable are still vulnerable, and everybody moved on and no one talks about what the vulnerable people are supposed to do.

So they all felt really good about themselves, being the good guys and blaming the bad guys, only to just leave all those who actually do have reason to worry unprotected after.
The silence is deafening.

The loss of my last cat, became a switch in careers,  became a year long void where I waited for the renovation to be over.
And when the upwards going curve of teaching yoga and new cats, was finally taking off, and I knew where I was heading;
It was 2020.

With my new company, and knowing exactly what I am going to do, I feel the grief of all those lost years, requires attention.
That I have been carrying this around since January 2018, when my cat died in my arms.

So much has happened since.
And nothing has been processed.

It’s all still raw and painful.

And I couldn’t help but wonder;
How do you recover, from the dark ages?

 .
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

Did I just save my work, or destroyed myself?

Published on by LS Harteveld

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

Dear Sara,

In our last correspondence I announced that I had once and for all quit being a yoga teacher.
And Boy, I meant it!
Still do.
And yet, quitting teaching yoga is not turning out as actually quitting teaching yoga. And for reasons I absolutely did not see coming, but that have persuaded me immediately.

Not to start teaching again, I would not call it that.
But the reasons persuaded me to go in and save my work, because it has all my heart and soul in it. And that work is not teaching yoga;
It’s the books that came from it.

A few years ago I have reissued the White Tigress Yoga Workbook, originally from Lauren Harteveld, under my real name.
The name where I also used to be a yoga teacher.
I also have a public online, collection of 52 (!) yoga schedules there, a ton of schedules still on my computer, about 15 early 21st century dvd’s I’d like to watch and make schedules for, and 5 vintage yoga books I’d like to study.

Yet perhaps I could have turned my back on all of it, if it had not been for the fact that I wrote those 52 schedules in my cute baby-handwriting, which I attribute to notes my dolls write, or the cats. Or as written by my cartoon character Love Duckie, which is what I did with these ones.

The 52 schedules are actually a yoga book written by Love Duckie.
And there is no way, and I mean none, I can turn my back on Love Duckie…

To be fair, it did start with the White Tigress.
It did start with realizing that if I no longer taught yoga, I would never be able to bring these 7 schedules that are the result of 20 years in yoga, to the public.
That was the first, that made me want to save yoga.
I thought about starting a website, just for the White Tigress yoga and lifestyle as described by Hsi Li in three books, and start making yoga videos again, just for that.
So that came first, and it still felt very partial. Very doable, non-threatening, to pick just that one booklet, and say: “This is all the yoga I will be teaching for the rest of my life.”
But then I shrieked, like the parents in Home Alone, not: “We forgot Kevin.” but “I forgot Love Duckie!”

Love Duckie could not be left behind.
And even though I was not abandoning the cartoon itself, I loved Love Duckie so much (who wouldn’t?) that abandoning the 52 schedules in his baby handwriting was unthinkable.

I don’t make a habit of connecting my real life work to this site, but since this blog relies so heavily on that work, I will happily share it, in case you want to check it out:
Book page under my real name, including the reissue of the White Tigress book. 
Love Duckie’s yoga book
And I once made an English translation of a Love Duckie cartoon.

So I am picking up making yoga videos on YouTube: The “Love Duckie yoga” on my Dutch channel, and the White Tigress yoga on my English channel.
And the third yoga-from-the-heart concept was Rock Star Yoga:
This too will return, on my English channel.

The above is just one version of the story. Another version is that I realized that I need yoga, just not as the tool of self-expression I thought it was.
The yoga itself is normal, not unique. And me making yoga videos is nothing special either. I even no longer consider giving public classes with rock music, mixing theatre with yoga, nothing of the sort.
So no, I don’t need yoga as a tool of self-expression. I was right about that, in my last post to you.

But I have used yoga in the past to express myself though: Through writing. Through making schedules.
The expression was there, just that the heart of it was not in the actual teaching.

And I have tried to express myself in the teaching too. Through using class themes, themed series, cards, blog posts, long relaxations, and video talks on YouTube, I have tried to weave storytelling into the yoga.
But I did it backwards because I tried to put the storytelling into the yoga, for as far as yoga allowed it. 
And that is what will be totally different now:
The storytelling will go first.

So instead of a yoga teacher, instead of a TED-talk like speaker, instead of a blogger, instead of a writer and instead of a mentor and business owner, I am just that;
A storyteller.

The stories come out, as they come out. Perhaps there is yoga, perhaps not.
I’m even thinking of ways to take the word yoga out of the videos to simply a story, and than the second half of the story is on your mat.

But whether I explain the past three weeks with finding back my White Tigress  work and Love Duckie, and not being able to leave them behind;
Or with my love for storytelling finally taking the main stage (optional link to my Birth of a storyteller post, a very longread under my real name);
Of course I’m scared.

Scared because the profession of being a yoga teacher brought me harm and took me out for 20 years plus.
I always thought I had one chance left. One chance, to get it right this time.
But with yoga on board it feels I decimated the chances of success.
Like I’m sailing with a bomb on board.

So in our call, I would like to talk about how to change that story and how to stop being scared.
How to dismantle the bomb, so that it becomes something I love. Just like I love yoga books, yoga videos, Love Duckie, and the White Tigress work.

There is a rule in film that if you show a gun at the beginning of the movie, you have to fire it before the end.
So I can’t depart with a live bomb on board, because I know it will blow. I know how the story goes, and to be honest, I would set it off myself if I had too.

I can’t depart with me failing being the most spectacular story..

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

The day I freed myself.

Published on by LS Harteveld
Rock Star Madonna

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup..
Which I already did two days ago, but I was wrong.
And I need another message to correct.
A big one.

Dear Sara,

This is a hard email for me, because I know I switched courses over the last few weeks on multiple occasions.  I feel I may be disappointing you or that you may be uncomfortable with my choice to become a coach.
So I write this proudly owning my choices, and looking forward to my future for the first time in full confidence of who I am.
The recent switches, although messy, are the result of everything I learned working with you as a coach.
They’re not a sign the coaching didn’t work, or that I’m still lost.

This second message to you is a messy one, and I would rather have spared you and myself the past two months.
But in hindsight I see these last two months as the high-pressure cooker, that was necessary to make the changes and finalize a decision, I have been reversing for years.

Which is my decision to not be a professional yoga teacher anymore. Just do yoga for myself, and teach yoga to friends when I can.

My decision to quit is final this time, and marks the end of two months of misery. Or two and a half months, because there were two weeks before the turmoil in my personal relationships became visible, when the new truth could already be felt.
This decision means this period has now come to a conclusion.

There is a broader picture here, a direction where my writing has become more serious in recent years not because of the writing intensifying (which it hasn’t) but because under both my names as a writer, you can see me leaning into other forms of visual art and performance art.
You can see me incorporating the passing of time, documenting my life.

I see my decision to never be a yoga teacher again, at least not professionally, as making space to be an artist.
To let what started as mere writing in 2006, develop.

But the final three weeks have been unbelievably hectic.
I have changed a lot, before it came down to this. 

The first switch I made, three weeks ago, was my decision to quit my plans to start coaching. In fact I was a 100% sure I would not do it.
This was also the day I embraced being a writer and a yoga teacher.

But then I came back on my decision to not be a coach, and saw myself being a coach for Rock Stars, in full color and firing on all cylinders!
It was crystal clear.
It was a calling, a knowing, just like the yoga vision in 1998 which ultimately ended up tainted and I have not been able to hold true to that vision at all.
But this vision was also just like writing, which I did develop independently, and beautifully. All by itself. This particular vision to “coach” (will never use that word) was one I felt I had been preparing for my whole life.
It made me intensely happy.

And it was a heart felt business, but it was also a monetizable business. 
I knew I had struck gold, but soul gold, more than money gold.

So there was that first turn, from not wanting to be a coach to knowing I will. 

And then there was an addition of marketing, messaging and selling.
Basically the addition of wanting to monetize my writing and yoga, as the third pillar to my art.
At that point, I still saw myself as a writer and a yoga teacher, but I understood that doing my own marketing and having my fingers in the communication pie, the business side of those things, was equally important.
That writing was my art form of self-expression, yoga was my art form of self-expression, but building a business too, was an indispensable part of my art. I would never stop doing that.

And now I’ve come back on the yoga part;
I am not a yoga teacher. 
Teaching yoga could be a form of self-expression, but it isn’t yet. If I compare it to music I’d say that yoga-wise, I’m a skilled classical pianist. But if I would like to become Guns N’ Roses new keyboard player, I would have to start learning all over again.

Before yoga would be a form of self-expression, I would have to start all over again. 
Which in itself, is good enough reason to take yoga out of my mix of art forms, because all the schedules I made since late last year, they had zero time for writing.
My entire schedule consisted of:
writing for blogs that were marketing
making yoga videos
doing yoga
marketing/ social media, I had a couple of series I would post
And then I had to squeeze and timeblock to have hours I could bill.

I was getting increasingly jealous of artists who had a real craft. And the first thought when I had ditched the yoga teaching, was to think:
“I now have a real craft! I am a writer!”
And a speaker, and a coach- but I sell my time with the mindset of it being performance art, not like a service provider. Although I do know how I am going to coach, I have my “system” – but that is beside the point of this blogpost.
But taking yoga teaching, making yoga videos, sharing my yoga practice on social media, and the whole yoga mentor aspect of it, out of my future business was a huge relief. 

But I didn’t get to the decision because of my calendar and that it didn’t fit, and something had to give.
I got to finally being able to let yoga go, because of what happened in my personal relationships late last year. And that being a yoga teacher and feeling that I need to be “good”  and not take up too much room as an artist, were intrinsically tied to it.

In a way the reason the drama occured late last year was because I had limited myself to being a yoga teacher.
Because if I had stepped into my power sooner, maybe our fate would have been different.
But also: If I had become who I really was, then even if the relationship had failed, and I had lost the person, at least I would still have had myself.
Whereas now I lost the relationship but I also lost myself.

Feeling trapped being a yoga teacher, is the reason last year’s turmoil hit me so hard.

Because I kept myself small for them.
I wanted to be accepted, and not rock the boat, for them.
I stayed a yoga teacher, decade after decade, because I felt that was the only little stamp-sized space I was entitled to, if I wanted them in my life.

Late 2016 I met a business coach online, and I have been following her work ever since. And for a long time I thought she represented my dream to start making money with my yoga, but now I realize she represented financial freedom to me.
Financial freedom which, on my list, is second in my list of priorities.

  1. Love 2. Freedom. 3. Sex. 4. Self-expression 5. Body 6. Fun 7. Status

Sexual freedom and creative freedom are reinforced at 3 and 4, but financial freedom is only “mentioned” under 2.
My top 7 does not have a separate number for money or business. They are intrinsically implied in 2.

The dream I received in 2016, was not to have a successful yoga business, but to express myself through my business and to be financially free.
Value or priority 2: Freedom.
Which is only topped by “1”, Love, and not by writing (self-expression 4).
And not by teaching yoga which was then (I thought) also still under (self-expression  4).

You could even say that my top 7, illustrates that I only have a top 2:
1. Love 2. Freedom

And that the only conflict is within “2”.
“Do I want financial freedom, more than freedom to self-express?”
And so on.
The answer is of course all forms of freedom are equally important to me. Financial freedom, sexual freedom, and creative freedom.

But again, I’m rationalizing. Because when I pulled the plug on yoga, it wasn’t because I saw that teaching yoga wasn’t an authentic artistic self-expression tool to me. 
The reason I could now suddenly part, after years, was because I realized that the personal relationship turmoil from late last year, has changed everything.

It has really proven to me, that holding back for family and for all those friends who liked me as a yoga teacher;
That it is all in vain.
They have all left me, or will ultimately leave me.
Or perhaps I left them, who is to say.

But the only choice I have, is if I want to die alone being the person I have pretended to be for 25 years;
Or die as who I really am.

A writer, an artist.

A rock star.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

Lauren, the writer, has joined my real-life business.

Published on by LS Harteveld

Catherine Tramell is my identity as Lauren Harteveld
Madonna is my identity as a yoga teacher

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

Detective Nick Curran;
“I love it. She’s got a hundred million bucks, she fucks fighters and rock n’ roll stars and she’s got a degree in screwing people’s heads”

Luitenant Walker:
“You forgot about her degree in literature. She’s a writer. She published a novel last year under a pen name. “

Dear Sara,

When I concluded on my last call that I AM a yoga teacher, and I AM a writer, I knew I was wrong in the sense that just focusing on these two skills, would not bring me the life I wanted.
After all, in the list of 7 values that I wrote you last time, self-expression is at number 4;
Both yoga and writing are tools of self-expression to me.
Using yoga as a tool of self-expression probably deserves a whole separate blog post, but I will now just accept that that is what it is to me.

The list of priorities is serving me greatly, in making decisions or explaining things which I feel I got wrong.
The list was a boiled down version from 12 values I initially had, to 7. And by heart, they were;
1. Love 
The most intimate circle including my pets.
2. Freedom
Including financial freedom. Sexual freedom and creative freedom, are reinforced at 3 and 4.
3. Sex
Full sexual expression.
4. Self-expression
Including writing and yoga.
5. Body
My health and using my body as part of my performance/ art. 
6. Fun
Including going to concerts and movies, rock music, studying history. I guess this is more the consumer side of it, whereas self-expression is the creator side of my art.
7. Status
This is the part of my career that is visible to the outside world.

So like I said, yoga is part of 4;
Self-expression.

Yoga was brought to me by Madonna which in retrospect only appealed to me because she is a performer.
Madonna expresses herself through her body, through how she moves. and how she speaks.
In 1998 she told she had started doing yoga. And I understood that just like dance, yoga was a path to start using my body as a way to express myself.

It didn’t work that out right away, because nobody uses yoga that way so how could I know that aspect had been what had appealed to me? And I did end up losing 25 years.
But now that I am rebuilding my yoga career?
Then yes.
I need to get back to the understanding I had that yoga is a tool for self-expression to me.
And that I will be a yoga teacher who teaches yoga, as a way to express yourself through your body.

This is also a good place to side-note that the insight that I am a yoga teacher and a writer, was also not complete because there was a third component missing;
The business side of it.

During our call I entertained the thought that having a business and making money as an entrepreneur was something that came after teaching yoga and writing, but this is not the case.
Just like I had a calling to become a writer, and a calling to become a yoga teacher, I had a calling late 2016, an understanding, that I was meant to have my own business.

But as I understand now, just like with yoga, I failed to see that I felt drawn to having a business as a tool for self-expression. In particular the marketing of it!
And just like yoga, businesses are rarely used or seen as a tool of self-expression. And again I lost valuable years here trying to “build” a business, the way others do.
Where now I can see that writing AND yoga AND running a business all serve the same purpose;
To express myself.

And that all three are necessary and vital to my well-being.
They’re all essential and none of them have to make me money, not having a business either. They serve a higher purpose.

Writing and teaching yoga are to me, what painting and sculpting are to visual artists who exercise two skills.
And having a business, meaning in particular communicating through marketing, selling and social media posts;
That is also part of my art.

I will never stop my marketing, anymore than I will stop teaching yoga or writing.
In fact, that I did stop marketing and daily messaging for my Lauren Harteveld account, because I “merely”  write here, and how that resulted in my writing decimating in 2021 and 2022, proves that there can be no creativity without the marketing, the messaging, and the very public part of being on social media.

Social media and marketing are what a fix spray is to a painting.
Or the oven in a pottery.
Social media and marketing, and also selling and making money, are part of the art.
They are the outer layer, the bringing it into the world.
Without it, the art of writing and teaching yoga, are not completely expressed. The third skill, the business meaning the marketing, connecting, and the very act of selling, is a required one.

So those were already important insights.
But the title of this post is:
“Lauren, the writer, has joined my real-life business.”
So that is my biggest breakthrough.

The last time we talked I was already on the path of starting a coaching business, although I worded it differently (and I will continue to do so) that is what it came down to.
From there, I moved away to being a coach but in the field of yoga, which felt really good. For a few days, I really thought that coaching people through their yoga was going to be what I do.
But then I concluded that ultimately I do not want that. That for my yoga I want it to be all public via YouTube (I will be a YouTube yoga teacher);
I want it to be real-life yoga mentoring or private classes, not Zoom or online coaching;
And I want it to be public events where I am booked to teach yoga.

So the online and international yoga coaching dropped from the radar, because it just didn’t fit with the real-life work I ultimately want to do.
The real-life expression, I want my yoga to have.
Online yoga coaching would just have me isolated behind my computer and I’ve definitely had enough of that.

With yoga coaching out, I took another look at my coaching company, the framework I had already created, although not finalized yet, and I saw both that any form of regular coaching would keep me occupied behind the screen and buried in an endless list of appointments to book and rebook and coaching packages to keep up with, refund and reschedule;
As well as that I saw a HUGE opportunity!

I saw exactly the type of coaching company I want to build.

A high end coaching business, for rock stars only, or those who wish to become one. In the music business, or in any other industry where they want their skill to be one of self-expression.
To be a performance.

Anyone who knows that whatever it is they “do”, is meant to be more, mean more, and to express ALL!
It is for anyone, meaning the very few, who understand that they are here to let it all out and let their work, their art, be a full creative expression of who it is they are.

My coaching (although I will not use that word) is a 100% private, life-changing relationship (and you know I offer those to few!) that you can fall back on, when you know you’re forgetting who you came here to be, and what you’re all about.

I’m in the process of having a contract drawn up, that ensures the client confidentiality and that creates clarity and boundaries.
A contract that creates a safe space where we can meet.

This way of doing business is inspired by my love life;
Where we are lovers, who only meet when we both feel like it.
Which could end any month or year, without notice even.
He can stop asking me, and of course I will check in with him, because he’s my lover. But I will not demand a date or a continuation of what we have.

With a client I will offer the same;
A friendly check-in, but I’m not going to hard-sell them on another booking, that would feel totally inappropriate.

I need a client to take the initiative to ask for a booking.
Exactly like my lover does.

With these two interventions – focusing on creating the safe space and letting the client buy, not me sell – I feel I m setting up a coaching business that is 100% suitable for me.
And I am very confident I can meet these rock stars at the level that they are, and inspire them to rock their art even more than what they do already.

But a bonus is that it is not yoga-me, not YouTube yoga teacher me, not real life me, nor event bookings me, who offers this coaching.
It is, Lauren Harteveld.

That the person these clients will benefit the most from, is not to talk to the “real me”;
But to Lauren Harteveld, the writer, instead.
Even when I do not call myself that way over there, I will know it is her. And I do that because my writing as Lauren Harteveld is more free, and because I found my voice and true expression as a writer, 15 years before I found my true voice as a yoga teacher.
I do it because Lauren Harteveld is way more sexual, than my expression under my own name will ever be.
But there is another reason.

Because the writer Lauren Harteveld, is inspired by Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct. I wrote a whole book about how I see her, what archetype she is and what she symbolizes, but for this blog I will focus on two aspects:
She is known to hang out with rock stars.
And she’s so wealthy she will not be impressed by anyone’s fame or wealth.

The writer Lauren Harteveld, the part of myself which I have identified as “my real self” on more than one occasion, will absolutely not show up to teach yoga. Not for any price, she just won’t come.

But to be with the rock stars of the world, and not tell a soul?
You’d be lucky, to have her. 

.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

7 Values, 7 Deadly Sins.

Published on by LS Harteveld

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

Dear Sara,

When I copied my former letter to you into a draft – a process only allowed in block editor, after which I then have to return to my draft section and open the copied post in Classical Editor, click some variation of “Are you sure you want this?!” because WordPress wants you to use Block editor and THEN I can write my post in classical editor –
I stumbled upon a new feature:
Below the Block Editor box to write a new title for my copied post, there was a writing prompt.

Now ironically, this totally useless addition to the Block Editor I have already been dodging like the Covid virus for three years, happened exactly in the three weeks I tried to start my new website for my new 2023 company;
A process in which I encountered and needed to dodge and work around the new WordPress update many, many times.
Because Block Editor is just one of the seven heads of Gutenberg, as the update is officially called. There is mayhem waiting beneath every feature, not just editing.

These other hard-to-do-without features of the old WordPress have also disappeared, or need to be reinstalled with a plugin or a piece of code;
Two things I’m not going to come near!

My new WordPress site still has a few things that I either have to solve, give up on, or settle for, and I haven’t made up my mind.
For the first time ever however, I am very happy that I have so many websites!
Under my real name, as well as under this name LS Harteveld.
I have so many blogs, all built in the era when WordPress was still easy!
And in particular because they have zero plugins, which are the achilles heel of any website, they all still work great.

So hooray for that, but the new website does require more effort in things that should have been just minutes work.
The Gutenberg update has become increasingly hard to move around.
But one of the things I did encounter on my quest to find the older features, was an option to click (or, more likely “unclick”) suggested writing prompts.

So I had an “Aha!” experience when I saw it popping up here!

When making my website, I had still assumed the writing prompt feature had been installed somewhere in the past year, because that’s when I last made a new website.
But seeing this writing prompt popping up here, and I know it wasn’t there three weeks ago, means it was apparently installed in the past 3 weeks, and it’s default setting is:
“Yes please! I want to receive writing prompts because when I open a new draft I’m always totally clueless what the fuck I should be writing about.”

Who does that?
Who would open a file, not knowing what to write?
Who would EVER, not know what to write?
To me having a writer’s block is not just unimaginable;
It would be preferable.

I can dream of a future where I have nothing to write, and nothing to say.
The businesses I could build!
The money I could make!
The fame I could have!
And all the fun stuff I would be able to do, all the adventures I would be able to have, without needing 5000 words and eight hour long writing sessions to process it all.

Oh writer’s block…. * dreamy eyes *
If they sold writer’s block in a bottle I would treasure that thing, and guard it with my life. 

I definitely need to find and unclick that option for writing prompts, and on all my blogs.
Because I came here knowing perfectly well what I would write about, and just spent all those paragraphs writing extra, on some random prompt that was forced on me by WordPress Gutenberg.
Distraction, making a WordPress blogger forget what they came here to write about, is the work of the devil.
I knew Gutenberg was evil.

So, what I came here to write about was: I found my values!

This was always high on my wishlist. The only reassurance I did have, stumbling around without knowing my values, was that it is impossible to go against them.
I will never drift off that much.
I will freeze, block or blow something up when something against my values happens, so in practice they’re pretty hard to miss.

But I didn’t want practice: I wanted theory.
I wanted concept.
I wanted to know what my values were, in their most abstract and general form! 
Not in their most manifest, practical, worldly form, because that shit is ever changing.
You can’t build a life on that.

And you certainly cannot build your 2023 company on responding to the devil in it’s infinite number of appearances.
Particularly not when you are really a writer and would like to write stuff all day and NOT have a company at all!
But be taken care off by an agent and a publisher.

In particular then, you do not have time to deal with everything that is against your value, in its shape-of-the-day.
You need to be crystal clear on your values and spot the things going against them, from afar.

 So, I found them, my values.
Initially there were 12, but I managed to bring them down to 7.
But after writing this blogpost, I realize that I was really only halfway…. that the list of values is not complete, without a list of sins.
And also, that some of my values were actually still way too specific.

It is very practical for the day-to-day use of these values, to make them specific.
For example “writing”.
Because then I know WHAT, which activity, matters to me and should be chosen over a different one.
However, the moment you want to reverse the values to find its antithesis, this no longer works.
There is no opposite to writing.

You can only find the opposite to writing if you first make it into an abstraction which is;
To think, and to send my thoughts into the world.
I could do without writing, but I cannot do without being allowed to think for myself and let my voice be heard.

So having said that I am tweaking the list, in order to be more abstract, and be able to find my personal opposing forces.
And I can already see why that WordPress writing prompt was indeed the opposite from what I am all about.
It was imposing their thoughts upon me, when I write to bring my thoughts out into the world.
Not haul them in.

7 Values, 7 Deadly Sins.

Number 1 is the top priority on the left, leading into the top nemesis situation, or sin, on the right.

1. 👼🏻LOVE
daily shape: love for my mother, pets, drawing cute cartoons, making photo collages of my teddy bear.

This is love in its most uncomplicated form, where you trust each other completely. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how small this category really is.
And that it should be, because this is the unbreakable bond category.

It is inherently unfree (point 2 on the list), and that means that I can only use this category for those of whom I know I, can live up to that.
And that they welcome it.

This is where I give not just unconditional love, but also an unconditional relationship.

Based on my top value, the anti-thesis to love, the first deadly sin, are relationships.
Because they can exist without love being there.

1.👹RELATIONSHIPS

2. 👼🏻FREEDOM
daily shape: Financial freedom and sexual freedom

For years I’ve known that the rules to what’s acceptable, allowed or even encouraged, are dependent on your financial independence. That men have always been sexually more free, BECAUSE they were financially more free.
And vice versa, that the sexual repression of women and minority groups can only be enforced as long as they are financially dependent on men, their employer, or even their clients.

That capitalism is both the weapon of the patriarchy as well as its achilles heel.
The moment you have attained financial freedom, not just free from your spouse but also free from employers or clients, then you’re free as a bird.

This explains why building a new business is so important for me. Not because I don’t see I am a writer, and secretly entertain fantasies about being kept by my publisher and agent;
But because I have a deep understanding that being an entrepreneur and having different income streams, coming from different markets (globally/ online, nationally and locally) is not just a nice to have;
It is a must.

The antithesis to Freedom is dependency, in particular financial dependency.

2.👹FINANCIAL DEPENDENCY

3. 👼🏻SEX
daily shape: I’ve had a lover for multiple years now, and I am open to meet a new lover too.

To me great sex means having sex with someone I am crazy about, but with whom I share no ties, that can point to the aforementioned relationships.
Of course I have a relationship with him; Just like I have a relationship with all my friends.

But it is a relationship of equality.
A relationship that can be broken by either party, even without explanation. Not wanting to be with the other person, is enough reason to stop showing up.

3.👹LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH FINANCIAL DEPENDENCY

4. 👼🏻SELF-EXPRESSION
daily shape: Writing and Publishing

I was very surprised to have writing, and publishing in particular, so high up my list.
But it is inspiring me to keep the pressure on working on publishing my books. On looking for ways to systemize making books from collections of blogposts and to see the writing of blogposts as writing on my books, which ultimately, it is.
When the past few years I had started to view writing as a marketing tool.

So writing wasn’t “actually” a real thing, in my opinion. It was only as good as the monetizable product or service I would be able to sell on the back of it.
But I no longer think that.

I am a writer and my blogs are my treasure trove to make books from, and to build my legacy.
To let my voice, my expression, be heard further and wider.

4.👹EXPRESSING SOMEBODY ELSE’S TRUTH/ LYING

5. 👼🏻BODY
daily shape: Yoga and walking/ cycling

This one is such a great one!
I have said it before, but I can really SEE my new body, in my mind’s eye! I know it’s there, I know what it’s going to look like.
It’s not Madonna’s 1990-ish body, as I originally thought.
But it’s her 2012 MDNA promo-shoots, that have the energy, the feel, of what it is I want.

Which means I’m actually going to put two of the OG original sins on my list!

5.👹GLUTTONY & SLOTH

6. 👼🏻FUN
daily shape: studying the topics I love (incl movies, days out, art) and blogging or posting about it.

When this came out at number 6, I thought:
“This is why you don’t have a man, Lauren!” 
Ha ha ha. Well, in my defense, we now know I don’t “have” a man because I think it kills the sex which was in my top 3.
But I think having fun at 6 doesn’t help.
In particular when my day-to-day idea of fun are actually solo activities.

These are the times when I study marketing and business;
Start sorting through my notebooks, play with my laminator, or start making playlists on YouTube, or collages on my phone, and forget the time.
For finding the antithesis, I m going to focus on their spontaneous and time-consuming nature;
It is the being able to spend ample time on these things, that makes them fun.

6.👹 HAVING A RIGID SCHEDULE

7. 👼🏻STATUS
daily shape: Receiving recognition online, nationally or internationally.

Again, a case of “No wonder this isn’t happening; Having it at 7!”
But I think it is exactly where it should be.

To me, being known is way more something that makes monetizing to achieve the #2 of financial freedom easier, and sustainable into the future, than something I aspire for personal reasons.
Whether or not I am known as the writer LS Harteveld, or as a specialist under my real name, or under my real name as a writer even;
It doesn’t matter.
But I will go for all of them.

I have identified four different markets, two of which I have a pretty good idea of how to achieve the status that will make people want to work with me.
So that is two markets where I expect to achieve status.
But I’m very enthusiastic to figuring the other two out 😉 

7.👹 RESTRICTIONS TO MY PUBLIC PERSONA

That was it!

7 Values, 7 sins.

Or, as the tagline of the movie Seven goes:
Seven deadly sins.
Seven ways to die.

Ain’t that the truth.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

I’ve lost the Lauren that gave me life

Published on by LS Harteveld

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

Dear Sara,

I almost got a heart attack when I saw the list with previous blogposts. A list I always start with, because I copy the old post into a new one. 
But the titles and dates of publication were unfamiliar, they did not support the story of what I thought the past three weeks had been…

The good news was that I saw I had already written a Lauren 1997 diary post “Write a book, Lauren.” A sentence that has been haunting me for so long, I had already made my peace with the fact that I was not going to write a post about it, and in all probability, also not write a, or more accurately another, book.
That the calling or the inspiration, the angel whispering in my ear “Write a book, Lauren.” had caught me at a bad time, and their message got lost in all of November’s drama.
But no!
I had actually written that post “Write a book, Lauren.“, and in my favorite series, Lauren 1997! 
AND it was a #NSFW post.

So that was the good news, I had totally forgotten I had done that. But that title didn’t give me the proverbial heart attack.
No, what startled me is that I did not see any post that was the “mid-term” update, which I clearly remembered sending you.
Because of all the turmoil in my life, you offered I could write you an extra email in-between our coaching calls which are currently at a three week interval.

I wrote the post, and intended to use that one as a “copy” post.
But didn’t see anything that matched the description….
I immediately thought I had published it on one of the blogs under my real name, and I also linked this faux pas somehow to the #NSFW tag of the Lauren 1997 diary post! 

Emotionally, it felt as if I had already posted a #NSFW under my real name.
😱

Either way; I checked the link in my email to you, and saw it was a laurenharteveld.com link. So no harm done.
https://laurenharteveld.com/2022/11/16/dust-yourself-off-and-try-again/
When I got back to the dashboard, I saw it was indeed there. Just that the date and title were no longer familiar to me.
I do remember the topic: loneliness. And thank you for your reply which was lovely! 

So this Sunday night, I get ready to write you this update, thinking I am just SO organized, and the week will be so smooth and relaxed!
And that I’ll be in bed at 10 PM, calm and collected, because I know that I got  this letter out!
Only to get a heart attack, slash panic attack, because I thought I had mixed my accounts up.

I even briefly checked for a Carrie Bradshaw photo with her face in shock.
But the one I liked was a gif, and my blog often doesn’t display those correctly as a thumbnail.
So I did not choose a startled/ shocked Carrie Bradshaw with this post.
But I probably should have.

But the whole wrong blog – horror scenario, did shed some light on the real issue at hand here.
That I have lost myself over the past three weeks. 
Something dramatic happened in my personal life, that will probably leave its mark in years to come. I feel like I m walking around with a hole in my identity.
A hole I have effectively plastered over, when it comes to my real name and real life. A hole that has not prevented me from picking up the new business plans I had, and carrying on like nothing happened, to the best of my ability.

But that for the Lauren Harteveld work, it doesn’t work that way.
That the real damage, is HERE. Even though the blow, the event, was on the “other” side.
My alterego Lauren Harteveld and my work (and life) under my real name, are like one life being lived in two different dimensions that influence each other.

At the same time I started picking up my life under my real name -seeing friends, having appointments, welcoming developments around my new business, LIFE!, -the core of the problem slowly migrated…..
To here.

I could write you my new business plan, and all the aspects which I now understand, need attending to in order to rebuild my life;
Financially as well as socially.
I could tell you that my yoga will be at the heart of my local, or national, offerings, and that writing in English under both of my names, will remain untouched and not function as a business model whatsoever.
I could tell you that.

But what I realize now is that the scar, the sorrow, the inertia, the gif of Carrie Bradshaw clasping her face with both hands;
The shock of what happened and the not knowing what ripple effect it will have for decades to come-
That the shock was here.

And that even if I write an NSFW post, for my favorite series Lauren 1997, even then my attention and presence here is so fleeting, that 10 days later I totally forgot I wrote it.

Lauren Harteveld, or Lauren 1997, is not interested in becoming a yoga professional under my real name.
She misses her lover.
She misses going to concerts, she misses all the friends I have said goodbye to the last 5 years.
She misses hanging out in the city late at night, on a Sunday.

The only positive thing is that I got the message from the universe, the angel or Inspiration, long before the hammer fell.
Long before fate struck.
I was told, weeks before I would know why, what it is I needed to do.

“Write a book, Lauren.” 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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.

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/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
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Dust yourself off and try again

Published on by LS Harteveld

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

“The fact is, sometimes it’s really hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes.
That’s why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun.”

Carrie Bradshaw

Dear Sara,

Thank you for offering me an option to write an extra email, in between our calls. I appreciate it and to an extend I need it, in order to consolidate the results so far and not let it wash away at the first setback.

The good news is I am finding my feet again.
Although I do not expect to find anything remotely resembling stability after what happened.
The past few weeks have changed the perception about who I am, and how poorly understood my relationship with the world has been.
And in particular with my family.

There is a French novel which was made into a television series in the 80s: Sans Famille (Without Family), translated in Dutch to Alone in this World. 
And although thankfully I have not lost my family, and if all goes well the future looks brighter for all of us than if the line of the past two decades had been continued, I did lose the part of having a family that was natural and unquestioned.

I will no doubt have good relationships with individual family members, but I no longer feel part of any family as a group and I never again will.
And in that sense I did lose my family, and it has shed light on another aspect of my life that I managed to overlook.
And which all those giving me well-meant advice of how to create a career out of my talents, or how to build a new career in yoga from the ashes of the old, seem to have overlooked as well.

Nobody talks about this when in my case, and in the case of millions of singles out there, it should be the first thing we take into consideration when speaking / thinking/ analyzing/ planning anything!

The thing I managed to overlook in my whole writing/ yoga/ academic credentials/ entrepreneurship journey, is this;
I am single.

I don’t live with a partner nor do I have children and I don’t have a boyfriend or partner with whom I can interact with on a day-to-day basis, and talk with about work.
I used to have a really great friend but she migrated to the US in 2017, and although I love our weekly calls, it does not compare to eating muffins on the couch together and watching television series on Sunday morning.

This means that the first thing I need to “acquire”, in the outside world, is a social life, or more generally speaking:
Social context.
Because I am not someone’s mother, nor someone’s wife or girlfriend.

I have realized before that my social life is largely dependent on friends; 
But now recent events proved that the social belonging of a family too, was not as unchangable as I presumed it was.

Yet aside from all those painful truths, something bigger seems to be at stake.
Bigger than having or not having regular dinner dates or muffin moments with people who know you well and who are, or who feel like, family.

And that bigger picture is that as a single, you need to BE somebody.
And that somebody needs to be somebody people can relate to!
My realization (from 2020? 2021?) that my work under this alter-ego LS Harteveld/ Lauren Harteveld, would never give me social context, was correct.
My choice to put this account on the backburner and focus on my work under my real name, was/is the right one.

But what I didn’t understand was WHY no longer writing as LS Harteveld was the right choice.
Not fully!
I didn’t realize that being single is a defining and in many ways limiting factor, in any career and working life. And definitely in mine because it comes on top of all the other already conflicting factors:
My desire to work as an independent/entrepreneur versus my desire to work with peers, colleagues, and not be in charge as an expert.
And not wanting to put in hours a day in marketing and acquisition, building systems, and other aspects of working as an independent which are all lonely desk-sitting hours that are bad for your physical and mental health.

They say loneliness is as bad for you as 14 cigarettes a day.
As a single, working as an independent and thereby spending the majority of my time working alone would literally kill me.
I can already feel how the past 4 years have aged me, for no other reason than no longer having the social context of being a (fulltime) yoga teacher.
From being an entrepreneur in transition in 2018 to ultimately quitting being an entrepreneur full-stop in December 2020.

It is extremely frustrating that I feel I cannot do my highest work as a writer nor as a yoga teacher, because my first thought apparently needs to be-
Does this work provide social interaction and/or a social context?
Or does it isolate me even further, just like writing as LS Harteveld isolated me over the years?

Or if all this is true, should I just risk it?
Should I just accept that the work I really want to do will probably isolate and kill me like 14 cigarettes a day will kill me?

Is it time to realize that being an artist, having a purpose, being an entrepreneur AND being single and not sharing your life with someone, are isolating callings that determine what your life will look like?
But that they are callings none the less?

Should I attempt to re-create a sense of stability and belonging, now that the little I had has fallen apart?
And risk missing out on the life I know I am here to live?

Should I risk dying with my life inside of me, in order to attain the day-to-day sense of belonging, that is at the heart of almost everyone’s life?
And at what cost?

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/