Category: The 60 Minute Writer

I don’t see her that often, and I have no idea if she minds being in my blogs. So I ll keep it as vague as possible.
But if you would ever meet her, my business bestie -let’s call her BB- the last thing you would think is “vague”.
Because she speaks her truth and her reasoning is razor sharp.
There is no person in the world with whom I feel more at ease as with her.

I am someone (aren’t we all?) who can pick up conflicting energies on what is being said.
Especially from people close to me, who hide those things because they wouldn’t see how it would contribute to our relationship. They don’t want to make their shit my problem.
But I can feel it’s there.

And then I go home and find myself going through everything I said, and what might have triggered their feelings of fear. A draining backlash.
I never have that with BB.

We do have other concerns; to not go too deep.
Because we understand each other so well, and neither one of us is covering things up. But also: neither one of us rests until we know why we are so sad or angry. Or why we are suddenly terrified by the success and responsibilities that lay before us. Our dinner dates have the intensity of a self-help shock therapy intensive:
You come out a different person.

You face paralyzing fears that you normally simply have to brush aside. That you can’t afford to pay too much attention to if you want to build your dream life. And not risk ending up in your rocking chair looking back thinking of all the things you didn’t do because you thought you would get hurt.
Except of course, every now and then you should face your biggest fear. And see it’s still as monstrous as the last time you checked. It may get you killed. Or worse. Yes, there is a worse, not going to share that one. But either way, you face all that shit and yet you do it anyway. 
Purpose is not negotiable.

And if you do make it to that rocking chair, you’ll have some great stories to tell.  Instead of a life that died inside of you.
Those are the things we speak about.
We purge our minds and reclaim our goals.
And then she excuses herself because she has to put her pet to bed.

Just like I had with my little cat Max, she has a pet who needs a lot of care right now. Which is why we met at her house: because she wants to be there for him as much as she can.
Cuddle, kiss, speak to him.
Feed him snacks and give him his medicine.
And at night she does an extra long session of all of those things, before she tucks him into his bench.

When she’s back I tell her about my doll Kylo Ren.
I bought him after Max died, so that I had something to sleep with. And he could also keep me company on my travels. I have barely been out of the house the last years of Max’ life. When I became mobile again, I wanted something to support my new lifestyle.
Kylo Ren would sleep with me in hotel beds all over the world, go to book readings, and make us new friends by saying:
“Don’t be afraid. I feel it too.”
Because he speaks if you push his tummy.
“This is a him in his travel pouch,” I showed a photo of Kylo Ren to BB.
“My mother made that for him, because I asked. She did think it was a little weird, to make a doll pouch for her middle-aged daughter.”
“Oh no, Kylie has a plush.”
Kylie was one of her other business besties, and she had a plush bear about the size of Kylo Ren.
“But isn’t she some kind of executive?” I asked, slightly puzzled.
“Yes,” said BB.
As if it was completely normal for an executive to carry around a toy. BB explained that the bear had a sleeping bag.
“Just like yours.”
I still couldn’t fully grasp what she was saying.
“You mean she actually takes it to work?”
“Yes. It sits on her desk.”

Here we had it.
Three women who were willing to face opposition and their own deaths if needed, to go after their dreams, who were also fully dedicated to looking after their elderly pets or their dolls.
And I suddenly realized how I had shown BB a paper in my mobile phone. It contained my daily schedule. It said:
1. messaging: write a blogpost
2. self-care: do yoga
3. BUILD. A. FUCKING. EMPIRE.
“I suppose most people would be ashamed to have it so visible,” I had said to BB.
Putting it out there, claiming it boldly IN. CAPITALS. and not being discreet about my ambition, had been so liberating.
But when I saw the three totally badass business babes, taking care of pets and dolls in a way “normal” people would definitely shy away from, I realized what the connection was:
Not just that we were all facing much bigger battles than explaining why we had a doll sitting at our desk- but also:
If you’re facing your deepest fears in order to live your purpose, showing the outside world who you are is no longer something you can hide. 
Being authentic is no longer an option.

If you’re going after your dreams, being fully you in all areas of your life, simply
becomes a must.
Don’t be afraid. I feel it too.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes. This one was written in written in 2,5 hours plus fifteen minutes on the Mandy Morris video at the bottom of this post. }

Books 

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New books will be added.

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

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This post is going to be confrontational for anyone who used the Konmari Method. And I don’t mean in the half-assed way I did. I didn’t even bother to put all my clothes on one pile before I started, and just did it drawer by drawer.
And I didn’t go looking for clothes which she warned were “everywhere around the house, you’d be surprised!”
Which might explain why my collection of tiny pants, which up until 2015 had been hiding in the basement, was never fully purged.

First of all I don’t purge my basement very often.
I estimate once every two years. And those were years where I basically moved every one or two years, so now that I have a permanent address it might be less.
I know I purged the basement a year ago, when my best friend migrated to the USA and I offered her storage space. But even then my tiny pants were no longer there. They were already in a box in my wardrobe. The box does get opened and I inspect them regularly. And never with the intention to throw them out!
The reason I keep coming back to my box of tiny pants is that they’re absolutely fascinating.

I m so glad that Konmari’s decluttering method never worked to the level that I originally thought would have been ideal. That I never got myself to throw out this ever expanding box of pants I didn’t fit. They were both a reminder of my past, as well as hope for the future: I was convinced they would one day fit.

So yesterday, after writing my New Body Manifesto (aka The Sex Worker Manifesto I suppose, because it was pretty obvious which women I found most inspirational when it came to matters of self-care) I got my tiny pants out.

Now the box doesn’t just contain pants: it also has a wide variety of tiny bras!
I remember having my chest measured after losing ten kilos in 2005, and she said I had 75 centimeters, maybe even 70 centimeters, with a D cup.
Not C!
Smaller chest sizes have a different cup size. So when I lost ten kilos I had accidentally went from a C to D cup. I really needed time to come to terms with my new status as sex bomb and remember not buying a bra that day.
First I had to process this.
So from that time on, I started buying 75D. But as I gained weight, and my chest was strangled by the tight strap, I started increasing the size.
But I kept forgetting my size and bought too small.
I have a large collection 80 C bras, when I never actually had that size. I didn’t start buying new bras until I was a 85C.
So my relationship with bras is definitely more complicated than with my pants.
My pants are really motivational.

My mother was the first to use this trick on me, and maybe she created the root cause. Because when I got potty training she bought me three panties:
One dark blue, one red, one yellow.
They had contrasting prints on them (the blue one had yellow duckies and the yellow one green clovers) and a matching contrasting color on the borders as well.
She hung the panties on a line outside, it was summer. And my potty was also outside. We had a very secluded garden so it wasn’t like she was trying to make me pee in front of the whole neighborhood. But I vividly remember being motivated by the three panties that would be mine the moment I did whatever I was supposed to do on the potty.

Back to the pants.

In 2005 I dropped ten kilos and I remember just fitting the pair of Marlene Dietrich pants (do they call it like that internationally as well?) at the bottom of this pile.
See photo.
But it wasn’t very comfortable, and I never wore them aside from trying to fit into them.
Which is why I’m dating it “1998” because that is the year I was in Australia, and I wore them to work.
So I m positive they fit me then.

That’s how I will go through the whole pile:
I will date it the last year I recall they still fit me.

Marlene Dietrich pants, from Zij
color: dark blue
size: 38
last worn: 1998
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
These were my first pants that had some sort of professional look. In the eighties I had a classmate who always bought her clothes at Zij. And she (unwittingly) inspired me to shop there as well.
I think these pants were bought in the early nineties.
In order to fit them I would have to weigh way under 60 kilos, and/or have a super toned waistline.
The last time I was this thin was one week in 2008 when I was totally stressed out because of medical shit that was going on.
So far, that has been the only thing that made me drop under 60.

Freesoul jeans
color: dark blue
size: 29 32
last worn probably in 2008
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
Reconstructing my body weight and history, 2008 must have been the year I was at my smallest, and these pants are definitely extremely tiny.
I remember fitting them only for a very brief period.
Maybe as little as a few months.
Just like the next pair.

white Mango jeans
size: 38
last worn: 2009
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
The post-it says 2008, but that’s the year I bought it, in the city where I was dating an Israeli spy. Or someone equally sketchy :p
Who knows.
But the added bonus of having that much anxiety attached to your dating, is that I do remember what I did the few days I was there. And one was buying these pants. They fit me more than one summer, and I have a picture of 2009 when I m still wearing them, so the post-it should have said:
2009

capri jeans Esprit
size: 38
last worn: 2012, fortieth birthday
how far I can get it on: halfway my thighs
On my fortieth birthday I posed for a photo in bikini top and these pants. Although I was happy with my body, I remember being surprised that I could still fit into these pants because I was at least a couple of kilos heavier than I wanted. I liked my body but I did hope the photo was me at my biggest, and that it would inspire me to shed the pounds once again.
Just like I had in 2005..
In retrospect that was me at my thinnest in many years to come.

pink capri Mexx
size: 38
last worn: 2016
how far I can get it on: 14 centimeters to close
This has been my absolute favorite set of pants for over a decade. I remember buying it April 2005, at a flea market. It didn’t fit. But then something happened.
I started losing weight.
It’s even safe to say these pants motivated me to lose the weight..
The pink capri, which I bought on Queensday so that’s why I know it was in April, were my first pair of motivational pants since my mother put the panties up to get me home trained 🙂
Last year I still fit them early spring. Then I got too big.
I dated the pants “2016” and not “2017” because they were not comfortable anymore.. I can’t wait to fit into them again.

Pall Mall Export jeans 
size: 32-32
last worn: never
how far I can get it on: 8 centimeters to close
These were pants that were supposed to fit. They are the same size as my current jeans, so when I saw these, last Kingsday on the flee market, I thought they would fit me.
God knows I don’t need more pants that are too small! lol
But they didn’t. They will be the first that I can wear once the pounds come off. So they’re the first milestone.

My pants are my measuring system for this challenge. I’m not going to weigh myself, but I’m about 74 kilos. So that makes it 15 kilos to drop.
There have been two changes in my diet, which people say attribute to weight loss.

One is that I stopped drinking alcohol a few weeks back.
Which I did because I wanted full awareness for my work and life, and I know I m prone to balancing out work with drinking. Not more than six glasses a week. After having an accident at home and hurting myself, after a long workday, and writing an extra blog post with two glasses of wine, I was done with taking risks with my health this way.
No more accidents.
No more wine.
I have had periods where I didn’t drink in the past, and I ve never lost weight over them. I m just mentioning this because that’s what people will say attributed.

Same goes for my diet: I eat three times a day, no snacks. Not even coffee with milk if I can help it. I m not super strict with it. I believe in particular that a social life is also important and you can’t always choose what, or the moments at which, you eat.
Also: Way back in time, for about six months, I didn’t eat till noon. And that too didn’t make me lose any weight.
I ve been on this habit of eating three times all you can eat, and there are days where this probably cuts my calorie intake in half, and yet I ve lost zero weight.
So this (intermittent fasting) too is something that people will say attributes to (my) weight loss, when in fact it never did in the past.
Nor has it done any such thing the past six weeks or so.
It doesn’t have to either because I m fine knowing my organs have half the work to do. And I chose this diet because it protects my teeth from getting sugar all the time.

The most important inspiration, motivation and “plan” I’ve got, is that I ve come to realize that if I see my body as a commodity, something I need to keep fit and healthy for my work. I now see it and treat it entirely differently.
I coyly referred to it as the Sex Worker diet, but for me it really was a breakthrough to start taking care of my body in a non-emotional or attached way. But simply because that’s what you do, if you make money from it.
A writer writes.
A photo model or sex worker trains their body.
End of story.
That and six gorgeous set of pants that are waiting for me, down the road.
And an infinite collection of bras to choose from.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one took me 2 hours and 15 minutes }

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

example video of a Konmari cleanse:

For a while now, I’ve been moderately obsessed with getting my old body back. And I’ve restarted this challenge at least once a week and often even had the audacity to publicly announce my physical transformation.
Only to then never speak of it again when I dropped off the wagon of doing more yoga and working less.
And instead didn’t do any yoga and worked even harder than ever before.
So I never got “there”.

Just yesterday, within days after cutting a deal with myself that these blog posts were going to be written in an hour, so that I had a chance of taking care of my basic physical needs with yoga, home cooked meals, daylight and a bike ride, I turned myself inside out at my writing desk and came up with a piece that stretched three hours and three decades.
Bye bye basic needs.
I did have a bike ride though, because I always clean the yoga studio on Tuesdays. So then the bike ride is work, which means there is a hundred percent higher chance that I’ll actually prioritize it.

So I was in the city, and my day had went awol first because of the way too long blogpost and then by a draining but effective series of phone calls and paperwork for last week’s creditcard fraude.
I was now walking the streets with an envelop, which I could not post anywhere because postal services have removed half of their mailboxes. To keep my spirits up, I was eating a double scoop of Belgian cream.
That’s when I “ran” (I could not have been strolling slower, honestly. Looking around halfheartedly for mailboxes) into Disciplined Friend.

Like all Disciplined Friends I have, he has an irrepressible urge to downplay his own achievements and to remind you of how many times he slacked and didn’t run, lift weights, or do yoga. Depending on which disciplined friend it is.
Disciplined Friend was in his running gear, and he was cooling down.
So we had a little chat.

I confessed to him that whenever he posted his run on Facebook, it inspired me.
From what I hear that is an atypical response to workout updates.
There’s even a meme:
“Unless you find a dead body on your morning run, I don’t want to know about it.”
I have that with family updates.
So unless we’re talking life or death situations, or photos of your cat, I would much rather know if you worked out.

I told him that I sometimes wished he would text me, to announce that he would go running. It would be crucial that he did this before he went, not after.
And then I would pause writing my lengthy blog posts, postpone calling creditcard companies, and do an amazing one hour super-intensive yoga session, that totally transformed my body and my life.
And I would do that three to four times a week.
And it would be amaaaayzing.
“And then of course I think: There’s an app for that,” I concluded my story.

I quickly started licking my ice cream all the way around because it was really hot and I couldn’t afford having a conversation.
I saw the letter in my hand already contained ice cream stains as well.

We said our goodbyes, I found a mailbox, cleaned my studio, taught my classes, and sat myself down for my last hour of the day, which is sacred time. I clear out my running diary, go through all the notes of that day, transfer them to my diary or notebooks and cross off all the pages that don’t contain relevant information anymore.

I could see where I had “lost” my resolution to do yoga: on days when I already have six hours of designated work, I can’t afford writing a three hour blog post and then expect to do an hour of yoga as well.
But also; the eating.
It’s not that I can’t have an ice cream, but I knew I was slipping back into my habit of needing food in order to make myself keep up with everything I have to do. I use food as fuel. Whereas when I’m writing? Journaling? Taking a personal development training?
I can go up to seven hours without needing food, water or Wifi.

So Monday and Tuesday are my most challenging days in terms of self-care but they also set me up for the rest of the week. If I don’t do yoga then, I don’t do it the rest of the week either.
Same goes for snacking.
If I drop my “diet” of three times a day all you can eat, in favor of Belgian ice cream on Tuesday afternoons, I will easily slip into eating  whatever crosses my path, twenty-four seven.

And I thought of my ideal body, my ideal lifestyle, and that every year for the last decade I had slipped away further. I have a photo in bikini top and jeans, from my 40th birthday. I vividly remember having it taken and thinking:
“Hmmm… I can’t believe I still fit into these pants. I’m way heavier than I want to be. But my belly looks nice. I hope this photo inspires me to take the extra pounds off.”
That was five years and eight kilos ago.

And then, like a lightning rod, it struck me. A powerful vision of exactly the way I want my body to be.
Lean.
Bendy.
Professional.
It was as if my two ideal bodies, those of porn star Stoya and of escort Avery Moore  mixed together with a new vision of Who I Wanted To Be, the second half of my life.
I wanted their photo model, bendy, beautiful pale bodies.

What was different from all the resolutions I had before, was that I no longer felt resistant to work for it. For the first time in my life I saw my body as a commodity, something that could pay the bills.
Which isn’t even that far off considering I am a yoga teacher, and the only offers I have gotten as a writer is to pose half nude or fully nude.
In “exchange for free publicity”.
I don’t know why I put quotation marks there, since it means exactly what it says.  I said no, or hell no, or fuck no, but I do acknowledge that a writer with a killer body is definitely more newsworthy than a middle aged woman struggling to keep the pounds off.

It was clear to me that my decision to commit to this daily blog, and thereby a decision to get serious with my writing, could only be followed by a decision to be just that driven in getting the sex worker body to match it.

I wonder if there’s an app for that.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one took me 2 hours and 15 minutes }

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

I think I got the idea from a more or less unrelated, yet totally compelling book title from Kat Loterzo:
Show Me Your Soul : There is a Magic Pill: You’re Just Too Scared to Swallow It 
It brought me the idea to use a placebo for something which had been bothering me for seven years, on and off: my irregular menstruation cycle.
I thought:
“If I take placebo pills twenty-one days straight, just like a real contraceptive, and then stop for a week, the menstruation should come exactly on the second day after I stop. My cycle will be exactly twenty-eight days.”
And it worked!

The first cycle kind of bounced off: the menstruation indeed did come, on the planned day. But I was totally taken aback by it. I didn’t even feel I had gotten my period. I was still in bathing robe, just coming out of the shower. And what I noticed was blood on the white laminated floor.
EVERYWHERE.
And running down my thighs, and I wiped it all clean but it just kept on running. I was immediately full on! But I cleaned it all up, put my menstruation cup in, and started my yoga and fitness.
But then later on, when I wanted to change the cup?
NOTHING.
It had completely, one hundred percent stopped.
I couldn’t even find traces of blood on the cup, it was completely gone.

I even considered that I had gone mad, that I had hallucinated that morning. But the tissues in the bin proved that I was not losing my mind.

A friend reconstructed for me that it had been the abdominal exercises in the fitness series, that had stopped it. Those were not full inversions, but I had been on my back lifting my hips off the ground slightly.
“Do you have a tilted uterus?” she asked me.
“Because if your uterus is tipped backwards, a small inversion is a full inversion internally.”

She told me all the signs and I added up all the experiences I had with sex, doctors and my menstruation cup.
And I realized she was right:
I had a tilted uterus.

Suddenly everything began to make sense.
Especially my struggle with the menstruation cup.

What no one tells you, not even the manual when this very much SHOULD be in the menstruation cup manual – is that a menstruation cup is nearly impossible to remove if you have a tilted uterus.

And that even after practice a woman with a tilted uterus will never have the clean, easy removal procedure that they pretend it to be in the videos and the manual. I ve read stories of women having to visit clinics, because they couldn’t get it out after the first time they inserted it.
It took me hours to get it out the first time.

And I m over forty with a hell of a lot experience. And I still make a mess every time. But the worst part of it was that I felt stupid because all the videos said it was so easy. And the manual said it was so easy. And I therefor assumed that it was like tampons:
Something that’s only difficult the first time.

So despite my messy start and feeling clumsy (I now realize anything short from ending up in ER is a job well done), I thought I could quickly catch up with the herd, and be like all the other pussies.
But pussies are not social animals.
And from everything my friend told me, my pussy was part of the ten percent that belonged to a subspecies that will respond differently to deep penetration, minimal inversions, and menstruation cups.

Long story short:
So although the pills worked on the first cycle, I made my menstruation disappear. I didn’t see it back for a whole week, and then it returned.
I took my stop week and then I refilled my pill bottle with twenty-one new pills. Every morning I chewed a vitamin C tablet, thinking:
“I’m taking my pill and my menstruation comes two days after the box is empty.”
And from thereon forward, my cycle has been in mint condition.

I also had a second placebo: a jar with a sticker that said “19forEver” and it contained Smarties.
I have no idea if that brand is available outside the Netherlands, but they’re basically chocolate M&M’s.
I took one every morning to get my nineteen year old body back. But I wasn’t seeing any results, despite the fact that I had been doing this for half a year.

I did like the practice of eating one Smartie every morning (who wouldn’t?) and I did think something about being thin and young, when I chewed it, but apparently the kilos were a lot more stubborn than my hormones.
And then something happened.

A young Dutch writer published his second book.
From a very young age, he has done everything that he possibly could do, to ensure he would be the hottest, richest, most successful author of his generation.
And then he DID become that.
Despite all the cynicism and sour responses from a lot of other authors (although not all! there are those who love him!) you should admire the fuck out of him for simply being that determined.
That driven.
That strong.

You could simply admire and respect him for everything he has achieved, without ever reading a word he writes, because the only thing that brought him where he is today is not his brilliant publisher;
It’s not all the talkshows that fight to get him on their show;
It’s not even the books he wrote.
It’s HIM.

He got to rock star level status, because that’s what he decided he was going to be. And just like I get infuriated every time someone refers to Madonna as “one of the biggest stars of the Universe”  -I usually yell back: “One of the biggest? Really? Who you gonna bring?!”- I have the same thing with him.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate his writing, I do, but the miracle about him, is his mindset.
His ambition.

It was his second book release that sparked something within me. I want that. I don’t want his version of success, so naturally my path and the choices I make will be entirely different. But I do know, and this vision has been developing over the past few weeks, what I want.
And it got me thinking:
“What if I had a red pill to success?”
Because I remembered the title from the Kat Loterzo book, and for whatever reason I thought she was talking about a red pill.
The red pill of success.

And I went into the kitchen and I got my jar with Smarties out, and I put all the red ones in a separate jar. These would be my success pills.
And I realized I wasn’t too happy with the results of my 19forEver jar, which contained mixed Smarties. Maybe it didn’t work if you kept all the colors in. It needed to look like real pills, not a carnaval of colors. I took all the colors out, except for the green ones. They would be my 19forEver pills.

So now I have three placebos.
“The pill; Tablets that I take three weeks on, one week off.
The green pill; That will make me age backwards and reshape my body to its nineteen year old form.
And the red pill of success.

And I m so not afraid to take it.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 26, 2020

I just updated this post, 2,5 years later, and I m so happy I found this post back!
I was toying with the thought of telling someone about my tilted uterus, because it makes such an interesting, and also slightly terrifying and yet sexy in a deviant way story;
But I had forgotten how I ever found out I have a tilted uterus!
And now I know, because I found this post back.

And I also need them color-coded pills back;
I m on previously mentioned non-effective carnaval colors!
No wonder they ceased to work.

Ever since I started updating these posts, I don’t think there ever was one, who was this informative.
From my past self to the current day one.
I call that a success already

~Lauren

Meanwhile, should you be Dutch, the topic of this blog post is related to a Dutch book I wrote.
In 2018 I made a reference of this book at the bottom of this post, and I decided it was so much fun, I’d leave it in 😉 

->

“Getergd door een rits onduidelijke medische klachten, besluit Lauren geen suiker meer te eten, geen Chardonnay meer te nemen, en geen latte macchiato’s meer te drinken.

Na een paar weken is ze zo apathisch dat ze zelfs vergeet te masturberen.

Tot een jonge Marokkaanse god op tv verschijnt die tegen Lauren zegt; “LauRRRen! WakkeRRR woRRRden! Ik ben ook schRRRijveRRR en ik heb ook een leuk leven!”
Dat is zo.
Sam doet de vier s’en.
Hij schrijft, hij sport, hij sekst en hij slaapt.

Ineens weet Lauren nog steeds niet waar het naartoe moet met haar leven, maar ze is wel klaarwakker. Zeker als ze erachter komt, dat Sam binnen een week een optreden geeft bij haar om de hoek.

Sam doet haar denken aan een verboden relatie met haar leerling, iets waar ze gemengde gevoelens over heeft.
Sam wil die best met haar onderzoeken, maar hij vraag een prijs…”

Het boek De Candystop is hier te koop

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

Last Friday, I set out to write something really simple about mistresshood.
Instead it became this meaty piece, called The Mistress Manifesto: in praise of an unknown sexual preference
that left me feeling shaky and insecure. An inevitable result from being creative, or at least from my writing style.
It drains you.

Which doesn’t mean that I suffer while doing it!

The writing makes me greedy for more and the thrill of self-revelation is so powerful that I always cut deeper than I intended to, because it fascinates me how far I can take this.
But after hitting publish I’m all like:
“Ouch.”
“Good God.”
“Christ this feels awful.”

My lower back hurts, I’m hungry as fuck, and I can barely convince my mind to reunite with my body. And in a pitch dark, cold house, I make a firm resolution that tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow, I will discipline myself by doing yoga in the mornings, taking healthy bike rides in the sunlight, and indulging in some light writing in the afternoon, while listening to Chopin.

And yet instead, I get up and start up my computer with my mouth still full from breakfast to jot down just one teeny tiny thing.
It will only take ten minutes.
And then I get sucked right back into it, and spit out four hours later, still in my pajamas thinking:
“How the hell did that happen?!”

And if I’m lucky, or if I have evening obligations, then “It” grabs me only once a day. But if I don’t have appointments outside the house, it is very well possible that It either holds me hostage to create not one, but two pieces of content, back-to-back.
Or that It hijacks my evening and makes me create something else.

Usually by seductively presenting it as a “quick and easy idea, that will be fun!”.
It is treacherous, the Genie of Creativity.

So tonight I’m asking “It”;
My Untamed Creativity;
My Calling to speak on behalf of Mistresses;
My Purpose to write every single day of my life;
God;
The Universe;
The Forces that Matter AND the ones that don’t but that would like to have a say in this anyway;
Can we PLEASE for the love of everything we would like to create together, keep this short and sweet, and write for sixty minutes on days when it would also be nice to have some sort of physical exercise.
See daylight.
Have proper meals.
A social life.
Work on my new books.
And not make this daily blogging into an all or nothing thing, where I need to fight you off, unless I m prepared to pay your price from anything between three hours to my left arm.

You already had a go at my left thumb two weeks ago, when I got it stuck in the door, on the first night of my holiday after a full workweek, two glasses of wine, and three hours of writing.
I still have this black nail here, reminding me of what You take, (any of you!) when given the chance.

So I promise you, my dear genie of creativity, my muse, my God, and ALL of you;
I will be here to write, every single day, for a rendez-vous of sixty minutes.
And we will still have a good time, and we’re going to conquer the world, but from now on we also have an understanding here;

Let’s keep this civil.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 25, 2020

I just updated this post, 2,5 years later.
And I’m both amazed and shocked; Things have not changed one bit! 
Writing still is this all-consuming force in my life that devours me.
And I secretly still wish I would have something that starts with a B and ends with “alance”.
And create something that starts with a B, and ends with “ooks”.
And I will.
Because the number 2020 is so cool! I want my books to be published this year, and it will be done.

Meanwhile, should you be Dutch, the topic of this blog post is related to a Dutch book I wrote.
In 2018 I made a reference of this book at the bottom of this post, and I decided it was so much fun, I’d leave it in 😉 

->

“Getergd door een rits onduidelijke medische klachten, besluit Lauren geen suiker meer te eten, geen Chardonnay meer te nemen, en geen latte macchiato’s meer te drinken.

Na een paar weken is ze zo apathisch dat ze zelfs vergeet te masturberen.

Tot een jonge Marokkaanse god op tv verschijnt die tegen Lauren zegt; “LauRRRen! WakkeRRR woRRRden! Ik ben ook schRRRijveRRR en ik heb ook een leuk leven!”
Dat is zo.
Sam doet de vier s’en.
Hij schrijft, hij sport, hij sekst en hij slaapt.

Ineens weet Lauren nog steeds niet waar het naartoe moet met haar leven, maar ze is wel klaarwakker. Zeker als ze erachter komt, dat Sam binnen een week een optreden geeft bij haar om de hoek.

Sam doet haar denken aan een verboden relatie met haar leerling, iets waar ze gemengde gevoelens over heeft.
Sam wil die best met haar onderzoeken, maar hij vraag een prijs…”

Het boek De Candystop is hier te koop

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU
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