the daily hustle – Page 2

Submissive caring bottom

Published on June 1, 2018March 16, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

“I haven’t had sex for ages,” I complained to Damian.
He had picked me up from the station in his baby Benz, and sped us to his house which he shared with his boyfriend and four cats.
“You know, I’ve realized Big is like my goose with the golden eggs,” I continued.
Mr. Big was my secret lover, who I only saw when he saw fit.
Which he hadn’t in a long time.
“If I didn’t have Mr.Big I wouldn’t have anything interesting to write about.”

“These nights won’t help,” Damian agreed. “We ate ice cream, we watched Madonna videos,” he mimicked Madonna’s helium 80s voice when she did a little sketch of how she started out.
“We laughed really hard, and my dream came true,” I finished it for him.
Damian laughed
“If this is what you dream of we can’t be friends.”
He drove wildly over a speed bump.

Damian was the only friend who had foreseen I would need a Plan B if my cat Max would die. About two months prior, he suggested that I should visit him and his boyfriend, and more importantly, their cats.
It took me quite a while before I took him up on it.
But now we had weekly date nights on the couch, and sometimes a second date as well, going to a movie or such.
We never skipped my weekly dose of kitty, in favor of a normal date. In fact we never skipped it at all. And although I initially came to cuddle with the cats, to be in the company of two men turned out to be a great substitute for not seeing Big as often as I would have liked.
“I love being with you and Daniel,” I confessed. “It’s so good to get this male energy.”

I wasn’t angry with Big. After three and a half year, being a secret mistress had become a conscious choice. I knew I would never be satisfied having a relationship with someone who was available.
Not seeing Big much was the downside of an otherwise perfect arrangement. Or maybe it wasn’t even a downside. Maybe it was what made seeing each other so good.
“I do wonder what void I fill with you guys,” I asked Damian. “It’s not like you need female energy.”
“You’re my alibi for weekly ice cream,” Damian answered.

We always had vegan ice-cream. Damian ate vegan, whenever it was easy and available. But I appreciated it, and now preferred it over regular ice-cream. It didn’t make you feel so heavy and it contained 30% less sugar.
Which might explain why I ate about a hundred percent more of it.
In the first few weeks, Damian offered to split the pint of peanut-butter cookie dough ice-cream, and I was all like:
“Oh no! That’s way too much for me!”
But after a few weeks of then agreeing to a second portion, and basically eating half of the pint anyway, my objections just became a running gag.
“I begin to see what you’re like in bed!” Damian would mock me. “Oh no! That’s way too big, I can’t take that!“

Lately, Damian stocked two or three flavors of ice-cream, and we had lost our natural limit of one jar split in half. So now the jokes about second portions were current again.
“Just force it into my bowl. I don’t want to have a say in it.”
“You know I don’t do that,” Damian would then dismiss it, and open a detailed conversation of how many scoops of every flavor I wanted for my second portion.

Damian was a bottom, just like me. Which meant he didn’t like taking charge.
He had been the first with whom I really, really, shared what I was like in bed. I even told him more than the guys I was with, and I never discussed my sex life with my girlfriends.
Not really.
Even then – before #metoo – powerplay and play-rape were almost political subjects. You couldn’t go around claiming your entire sexuality came down to wanting to be penetrated in all your holes without consent.
And if you did you were supposed to engage in defending and explaining, that yes of course, there had actually been consent. And of course not, would you like real rape.
A draining conversation.
For both parties I assumed.

So for years I only talked real sex with Damian. And even now, he was the only one who understood, that if you (a bottom) had to make the first move, you did it so reluctantly and basically held it against someone. The other person better make that up to you, by immediately taking charge and making the next five moves and beyond.
So that we could go back to the comfort of being bottoms.

The only time Damian and me were inclined to be versatile, was if the guy was way younger and age put us in charge. Then we’d make an exception, which we saw as “taking responsibility”.
But it wasn’t ideal.

Damian was living with Daniel, who was versatile. This meant that Daniel could play multiple roles. Damian and me tried to categorize the cats as well. The bitchy lady was a dominatrix (we immediately agreed on her); the male cat with the cute small face was gender-neutral (Damian disagreed), and the two giant male cats were “just into anything naughty” (according to Damian).
“I would say versatile,” I said.
“That’s the same thing,” Damian brushed it off.

We went into the kitchen to get ice-cream and Damian filled our bowls, contemplating out loud how much he should leave in the containers for Daniel.
“Does he want ice-cream too?” I asked.
I didn’t recall seeing Daniel eating ice-cream. He was at his usual spot at the dining table, gaming with his online friends. Daniel could hear our conversations and occasionally contributed.
“We just had dinner,” Damian said. “Daniel can’t eat, if he’s just eaten.”
“I don’t understand that,” I said.
“Of course not. You’re a bottom. We can always take more.”

We settled on the couch, with cats, ice-cream and Madonna’s Confessions tour. Damian was the only one who cuddled with his cats in the same way I did. He was always completely taken aback by how cute they were, and showered them with compliments as he kissed their little heads, and faces. The cats were completely docile, because they were so used to being handled.
The two naughty ones were of course very naughty. Something Daniel tried to correct.

“I m the bad cop of the house,” he complained, as me and Damian were completely devoid of any desire to do anything about anyone.
“Just let them!” I defended the cats, whenever Daniel asked me to help out when the naughty ones tore up the couch or bullied each other.
Daniel rolled his eyes; “Promise me, you’ll never get a dog.”
“I promise.”

Damian and me talked about how I had looked for job opportunities in taking care of elderly people or mentally disabled people.
“It’s like with cats: I give love and care. I don’t need anything back, the reward is in the giving.”
But so far the response from recruitment had been lukewarm at best.
“And that’s okay, you know. I believe in divine guidance. If a door doesn’t open, it’s not my door. It’s like with dating. Either you’re super eager to see me. Or you’re not. But I m not going to sell myself.”
“Of course you’re not,” Damian agreed. “You’re submissive. A loving caring bottom.”

On screen Madonna was dancing and showing off her gorgeous body. As if he was reading my thoughts, Damian said:
“She’s 47 there. No, 48.”
“That gives me two years to get that body,” I sighed, patting my chubby belly. “Originally I said I was going to lose it all, by July 5th.”
“Why July 5th?” Damian asked.
“I don’t know. I just came across it, in a blog. Now I’m waiting for a miracle.”
“Maybe you can pray to Ganesha,” Damian suggested.
“Ganesha? I think we need something stronger. Like Kali.”
I need something fierce and dominant, to whip this bottom into shape.

Preferably without consent.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

A scattered life with foreign pieces

Published on May 31, 2018January 15, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Every time I think I know what’s important, I find another piece of the puzzle.
“Of course this one should go in there as well!” I exclaim, when I find a tiny furry piece that says “new cat baby 2019”.
Or “write every day”; a piece that I always estimate at sixty minutes a day, but that can blow up to four hours.

But when I peer at the puzzle where “cat baby” or “write every day” should go, I realize that these pieces can only go in there, if I take others out.
Such as this freaking big piece that says:
GET A NORMAL JOB AND START MAKING SOME MONEY YOU BITCH
Sometimes that ugly piece isn’t there, but then there is this other large piece there instead. It says:
job to take care of elderly people or mentally disabled people.
purpose work.
no cats required.

All large chunks that involve me getting a new career or payroll job make a poor fit with the desire to write, because of scarcity of time, and also with the desire for cats.
With the cats it’s not so much a time thing, but it would be hard to leave them at home for nine hours a day. Looking at me with those large eyes. And it would be absolutely impossible to go out for full days if a cat was sick.
Getting a new career taking care of people would at least have the benefit that I could put love and nurture into my work. That it could substitute the need for cats. And then when I had time off, I could go on guilt-free holidays, because I had colleagues take over.
Not two cat babies at home missing their mom.
But this new career would be full-time, at least for the first two years. This has to do with the pretty standard two year job/re-education contract.
I would have to give up teaching yoga, because I don’t want to do that if I’m already busy commuting, working, receiving training and studying.
A 40+++ hour job.

So a job may replace my strong desire to get cats, and give me a nice salary, but there are also Basic Needs that I would need to live without:
To write for this blog.
To have ample time with friends or if I’m really lucky, with my lover Mr.Big.
I would have to let these pieces of the puzzle go.

And then there is this other piece, which fits so well with either getting a part-time job in an unrelated sector (and continue teaching yoga), or with getting a full time job in care or somewhere else.
This strange piece has an abusive message, that nonetheless is so tempting…
It says:
STOP BEING AN ENTITLED BITCH AND GET YOUR ASS TO WORK FOR 40 HOURS LIKE A NORMAL PERSON
And the more obligations I put together?
The better it fits!

I could have a 40+ hour job AND keep teaching my group classes – a schedule so busy that I would consider killing myself -and yet the STOP BEING AN ENTITLED BITCH piece would still fit.
It would probably have a sadistic side-kick appearing:
“That’s right! That’s what normal people do! It’s about time you learn you’re not entitle to ANYTHING!”
And the “make a full income” piece would be on the table.
But there wouldn’t be any room for something else.

The only thing I could do to create space if “make a full income” and “40+ hour job” were on the table?
Is to stop teaching yoga for two years, so that I at least have some free time for friends, and for writing.
Give up yoga… that’s drastic.

For the past few years I have had this cute, cheap yoga studio in the city center by divine intervention. I made a note-to-self that had the weight of a message tattooed on my arm;
That I would never, ever, give it up.
I would hold on to this small affordable yoga studio with my life.

At the time I had been in business for ten years and every place I had ever rented up until then, had been either too expensive, too cold, too hot, too far away from my other locations. Or it was perfect, but I it didn’t have any options to rent it for more hours.
My tiny yoga studio would always be worth holding on to.
But still.. renting a business space for two years without using it?

This process of trying to fit the pieces together has been going on for over a week. Many things have changed, the puzzle has changed too.
I have cancelled my lease at the most profitable location. It’s not my own studio but a place where I have taught for eleven years.
As soon as I considered going into health care, I realized I couldn’t commit to those classes for another year.
Having a fixed night when I had to teach yoga didn’t make sense if I had to start working in shifts. Or even if I took on another job:
It could easily require me to work that night.

Letting that more expensive location, and that fixed night, go, means I am now free to determine my hours on a flexible basis in my own studio.
I m free to change careers.
But I could also expand my number of classes, if the studio picks up. Which could happen! In my new concept I work from a single location, and we’ll be a private studio for current members, returning members, and their friends.
And if everybody is as enthusiastic about that as I am, I could even end up expanding the number of classes I teach, and a payroll job or new career will no longer be necessary.
And I have a trump card:
Teaching private yoga.
It’s something I have never put my full weight in.
But now I feel I need to do this..
That before I bring out the big gun, a new career, I need to give it another shot to get a full income from “just” teaching yoga.
Which will also allow me to keep writing and to publish books. It’s a tandem strategy; What’s good for yoga is good for writing.

And only if that fails?
If I’ve given it my all, and between now and let’s say six months I don’t see any progress?
Then I ll look at the “real job” option again.

So I was right, when I left that big location, concentrated all my classes and slimmed down the concept to a friends-only studio.
It certainly wasn’t going anywhere the way it was.

But after a week of alternating between crying and being euphoric; And of fitting the pieces together and then finding new pieces and not having a place to put them; I begin to understand that my puzzle may very well not contain a new career, nor any abusive pieces that yell at me. That those pieces just look attractive because they’re so large. They cover a lot of holes.
They cover purpose, they cover income.
They fill up all the holes in my life, and of my career, as well as the hole in my heart where my cats used to be.

But the trick is that despite of their impressive results, they will never truly fit. They’re a cover-up, offering a tempting, complete picture of a life well lived.

But it’s not my life.
It’s a foreign one.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Why I never stood up to my parents

Published on May 24, 2018January 12, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I was way over forty when I discovered something:
That writing made me happy.
It had been kind of a necessity when I was in my thirties, became single and started dating. It was my primary tool of self-reflection and growth. But in my forties, with my love life figured out, and a secret lover to practice all lessons learned, writing became a Joy.

As long as my days consisted of writing I didn’t need anything normal people needed. Social interactions, food, exercise, and even sleep all became options, if I was interested in staying healthy. But I didn’t actually need them, and could go on without breaks for up to ten hours.
I learned to make meals in five minutes and ate them at my desk.

I learned I could get out of my pajamas, shower, have dinner and be ready to go out and teach yoga, in fifteen minutes flat.
I had a standing desk, but otherwise my ass would have fallen off.
And I wouldn’t have noticed it.

I looked down on other people who needed normal things like leisure and Netflix. And this is going to sound horrible, but since you’re probably already reading this to see for yourself that I am a fucked up person: I know.
And I’m not even hiding it.

But I was happy in my writing bubble. Especially because I had cats, who more or less accidentally came on my path when I separated from the boyfriend who was supposed to take care of them should we ever break up.
But those two little fellows were the best thing that ever happened to me.
They were the reason I never considered pursuing a career that would take me away from home, nor would I consider doing something, or committing to something, that could limit the infinite amount of time, love and money I could spend on them.

I would even consider invasive treatments or operations in order to stay alive to take care of them. Because I knew that if I died their level of care would suffer.
They were my number one reason to live.

And because I had my writing, I actually enjoyed that life tied to computer and my cats. It was not just home, it was everything.
It was my Life.

I was also amazed at how productive I was, and how little sleep I needed.
I had never expected it anymore, that there was something in me that made me tick..

I was two decades past what should have been my rebellious puberty; Standing up for choosing an education or profession I wanted!

I was a decade past what should have been my motivated twenties;
Hustling my ass off to make a career!

I had done neither of those things. I had simply chosen the road of least resistance, so that my parents wouldn’t get too upset.
I didn’t realize yet that I would be totally unsuitable, or at least unmotivated, to make the career they wanted for me, but I did instinctively go for:
“What would they like me to do, what is my margin, and from those options what is the optimal choice for me?”
I scowled myself for not standing up for myself, but in retrospect that makes so much sense. Because I didn’t have anything to stand up for!
I had not discovered writing yet, and I also didn’t have cats.

To make my parents happy, or at least not to let them worry too much, and to not let my boyfriend down.
Those were my life’s goals, and I was really good at them.

Until I found myself single, living alone, with two little furry friends to take care of and a computer to write on, feeling ABSOLUTE BLISS.
And not needing sleep, not needing food.

I m not going to say that I needed “few things”!
An apartment all to yourself as well as twenty-four hours every day, is nothing small.
It’s actually the biggest, most entitled thing, you can possibly imagine.
But I thrived at it.
I was by far the best cat mother I ever knew, maybe aside from women who have dedicated their life to rescuing cats, and taking them in.
But I came pretty close.
And I had only two cats; they had my full attention. So they didn’t have to share anything. Not even the kitty litter box, of which I had three, so that they always had something to choose from. Because I had learned the optimal number of kitty litter boxes was the number of cats plus one.

But it felt so great to be so goddamn good at something! And next to being a kick-ass cat mother I also liked what I wrote, to reread it.
It evolved from writing Dutch fiction, to Dutch erotica, to English diaries, to ultimately English autobiographical erotica. And now I’ve taken things down a notch, and focus on the topic of being a mistress.

But what I failed to see in those twelve years – when writing went from something that was required to process my complicated sexual issues, to something that I did because it was how I breathed – was that underneath? Nothing had changed.
And beyond the cats?
Nothing had changed either.

If I had to choose again, between pleasing my parents or choosing for my writing or my cats – only the cats would have been a reason to stand up for myself.
I would never let anything touch them.
I would have become a prostitute if that’s what was required to support our cat heaven, which was basically also my heaven.
But when the cats died, it was gone.

My cats Max and Willem took the magic with them, of me being willing to fight for my life. They had been the only thing that would have outweighed disturbing my parents.
But writing?
No.

I m not going to say: “I need to write! You can’t take this from me! And if I have to I ll turn a prostitute in order to make sure I can write!”
I don’t care. I really don’t.

If it would make them happy I would just called it quits on the playtime of having my own yoga studio, and dismiss the whole idea of being an entrepreneur.
Just take a job with a pension plan, and give them the worry-free life of having a daughter who is successful and doesn’t do anything that puts anyone at risk.
No financial risk.
Not of reputation.
Not by making enemies.

But the last time I chose to make a parent happy this way, he died within five months.
At peace; Because he knew I had a job and was now taken care of.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

I wanna quit so badly

Published on May 23, 2018January 11, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I ACTUALLY thought it was going to work:
No more diary posts.
No more writing about writing.
No more yoga bizz struggles.
And definitely no more erotica.
Well, technically that one was fake. I haven’t written erotica since 2016 to begin with.
But from now on forward I was going to BE the professional AUTHOR SPEAKER EXPERT! on the field of being a mistress.
I was going to share THAT message, and ONLY that message with the world.
And I m pretty sure there was something in that final mission statement that concerned having to stop typing in capitals.
Or at least there should have been.

And what a great idea to move everything that was not a hundred percent relevant to The Message of The Mistress, back into hiding.
Smashing really.
This blog would get one, clean, professional, bite sized message every day:
It’s okay to be a mistress, or to have a mistress.
And even if you’re betrayed by your husband having one:
No reason for drama.
We can all get better from this. Here, let me explain….

My Mistress Message would be the ONLY thing I would be known for.
So that I could disconnect the rest of my life from the public eye. Where it had been since 2010 when I had started publishing on my LS Harteveld website.
It would help me to feel safer and less anxious, if I created more privacy and stopped sharing daily shenanigans.
That was Sunday.
And guess what?
I didn’t write since Sunday.

It’s Wednesday night now, and between Sunday morning and Wednesday night not writing? That’s forever, in my writer book. That’s SOMEONE IS SERIOUSLY LOSING HER SHIT -long.
Not in the way I was losing my shit last week!
There were no heart attacks and sleepless nights this time. And this morning, when someone started tweeting about astrology and all the Scorpios answered with their deepest most powerful, sexual stuff and I joyfully remembered it was now my job to join the conversation as an expert?
Just for a moment, I thought I could pull it off.

I would write my first clean 500 words professional message, with maybe a cute or inspiring example (nothing triggering!) of why Scorpio women, whether by sun sign or ascendant, make the best mistresses.
It would be the first of many of such little, harmless posts, which aside from its difficult topic of mistresshood, would not be different from any mainstream column about sex or relationships.
Oh what a wonderful, pink, fluffy cotton candy dream it is!

The days I wrote stuff that gave me heart attacks, and felt exposed because next to my difficult message I shared every-fucking-thing else;
They would be over.

These posts would not disrupt the hard-fought mental and financial equilibrium of my life. No one would get hurt over these…
But then the day happened.

Today, Wednesday, the fourth day of relative peace and calm. And I realized after a series of events, that there was no “safe”. There was no way I could share my message in a way that would ensure money would be earned, messages would be heard, and risks would be worth taking.
And that in fact, trying to play it safe may very well turn out to be the riskiest thing I could possibly choose.

First of all: the fact that I didn’t write for three mornings in a row?
Hello?!
How could I miss that?

After over a month of daily blogging, then missing a day because of anxiety, then drawing a conclusion, being happy, peaceful, STOPPING WRITING.
It’s daunting how easy it was.
How the promise I no longer had to share ALL the things, completely cured me from my urge to write.
Apparently there was no motivation, let alone a pressing urge, left to write a daily blogpost, once the battle field had been cleared from phobias and anxiety. I didn’t want to disturb the peace. And especially not by writing a piece that would have the raw emotional impact of a baby crocodile. Which could still, technically, bite someone’s finger off.

The civilized messaging, writing, that I intended to base an entire career on, would have been soulless and obsolete. And that’s assuming I could have actually started it.

Things got bad. Talk of a “real” job. Stop hoping I ll ever make my business work. And I could see myself being ignored and gossiped about, by female coworkers who would find out who I (also) was. See myself being made fun of by men who would brag to each other if I walked by.
I saw myself rather wanting to die.

I didn’t see anything suicidal, but I definitely saw a wish to stop making an effort to live physically. And a willingness to just hand in all the fun, ambition, my hobby of writing, or even teaching yoga, and just do something that pays and doesn’t upset anyone.

And to make things at work as normal as possible I would first remove all my LS Harteveld work; the website, purge Google. And if someone would still find out, I would say:
“That was me in the past. I am no longer that person.”
And bow my head in shame.

I would be spiritually dead.

And I was surprised by how tempting that was. To give it all up.
To say:
I failed. I wasn’t making any money from it and I was too afraid writing about being a mistress would get me murdered. Or that my family would start being ashamed of me.
Or for something, anything, happening to them, by people who were angry with me.
It wasn’t worth it.
I’m a mistress, I m a bad person, but I m not going to make it worse.

And I said it was tempting, but that should be present tense.
It still is tempting.
I wanna quit so badly.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

update January 2021:
I want to assure you becoming proper never happened, and I am still writing!
You can subscribe to the blog, to receive new posts in your InBox.
My current project is Lauren96:
It is a diary of my life but translated to 25 years ago.

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/

Meet my imaginary mother. You can have one too!

Published on May 16, 2018January 5, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I do a ton of “mindset work” which basically means reprogramming your brain by journaling, goalsetting and watching motivational videos.
They’re gold.
It’s as if every day ten variations to The Secret are posted online and because I’m way over forty, I actually remember the pre-YouTube era where you had to go to a new age store to get anything about the Universal woo-woo.

I was one of those people who got into that at a pretty early stage. This was a coincidence: I would never have considered entering a shop with crystals and angel cards in the Netherlands.
Anything alternative reminded me too much of the anthroposophical and macrobiotic community, which was something people my mothers age engaged in.
Not cool kids in their twenties.

But because I was abroad at the time, I was exposed to English Louise Hay books, which I didn’t associate with my own personal history. The design of English books was more appealing as well.
In the largest chain of secondhand bookstores in the Netherlands you could clearly see the difference between the rows of English books, and the other shelves with Dutch books.

English covers had brighter colors, and the layout inside had striking fonts.
The Dutch ones were plain and unexciting, both outside and in.

The language on the covers was different as well:
English books were more sales-y. With references to bestseller lists, prizes and quotes from celebrities giving praise for the book.
Things Dutch books would never do.
Well, maybe one.
In the sixties an author called Jan Cremer singlehandedly propelled his debut novel to bestseller status by printing on the cover:
“The inevitable bestseller”
Which then became a bestseller.
But other than that, all books were published downplaying their content and there was zero level of excitement to be found.

Had I stayed in the Netherlands, I might have missed New Age thinking entirely.

So because of my adventure abroad I was one of the early adapters of New Age in the Netherlands. At least from my generation. Yoga had been making a rise in young people (young was everything under forty), but positive thinking was absolutely not done.
We, yoga students, were supposed to study Patanjali’s yoga sutras instead.
I strongly advice against that by the way.
Unless maybe when you stumble onto a spiffy American version with a sticker “The inevitable ancient bestseller.”
Anyway!
What I was trying to say here was that I have a long history of mindset work, from Louise Hay’s positive thinking, to The Secret, to motivational YouTube videos and journaling goals and dreams.

Not only do I believe that you can create an internal world, and that the outer world will start matching your imaginary bank account, body, lifestyle.
I also believe that you are fully allowed to create an internal world that cannot even exist in reality.
For example: maybe I will have new cats one day.
But because it is super unpractical to have them until way in 2019, for a number of reasons, I keep my old cats alive in my heart. My deceased furry friends are alive in my spiritual world. And because I will be doing this consistently, over a very long period of time, there is a chance I don’t choose to have new cats in 2019.
By keeping the cats alive in my internal, spiritual world, they already fulfill a need.

Something similar happened when I created a new mother out of thin air.
I was setting up a new life or fantasy, where I would be thin, young, healthy, and I would automatically do all my daily tasks. Comparable to when I was a teen when I was indeed thin, young, and healthy, and school provided an environment where studying was simply automatic.
My parents didn’t get that much involved in what I did. Which is probably a good thing because I don’t respond too well to people mingling into my affairs. But I do remember that it helped me that they just naturally assumed I was working hard to get good grades.
And I did.

I was never that ambitious, I have to say. But I was good enough and certainly didn’t skip class or anything.
And at home I knew I was taken care of.
They provided food and shelter, and belonging.
My mother (my real mother!) even got up and made our breakfast and lunch, all throughout high school. Until we moved out. I knew of very few mothers who were that dedicated to be there for their teens.

I think what she understood better than anyone, was that it was never about the lunchbox or the fresh orange juice.
She could have just sat there and do nothing, and talk to us while we were getting ready for the day. It was about presence. It was about love.

The reason I suddenly longed being fifteen, and imagined I was fifteen, was not just to get the youthful body back but also to get the presence of a mother back.
So I created a new mother.
Oh by the way, the reason I created a new mother is because my real mother is still alive, so I can’t possibly make her into a ghost! That would feel awful.
And besides, this offered me an opportunity to get an even “better” mom: one who would suit the occasion.
And I immediately thought of Gretchen Rubin.

Gretchen is an author, best known for her book The Happiness Project, and other books in the field of personal development. A month ago I studied her work, and one of the things I liked was that she had persuaded one of her daughters who was complaining that she didn’t want to do school work on the weekends, to work together at 7 AM every Sunday.
So that she would have the rest of the day off.

The daughter agreed, and Gretchen helped by making sure the room was warm and made her daughter breakfast. While Gretchen did her daily two hour email purge, her daughter did her school work.

Gretchen is caring like my mother, but way more domineering and ambitious. Which would definitely be annoying if she’d been my real mother, but now that I was installing her to be my fantasy mother, I thought it was just right.
I liked the idea of her relentless work ethics kicking my life into a higher gear. Meanwhile relieving me of the obligation to worry about stuff.
I wouldn’t have to worry about life any more than I was fifteen.
From now on, I would be looked after and taken care of.

So now I live in my apartment with my mother Gretchen, who makes sure I go to bed on time, get up on time, and that I don’t stress myself out for example by checking my mailbox or social media at a time that is designated for something else.
That I don’t doubt myself too much, and just get back up if life gets tough.

I once heard that becoming an adult – and this definitely referred to personal development, not to just coming of age – meant that you learned how to become your own parent.
I see Gretchen just checked that off my list.

<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 hours }

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/

Just YouTube search “Gretchen Rubin” for so much more!

The Business Bestie: pets, plush toys and Build.A.Fucking.Empire.

Published on May 13, 2018December 10, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.

Kylo Ren in his travel pouch his grandma made him

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

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/

Six-steps-to-motivation pants and an infinite bra collection

Published on May 10, 2018December 8, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

example video of a Konmari cleanse:

Treating myself to a new body for my birthday

Published on May 9, 2018December 8, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

I m taking the red pill to abundance and success

Published on May 7, 2018October 27, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.

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Button on this page, probably on the top right.

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Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

The 60 Minute Writer: Let’s get this baby started

Published on May 6, 2018October 25, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.

“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.

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