Category: BTS

So incredibly necessary | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld

It reminds me of the 90s where I no longer liked being a smoker, and the rebel identity and Hollywood glamour had worn off long ago.
Yet I could not stop.
Not even for a day.

Ultimately I managed to quit on the back of a “smoking hangover”.
The day after a party and it was almost noon before I got out of bed anyway. So the first hours without cigarettes were “on the house”.

The alcohol-free night had left me with a hangover because I had been smoking all night, at a loud venue with dozens of other smokers.
When I should have been in bed sleeping.

That day I quit and never went back.

I had been trying for years, with several attempts dating as far back as high school.
For a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, but I had always fallen off the wagon.
Over the years quitting seemed to have gotten harder.
Not easier.

Yet this final “attempt” immediately felt different. A spur-of-the-moment decision, and I remember buying the widest variety of bubblegum flavors I ever owned, including Donald Duck bubble gum that came with a cartoon in the wrapper.

And pricey nicotine gum.
But I had not read the instructions (which I believe will tell you to chew it slowly) and it made me cough.
I never bought a second pack.

But regardless of the messy start, as well as my poor record of always starting again, I immediately, and with certainty, knew this attempt was successful.
And I was right.

And I am waiting for the moment the same click happens with my internet addiction. And to only be online in a deliberate way. Which can also be for entertainment, I’m not depriving myself.

But it has not come.

I have definitely gotten better, but the finality is not there. I’m making the most of what I am humanly able to do, from my end.
But I’m gonna need some magic from the Universe, to make this final.

I have three timelines to attend to;
1990, where I am rebooting my body.
2000, where I am rebooting my love life.
And 2025 where I am rebooting success.

None of them like waking up to the taste of internet in the morning.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living
.

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2025* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
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Books 

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

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
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Categories BTS

A copy of a copy | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld

“With insomnia, nothing’s real. Everything’s far away.
Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy.”

Fight Club (1999)


A grey leather, A4-sized ringbinder with lined paper, and 15 minutes extra time in bed every morning, to write three diary entries.
That, for now, is the recipe.

Three entries, one for every timeline.

number 1: 1990
The timeline I cancelled because I did not want to forget the affair with Bear.
And if I would restart Lauren2000’s timeline in 1990, then my part-fiction part-real 27 year old counterpart would not have had an affair with Bear.
She’d be 17, and a virgin.
Starting her love life pretty much from scratch, and do it differently now.
Stop giving it so much of her attention.

The thought fascinated me, yet ultimately I refused to let my/Lauren’s history with Bear go.

Until this morning when I started a three-timeline diary!
This, was how I would preserve old timelines.
They would unfold simultaneously.
And Lauren’s 1990 virgin life was rebooted in a paragraph that took almost half a page.

Lauren’s 1990 priority, the decision she has made this morning, is that she will become a yoga teacher and will do an hour a day of yoga.

Then, the year 2000.
This is definitely my main creative timeline.
Although I am aware that living in the past, and writing from it, is completely unpackagable and in probability also ridiculous art, I’ve been mesmerized by it since 2019!

If I could choose I would go back today.
So I wrote from Lauren’s year 2000 timeline.
A short diary entry where she says she’s rebooting 1990 none the less.
But will never forget Bear, nor erase her own timeline.

2025
Where such a top heavy workload seems to have overtaken my life, it makes both my desire to move to simpler times totally understandable as well as totally impossible.

As of today, if I want this to work (finally!), then I now have 1 hour a day less to be creative.
Because Lauren 1990 is claiming one hour a day for her yoga.
And Lauren 2000 could not do any of my 2025 creative projects because we didn’t have content or internet then, like we do today.
So because almost all of my creative work is online, this automatically means it can only be done in 2025.
Therefor, it needs to be done within a regular workweek, so there is still leisure time that can be dedicated to my offline writing (Lauren 2000) and yoga (Lauren 1990).

This post + Canva took me (Lauren 2025) one hour and 29 minutes to create.
The other two girls, are waiting.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living
.

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2025* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
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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.
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Categories BTS

A refusal to forget | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld

We all know that a book within a book, or as it was in my case, a timeline within a timeline, usually does not work.
And yet!
This did not keep me from trying.

Since 2019 I have been writing a diary as if my life is happening 25 years-ago.
So I am 25 years younger, as is everyone around me including a lover whom lived on as “Bear” here in this altered universe, which started in 1994 (= 2019, minus 25 years).

When the affair ended, I gradually stopped blogging for that timeline. In 2024 and 2025 combined maybe like a handful of posts.
Then I stopped.
If there was anything remotely interesting, I’d write it offline and wait 2 years before publishing it into a book.

I hoped the 2 year delay would rekindle both the 2000 project, as well as my love life of course.
I don’t want to cockblock my Year 2000-self, by blogging all our secrets.

Last month, I created a Word file in the book-to-be format.
The diary starts when Lauren 2000 decides to rewrite her own history by going back in time, and pretend it was 1990.

This was the aforementioned timeline within a timeline;
Lauren2000 pretends it 1990, and she starts again.

The reason she did this was because she was tired of trying to get over the breakup with her lover Bear.
Something I can totally relate to, since I’m still recalibrating after the breakup with Mr.Big, although fortunately this is one of those things that gets far less painful with age.
But I’m in, girl!
Throw us back another decade Lauren 2000!
💪

Yet despite putting in the work, it turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

It was not that the alternative 1990 timeline itself stopped appealing to me.
I could still see that if at 17 years old, Lauren/ fictional me had made a different choice – to not team up with her lover Bear, and had focused on herself – it would have made for an amazing life!
And radically different to what both I had, as well as what my fictional 20th century Lauren had had with Bear.

I loved this the idea of starting fresh, in 1990.

However;
Lauren 2000 stopped wanting it.

She stopped wanting to erase the years with Bear, only because she kept feeling broken hearted.
It had been too important, too valuable.
Flaws and all.

What changed her mind was a 1995 Bon Jovi performance, of the song Damned. In particular the live version makes a powerful and seductive statement to just go for it.

“If loving you is wrong,” Jon Bon Jovi sensually sways his hips. “I don’t want to be right.”

Neither do we, Jon.
Neither do we.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living
.

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2025* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
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Books 

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

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

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/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Categories BTS

the 1990 (sex-free) makeover | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld
One of the things I will have to come to terms with is that I will not be the best timeline artist that has ever lived.
Despite technically not being the first one to deliberately decide to live in the past, I feel that in many ways?
I am the first.
.
Maybe the difference is that I am not an actual time-capsule artist.
Thrifting secondhand stores for turn of the century items and redecorating my home or assembling a turn of the century wardrobe have never been the heart of what I consider the creation of a new timeline.
So from my perspective I am the first timeline artist, because what we have seen up until now are time-capsule artists.
Not timeline.
.
Twenty years from now, I think more people will be working with the creation of timelines. And we’ll know how to start or set it up and live it, and how to keep getting better at it.
But for me the goal is doing it at all.
To make the first mark in untrodden territory.
.
And it’s not even a matter of not knowing if I’ll ever reach my destination, but being okay with not knowing what my destination is to begin with.
..
So this blogpost (again) is little more than me trying.
Trying, to give you a behind the scenes of what is now still my Lauren2000 project, and how I’m setting “us” up to be shifted into a new timeline.
1990.
.
First the recap of what got us here.
Why am I on the year 2000 timeline?
It started in 2019 when I moved my literary as well as real life storyline of having a lover I called Mr. Big, to an alternative universe of 1994 where he was called Bear and we were college graduates.
And I liked it….. I liked it a lot.
.
At the time I had been writing about my affair with Mr. Big from March 2015 to 2019, and this was a new way of seeing our liaison.
It was a new narrative, a new story, based on the same events.
In this new story Lauren had “recruited” Bear in December 1989, because she needed someone experienced to lose her virginity with. Something he had agreed to. They had both liked it so much they kept seeing each other during their college years which would start Summer 1990.
.
So in 1994, when I began writing my new storyline (it’s poorly searchable on this website, but you can do a search for “Letter from a Stranger”, which will bring you to the first chapter and a category at the bottom of the post) Lauren and Bear are both graduated and starting their working lives.
Lauren has just moved into an apartment, and she now has cats.
.
So the Lauren year 2000 timeline, the one this current series you’re reading right now is a behind the scenes for;
Well that is nothing more than the 6 years later – storyline.
But in the year 2000 the relationship with Bear is over, and she no longer has sex. This is the reason I am no longer writing for her because I don’t “need” a Lauren2000 diary saved until eternity, if Lauren doesn’t have a lover.
.
Lauren 2000 does keep a paper diary but unless she gets a lover none of it will be published into a book. 
.
The timelines that will come out in book form are:
“A Letter to a Stranger, including book 2 Dear Nikki” 1994-1996 
And then I’ll supplement it with a yet to be titled book:
“Lauren Endgame” 1996-2000
It will end in the year 2000 with Lauren deciding to turn the clock back in time and start all over again.
As if Bear never existed.
.
Now we’re in 1990 territory.
Because both Lauren 2000 as well as me real time 2025, have decided to set up and live into a new timeline:
What if, in December 1989, Lauren had not recruited Bear?
What if she had made a different decision, which is to focus on herself and worst case scenario to stay a virgin?
.
1990 was the heart of a worldwide fear of the aids pandemic, and this would stay on until second half of the 90s when combination therapy took the sharpest edges off.
It was an inauspicious moment to get experimental in your sex life, and the idea that Lauren would have made a different decision is quite plausible.
.
So this is where we are setting up our new story.
A story I will be writing about, in this series (“behind the scenes”), but then it will be called Behind The Scenes of Lauren 1990, and no longer Lauren 2000.
So it will be a completely new timeline.
.
However, as far as I can tell I will not be writing from or on, this timeline. I will keep a paper diary but I expect it to be brief and not be publishing it, since writing itself was connected to both being sexual, as well as in being in liaisons that were so complicated and emotional that I needed writing to process it.
On the new 1990 timeline we’re not having any of that.
.
In a very 2025 word, the 1990 timeline is all about decentering men and no longer making (shared) sexuality the core of her/my identity.
Lauren is to stay connected to her own body and not to lose herself in falling in love in a way that makes her give away her power.
She/ Lauren 1990 has no intention of writing because the point is she’ll be in charge of her emotions.
.
Chances are that this Lauren, sex or not, will never turn into a diarist.
But we’ll see.
If she does, we’ll get diaries written by Lauren 1990, but don’t count on it.
.
Although I have been playing with the idea of cutting back so deeply in the 80s/90s to starting all over again for a number of years – and I know this because it started with the idea of returning to 1988 two years ago –
the choice to now actually get serious and do this, is really fresh.
And the newest aspect about it, and one I consider a big deal and me “getting serious” about it!, is that I have set up a date in July where I will transit.
.
I will be treating this new timeline project like a departure, a migration, a move into foreign lands.
Just that this shift will be inward, and not in the physical world.
It will be in mindset (a word that I cannot use in 1990).
It will be about who I/Lauren become, after making a totally different choice.
.
And I have less than two months to figure out how to get there.
.

.A
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2025* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
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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.
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/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Categories BTS

Cleaning up timelines & Closing portals | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on by LS Harteveld
About a month ago, I was by myself at the movie theater watching the commercials when I had the most unsettling experience.
It would have helped to have a friend there, just to check if I had lost it;
Or, alternatively, if the world around us had.
But I was by myself, and because I have been on this time travel project since 2019, I decided the most logical explanation was that I had lost it.

In 2019 I started diary writing here on this blog, as if it was the year 1994 and I was in my early 20s.
So the events that happened, got translated to that time period.
But I wasn’t particularly good at it, and it was little more than a literary construct.
Before I had decided if this whole faux 20th century living was even worth pursuing- it was March 1995 then, on my timeline – I was down the rabbit hole.
With the 2020 timeline collapsed, the only stable one was 1995.

So there I was at the theater March “2025”, but still playing it was 2000.
Seeing a commercial that I not just did not understand but found downright repulsive.
You can watch the commercial here (Hornbach, a gardening center).
There is no dialogue, so you can watch it.

I guess the good news is that after six years I am standing firmly in my own Y2K truth that this commercial is portraying serious mental health issues as entertainment.
The neutral fact is that I can never go back to my own timeline, which is a story for another day perhaps, but there is no way I could sustain the barrage of media and interpersonal communication ever again at any point in my life. 

But the bad news is that seeing unsettling commercials does not even begin to scratch the surface of all the weird things I have discovered, both researching timelines as well as flat out experiencing them!
From being frustrated thinking: “Gee, I’m so flaky with this living in the past-thing! “, I am now at:
“Oh my God, I have no idea what I’ve unleashed…”

I thought ending this project concluding it was getting nowhere and considering it a very lengthy yet ultimately flawed artistic experiment, was the worst that could happen to it.

But now?
The worst outcome would be that I have opened a doorway to another dimension and entities that do not belong here on earth are coming in.
If you want to create your own timeline scare this weekend, I suggest you look for Montauk Project which directly inspired Stranger Things, including a demon coming from the other side, as well as CERN where it is said the find of the God particle in 2012 has (as Stephen Hawking predicted) ended the world as we know it, and we have gone through a blackhole to another time.
And that we have been living in a simulation ever since.

It was enough to make me delete all my playlists on YouTube with regard to timeline “magic”.
Which is just as good since I’m in 2000 so I shouldn’t be on YouTube anyway!

So instead of making the 2000 trip as “real” as possible, in a mind blowing What the Bleep Do We Know – way, I’ve taken it into an entirely new direction.
Rooted as deeply as I can in the 3D. Into matter. Into the NOW.
I’m taking my Y2K project into the physical experience of living in this body, in this city, on this earth.

This tree is not going anywhere.
She’s home.

.A
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2025* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Categories BTS

the updated rules of engagement | How we will date pretending it’s the year 2000

Published on by LS Harteveld

I was watching a 1998 episode of Sex & the City this morning (on dvd, because I am pretending I am living in the year 2000) and it featured a man who not only slept with models;
He also secretly taped them.

He had a whole collection of videos which he could not show to the public “yet”.
“Yet” was his own word, when he showed his collection to Carrie Bradshaw.
He was an artist who had never sold a single painting. Carrie’s classification, not mine. 

Yet this 27 year old scene was surprisingly on point in illustrating my prediction I will in all probability never have sex again.
I feel so overwhelmingly unsafe, so objectified, so assaulted, that I am pretty sure I will never trust anyone with a mobile phone with my secrets let alone my body, ever again.

And I was already a few paragraphs in linking these safety issues to our era, when I realized that first of all, if I would go down that route, this piece would become just as toxic and frightening as male internet culture itself.
And secondly; That the old Sex & the City episode proves that this is not a new thing.

Ever since the invention of video, every woman having sex, trying on clothes, changing clothes or using public bathrooms, has risked being exploited by someone secretly filming her.
It’s just the scale of it, that has changed.
And that’s without counting the number of times something that was shared in private was later posted to the internet or shared on WhatsApp.

Oh well that got pretty toxic even after I deleted the paragraphs I refused to finish.
Guess it just can’t be helped.

And maybe because I originally started writing under this name because I thought a life of sexual freedom was desirable, and also interesting to write about, it is not so strange that I feel both angry as well as anxious, that it has become seemingly impossible to continue.
I really don’t see how I would ever have sex ever again.

But this post is titled the updated rules of engagement, and how we are going to date as if it’s the year 2000.
So obviously, I am not ready to throw in the towel.
Not yet.

Because I think that if this is MY problem?
If I feel so unsafe that I can no longer have sex?
Then that is not just me, then it means something bigger is at play.

In 2019 I wrote a post called The Rules of Engagement, about the project that has helmed the majority of my sexual writings, which is the timetravel project.
At that time it was 1994, in that world.
And in the article I wrote that any new men would have to be aware that I was writing about my love life.

So even though in the 10+ years I had already been writing about my sex life at that time, and even though this had never lead to any problems of any kind, I did know I had a pretty much ongoing responsibility to keep thinking about the consequences and to keep improving on my disclaimer and consent policies.

In other words, I knew what any writer knows and that is that having someone write about you messes with your head.
Their head, as well as mine.
The moment you write about something reality changes, and the moment you do that with the emotional charge of having a sexual affair, the chemistry becomes incredibly potent.

I don’t think any writer really understands the power of it.
And if we did, the responsibility would probably immobilize us.
Or me, anyway.

Anyway, I don’t know what I put onto paper in 2019 because I have not reread the article, because I feel such a Last Hope urgency to tackle this with a fresh pair of eyes.
But if you are interested you can read the 2019 version of The Rules of Engagement here.

So what did I come up with, for the 2025 Rules of Engagement?
What will happen if we start hanging out, and become friends?
What will happen when we fall in love, and become lovers?

In the case of friendship, nothing will happen on paper.
I have not written about any of my friends for absolutely years, so that is very simple.
It is also good to point out that a friendship, meaning hanging out together at dates which are scheduled in advance, is a prerequisite before there ever happening anything else.
There are no casual visitors in my life.
Everybody who is in my life is a friend, meaning a reliable person who is free to be seen with me in public.
And enjoying it!

Scenario 2.
If you fall in love with me one-sided, nothing will happen either.
I have never seen this end well, and we will both go our separate ways, and that’s it.
You will never have to worry about there being anything in my writing, because there won’t.

Scenario 3.
I fall in love with you, one sided.
This is absolutely amazing chemistry, and again, nothing will be there in my diary.
We just hang out, and then off you go to wherever it is you go off to, and it will be brilliant.
Out of all scenarios, number three is absolutely the best possible outcome possible for both of us!
No drama, no fuss, and an empty diary.

Scenario 4.
We have so much chemistry, we have no idea what hit us.
Two ways to go about it:
1. We talk about it.
This will be very unerotic and I will fall out of love immediately, and no diary writing will be needed or desired.
2. We don’t say a word
And just have these ubercool dates with subtext and hidden flirts, and our friendship coating is so thick and slick it will fool anybody around us.
Just that you and I both know this will one day be a hell of a lot more.

So in the very unlikely scenario that we both fall in love, and manage to not say anything about it but instead play it super cool?
Yes, Lauren living in the year 2000 will be writing about you.
OFFLINE!

And you will get a different name, and locations, situations and dates will be altered and none of your personal information or stories will be shared in any way.
It is a reimagined version of a timeline that never existed. 

You will receive any sexual entries by email, or other content as well, if you wish.

Ultimately the interesting entries from the diaries will be created into printed books, in the vintage diaries which I am still in the process of creating the first volumes (1994-1996).

There will no longer be an online version of anything happening in my or our lives, April 2025 moving forward.
I have taken all diary writing offline.

The time between anything (sexual) that could happen between you and me, and writing the diary entries, offline, on one hand;
And the printing of the journals, thereby making them available to the public, will be 2 years minimum, most likely longer.

So there they are.
The rules of engagement 2025.

And our phones are tucked away, in a timeline far far away.
It’s just us now.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Categories BTS

In Bed With | #2 BTS

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Truth or Dare was internationally released as In Bed With Madonna

This is the 2021 behind the scenes (BTS) diary, of my third time travel year 1996-1997. I describe the choices for my 1996 life and its diary posts. Subscribe to this blog to receive both series in your Inbox. Thursday 18 November 2021       posted on Facebook
It s 2.45 AM here, and this may or may not be the appropriate time to type a small update about why I’ve had my Lauren 1996 project, where I live and write as if it is 1996; As well as its twin real time project, or log “Behind The Scenes” (BTS), bottom out before they had any momentum, or even before they had one word on record- as was the case with Lauren 1996. Publishing book 1 and 2 1994-1996 also; entirely bottomed out. I m glad the files/ work was saved, as far as I know. Because the past week I’ve had an avalanche of major and minor very 21st century (not 1996) technical problems. And that s not counting a change in internet cable providers, which is scheduled for December and buying a new mobile phone, I m typing this on my to-be-replaced one which is old and will soon start getting technical hiccups, incompatibility in apps etc Yet that same geriatric phone is currently the only fully functional, connected computer in my house. Although the number was changed a few days ago, but otherwise it s the same familiar, has-no-secrets-from-me, love-you-at-3 AM when I can t sleep, companion. Now I did see how my forced time off from my normal/desktop 21th century computer could benefit my Lauren 1996 project, and it did for the first days. But now the stress of all the things I can t do, have to postpone or remember to pick up when I have a computer that s online; That stress is starting to accumulate. I m now LESS in 1996 head space than before phone and computer problems started. So that s it in a midnight nutshell. I think in order to play-pretend it s 1996, I need my 2021 tech to be stable. But things that need fixing, tweaking or learning, because I have new software/systems, those things take time. Combined with not having a computer to blog with meant I d only be able to write on my phone anyway. Which is great for 3.25 AM at night! Because so far that has been the biggest cost; Not the missed blog posts, not the delay in all the admin or correspondence, not the book publishing that didn’t get done. The biggest cost is not sleeping, knowing you have to get up early. And hoping tomorrow 2021 will be up and running, so you can go back to 1996 and forget it existed. . Saturday 20 November 2021       1990 Madonna-DancersThe good news is my internet is working to the point that I can use WordPress, and have more options than making midnight Facebook posts. The bad news that it still throws me off often enough to cause problems because the connection is frequently lost and I need it even more often than I did with the previous laptop because I need to personalize settings, download software, type full urls and enter my full usernames the first time I visit all my regular sites. I just spent half an hour going back and fro to get an English spelling check here on this blog. But regardless what I tried it kept being stuck in Dutch, underlining the entire post. It turned out that downloading the English dictionary had failed which was why it was still in Dutch and kept underlining every English word. And I m afraid the assignment of a mechanic has gotten lost with the provider, because it’s been 48 hours and they were going to call for an appointment. So we’re on our own here! With a glass fiber cable that is most likely hanging by a thread, or a modem that has a loose connection. But I’m here, and the hard earned spelling check is working, so I’m not complaining! And there was more news, on the Lauren 1996-1997 front. I’ve fallen prey again to not being able to sleep, feeling overwhelmed and suffering from anxiety. I don’t wake up sick like I did for four months this year, nor have the 2020 migraines returned, yet I fear that if I get this wrong, they will soon be here to join the party. It is key that I pick wisely; What is worth getting upset over, losing sleep over? In the final entries from my time travel project, dating from October, Lauren 1996 even more strongly, taps into being well-dressed, friendly and cool. She does this by remembering a room mate who was an escort, and how she had always wanted to be so “together”, and she recommits to this vision. But something else has happened, in 2021. An inspiration came by that I cannot pass on, which was the documentary In Bed With Madonna (1991). It was the first movie I ever went to see multiple times, only to be matched shortly after by Basic Instinct.  Even Fight Club and Lord of the Rings, many years later- I can’t remember seeing them more often than once in cinemas… I read an analysis for the 30th anniversary of In Bed With Madonna, that how boldly she expresses her sexuality and her stardom, are unprecedented.  Modern day music documentaries may attempt to portray their stars in the same authentic manner- but that it revolves much more about relatability and being vulnerable; Not about being a super star and owning that! In Bed With Madonna has got balls. And so do I, which is why that movie appealed to me from the very beginning. To give you a bit of background story: Although I AM a writer (meaning I need it like others need to breathe), my chosen profession for a long time was to be a yoga teacher. In recent years I quit group classes, and I was still in the process of reinventing it when Covid happened. If it wasn’t for Covid I would definitely have picked up teaching group classes again, but instead I quit my business and ended the lease of my yoga space. But the quest for how to revive my old profession stayed. The broad strokes of what it is I will be doing (and have started on and off) is to build a badass online yoga community through free YouTube classes, and then start teaching to that particular community in a one-off event style, locally as well as internationally, when Covid regulations have been lifted. Watching In Bed With Madonna, gave me the missing piece both to framing my yoga, as well as to the identity or the energy to teach it with. I saw with great clarity that what I like in her, and which has actually been the thing that turned me to yoga in 1998- was that she is a performer. When I turned to yoga in 1998 after she had spoken about practicing yoga, it had never been yoga that had lured me in.  I had bought into the idea of doing yoga because Madonna did yoga (1)  And the reason I had bought into this was because she was a performer (2) In other words the entire concept of teaching yoga, having a yoga teacher or being a yoga teacher, had never been part of why I started yoga. I had yoga teachers, and I became a yoga teacher too, yet that was all unrelated to why I had felt drawn to yoga. It stayed unrelated for two decades, until being in the yoga world became unbearable. As far as I can pinpoint it, should being two decades off purpose and off path need pinpointing, then what I have felt happening on entering the yoga world, is that I lost my power. I lost my authenticity, my sexuality, my joy. I lost everything I stood for and what pulled me through was the Madonna / yoga connection that kept enchanting me, just thinking about it…. In 2000 Madonna made a movie The Next Best Thing where she plays a yoga teacher, and that movie too was imprinted in me. It feels the closest to the real yoga, that I feel inside of me and that wants to be expressed, created, still desires to be brought into this world like a book or a story wants to be written! The mistake I made was thinking the way “to bring it” was by following regular teacher trainings. Or, since I did learn good things there, the mistake I made was not realizing how much work and correcting I would need to do AFTER taking those trainings. How many miles I would be OFF path, after the diplomas, and that my journey should have been to first go back, unlearn and restart in 2000, the last year when I knew I was still ON path! In Bed With Madonna made me realize that it was HER energy, that had drawn me not just to yoga but to the entire concept of adult life. I recall having five visions of being an adult, or being a professional, that I found powerful and alluring. They are in chronological order: 1. being Madonna (1985) This started in 1985 when she played Desperately Seeking Susan. 2. being an escort (late 80s, early 90s) I ve always felt attracted to this line of work because the women I knew who did this took excellent care of themselves and were far more sophisticated than other women my age. As well as smart and independent. 3. being a writer/ Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct 1992) Even more so than just wanting to do yoga because of Madonna, it was clear that my desire to become a writer was preceded (and is defined) by wanting to be Catherine Tramell. In my eyes the cool blonde was someone who knew how the game was played and did not waste time trying to be liked. Catherine Tramell is a fictional character, just like Madonna’s yoga teacher was a fictional character,  yet she is the only writer I aspire to be, and she is the only reason I became a writer. 4. being a photographer (90s) Although I started photographing in the 80s, it wasn’t until the 90s that I started toying with the idea of becoming a professional. I was inspired by female photographers Patricia Steur and Annie Leibovitz, and started an education I dropped out of. I just wasn’t that into it. And I never felt any desire to go back to photography again.  5. being a yoga teacher (Madonna in The Next Best Thing, 2000) More or less discussed already. Madonna turned me to yoga, and then this movie took that up a level by making teaching yoga the coolest job in the world! What I recognized in In Bed With Madonna, was that I too am a performer. That the reason only fictional characters inspire me, is because like an actor I play a role. My work, my profession, is to perform. The reason I dropped out of BEING a yoga teacher, the reason I never was a photographer, a proper normal writer, nor an escort, is that I put those identities on like a coat. And that what I had done by redesigning my yoga work to teaching for free online, as to lay the foundation to later go on tour and give one-off shows (really!); Was me turning yoga into the performance art that had appealed to me from the start. Just like performance art had pulled me to writing, to photography, to escorting, to being Madonna in 1985. My work, my craft, is to be a performer. That is what I am drawn to, can get better at, and will be known for. However, there was a problem with fully adopting early 90s Madonna performance power to teaching yoga; First of all because I am suffering from anxiety again, making it not very appealing to drop fully into madness and mayhem Blonde Ambition identity. And secondly, because I had Lauren’s 1996 diaries identifying with Catherine Tramell and a resolution to add the cool and self-care level of escorts. Not to be Madonna. And with the anxiety having returned, I d also rather commit to their cool. But fortunately I have found that the two are actually quite alike, in other ways. That In Bed With Madonna (1991) and Basic Instinct (1992) both portray powerful women with strong sexualities.  But Madonna is “yang”, energetic, extroverted. She is the performer of the two, which is why I will be in that energy when I “teach” yoga (as we know now I am actually giving a performance), under my real name. The character of the writer Catherine Tramell, in Basic Instinct 1992, is poised, introverted, cool. She is “yin”. Which is why, when I do yoga to ease stress and anxiety, and when I’m living my Lauren1996 life, I will be in the energy of Catherine Tramell, and I keep my promise to “Lauren” to become more stylish and contained like the elegant sex workers she recalled in her last October chapters. With that decision – and internet or no internet 😉 – I think we’re all set to travel time! I therefor expect this post to be the last BTS, Behind The Scenes, for a while! So the next post will be the first chapter of the new book from Lauren, 1996 – 1997. Showtime.
~Lauren An Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.
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Books 
My diaries are available at LULU New books will be added, including the time travel project books Letter from a stranger and Dear Nikki. 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

We have every right to be powerful, in whatever form of sexuality we choose to have. | #1 BTS

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
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GQ Men of the Year 2019 – “Woman of the Year”: Sharon Stone. Full video at the bottom of this post.

“We have every right to be powerful, in whatever form of sexuality we choose to have. And no one is allowed to take that away from you.”

Sharon Stone GQ Awards 2019

This is the behind the scenes (BTS) diary, of my third time travel year 1996-1997. Subscribe to this blog to receive them in your Inbox. This first post starts a month ago, because BTS was originally intended to be an offline diary.  OCTOBER – IT HURTS Friday 15 October 2021            For quite a few times today, a day spent only behind my computer because I had one blogpost { one of the final chapters to 1995-1996 } to take down and save, because its sexual explicit content had given me a panic attack, and I also wrote a closing chapter/ final blogpost to a series called The Covid Diaries, and I had an online workshop;  During that day where I only sat, and worked, and was totally absorbed in basically setting up the basics to transfer my work from blogging, to writing, from online to offline;    On that day I thought, “That new thing, BTS, is not really necessary. It will only make things more complicated. I will delete it tonight.”            When now that it’s nighttime I know how crucial this new series is. BTS, Behind The Scenes.      I need this for my own sanity. So what happened to writing about my sex life that suddenly bit me in the butt?             Why didn’t I coach myself to being comfortable with my sexually explicit blog post, called “Promotion”, a chapter to my fictionalized 1996 diary?       Why didn’t I work through the resistance?          First of all because the anxiety attack I experienced this morning, was particularly violent.        I had clearly hit a nerve somewhere, and I felt that taking the post down was a solution that had a limited time window to being effective.          If I wanted to stabilize with a quick fix, I had to act fast. The second reason I decided quickly was because I am developing my work and media personality, under my real name.                My alter ego Lauren Harteveld, now more than ever, needs to be a place of solace. A place of feeling nurtured.                 Not a place where I get stressed out over having sex blogposts. I’ve known for a while that the nature of my work here would have to change, in order to step into this new role under my real name.   I just had not thought it through yet.     Waking up with a panic attack over the sex post was my cue the time had come to scale down on LS Harteveld, and transfer the intimate parts to offline.     That was the price I was willing to pay for peace of mind, working under my real name and be the real me. My future was not one where I would wake up suffering from a panic attack from a blog post for my alter ego I had posted the night before. But thirdly, and this is why it was actually good news and I did not look further for reasons to keep the sex post up, because the final reason I decided I would go underground, was that I want to write so much more about sex! More explicitly than the post that was already giving me panic attacks. The post I took down was a 1996 fictionalization of a 2021 email I had sent to a man I correspond with.  Now it had become a letter Lauren 1996 wrote to an English bootleg trader called Nikki. A blog post. And one that scared me so much, I changed my mind. The real problem had been that the taken down blogpost was still just a fraction of the honesty and the intimacy I had shared in my email. The contrast had been stark. And confronting.             Every time I reread my blogpost, I realized it lacked the level of truth and intimacy my email to the real life Nikki had.                It felt like such a betrayal of something pure. I had censored myself. Originally, meaning before taking it down, I had planned on writing a second blogpost this weekend. A second fictional letter to the character of Nikki, but now including details I had left out. And to frame it as being a second letter Lauren in 1996 would write to her friend Nikki, because she had not been ready to share.              But the panic attack showed me there was no way I would take it up a notch. New professional-me under my real name, would not be able to write such scary blogposts under my alter ego.       If I really desired the same level of intimacy in my 1996 diary, as I had displayed in my email to real life Nikki, and I also wanted to become a professional under my real name;  Then after more than 10 years of being a blogger, the whole online thing had to go. It’s 10.30 PM now. I feel totally raw, unhappy, overwhelmed, maybe even disappointed.            If there ever comes a day my work life under my real name starts to make me unhappy, or if I see a way of doing it without feeling threatened by the sexuality of my work here, then I will return to being a blogger. But for now, this is what it is. I am no longer a blogger.             And that hurts… . Saturday 16 October 2021       It got worse before it got much better!   Going to bed I checked my phone and found a browser open that offered access to yesterday’s Zoom call. It was a url that I had copy pasted manually because the link in the email had not been clickable.           I usually attend calls both on my laptop to type, and on my telephone for a good camera angle.    But yesterday, I only remembered being successful at logging in via laptop. As far as I recalled, the phone browser and link had not worked. Yet here it was, a clear sign that at least the url had worked. Had I used it, and clicked on an “Okay” to enter the call, without remembering doing it? Had I been online thinking I was invisible and excusing myself for not being on screen, when all the time I was recorded? The call was with a group I had not known, and the communication was not entirely in flow. But I had dismissed that, thinking it was because I was communicating through chat only, and that it were all people who did not know each other.            Had it been because I was visible, in totally unpresentable fashion, and no one told me? I got the absolute worst panic attack. That morning’s panic attack, triggered by the sex blogpost, was nothing compare to The Biggie that hit me around midnight.           I was trembling all over my body, I felt sick and I wrote an email to the friend who had organized the call.            I explained I was unsure if I had opened the Zoom app on my phone.    “Was I visible?” I asked. “I’ve been crippled with anxiety all day, and thought is daunting! I hope you can help.” For an hour I tried a variety of tactics from rationalizing the social fear, to projecting it, to ultimately befriending it and accepting its presence. Which was for this crisis situation the best option, although no miracle trick.     An hour later I was still wide awake and had been checking my email at regular intervals, even though I thought I “should” be able to do without her reassurance.               But boy, was I happy to read her reply that everything had been more than fine!             I had not been online with my phone camera.   Immediately the anxiety subsided and ever since then the return of my generic anxiety has looked like a walk in the park compared to the panic I felt for that hour.       I can do that! I slept exceptionally well, and I’m doing great today. . NOVEMBER – LET’S DO THIS!!  Friday 12 November 2021            In 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, I’ve half-in-half out participated in a performance project, living my life and keeping an online diary as if it is 25 years ago. These two diaries A Letter From A Stranger (1994-1995) and Dear Nikki (1995-1996), are in their publishing stage, and it has been time to start writing book three for a while now. Except I didn’t. After the final chapters for Dear Nikki, which I never published online because it gave me too much anxiety, I did try to start the new book 1996-1997 offline, meaning safer and far less likely to push me over the edge, but to no avail. I don’t write when it’s offline, I make the wrong choices, avoid adventures. I am no longer inspired to live a full life, if I keep myself from blogging diary style, about its most meaningful, sexual parts (for one); And I m also not inspired to live real-time, real pandemic 2021. I need that extra layer of historical context of analogue (yes I do see the irony here) life, and the performance art based challenge of pretending I’m living my life from being a 20-something living in the 90s. Not just for my sex life, sex posts, diary of the 90s as Lauren Harteveld; But I need it for my work under my real name as well. If I am not online “here” as my alter ego, and if I don’t have that secretive private life which I then share by blogging (and get freaked out about); Well then I don’t live, write or work in the real world under my real name either! My two personas really are like a Siamese twin, and if I m committing to creating massive impact, to having big results, and worldly success in every way for the real me? Then it means I have to amp it up living as Lauren Harteveld too. And I admit; The time travel projects 1 and 2 have been sloppy in their execution, the first two books have not been all in. They were more a translation of real time events, to a fictional 90s past, but I wasn’t living it in the moment. I never did business as if it was the 90s, never made love as if I was in my twenties, I was using the fictionalization of my past as a construct instead of as the performance art it was always intended to be! For book 3 no more sloppy time travelling allowed. So last night, I made a list. And I made it short. I left EVERYTHING out, that I knew was critical to feeling good, everything I knew that would frustrate me if I didn’t do it, and everything that would have to be in place before I could get to my core activities for which I wanted to be known. Because for what has been somewhere between a week and a few years, I have tried to schedule my daily routine so that all the things that matter to me get done. And instead the only thing that got done – and very consistently! – was whatever I felt like doing! What inspired me. And the things that had to get done got done too, and if frustrations reached peak level or deadlines closed in, then all the other things got done as well. In other words, both my personal preferences, my sexuality for sure (2021 was the best sexual year of my life!), my financial obligations, my social life, and everything else; It had a way of getting done. It took care of itself not because I had scheduled it, but despite of it. However, what did not get done, was what I really want to be known for; To be a world famous rock star writer, who does yoga. Well technically the writing did get done, it always gets done because it’s what comes natural. Yoga didn’t get done at all, but that’s not my biggest worry to be honest. But the part of rock star writer that didn’t get done, or not consistently, was the business side of it. Meaning publishing, selling, and speaking about my work, the being of the rock star writer did not happen. There has not been a visible rock star writer, not under any of the two names, to relate to. I have been invisible. Which is why, I kept this list of what Lauren 1996 would be committing to every day, short. Very short.
  1. do yoga or teach yoga
  2. publish books
I fell asleep thinking of myself as Lauren 1996. And as I type this, again, I can feel her living in me. For the first time since 2019, the summer I started my time travel project, I can feel it is working. This morning I worked on publishing my books. I took the book on Basic Instinct/ Catherine Tramell, which I pulled from publishing, and that has been on my desk for weeks now to get improved and republished. I found a reference to the 2019 GQ speech Sharon Stone made, which was about how she dealt with feeling exposed after Basic Instinct came out, and although I had made up my mind and had decided to write the new time travel diary 1996-1997 online just like its predecessors; This speech was exactly what I needed to hear at this time. It was about making a conscious decision about what to do with that part that you fear, sometimes correctly obviously, others will use to shame you and try to destroy you. “Time to decide what you do with the tender, important, beautiful, savage, passionate, most important part of yourself.  What are you gonna do with it? I ll tell you what I did with mine. I respected it.” . Lauren An Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living. Subscribe to this blog to receive the new episodes of – Behind The Scenes, about living offline, – and its juicy 90s companion Lauren 1996-1997 in your Inbox
Books 
My diaries are available at LULU New books will be added, including the time travel project books Letter from a stranger and Dear Nikki. 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