The Time Travel Project – Page 2

A copy of a copy | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on July 10, 2025July 10, 2025 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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A refusal to forget | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on July 1, 2025July 1, 2025 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.
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the 1990 (sex-free) makeover | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on May 30, 2025May 31, 2025 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

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New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
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Cleaning up timelines & Closing portals | year 2000 behind the scenes

Published on May 17, 2025May 18, 2025 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.
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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

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

Published on April 24, 2025April 24, 2025 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

{ previously unpublished draft } Shed a tear ’cause I’m missin’ you | 1995 Series

Published on February 12, 2024February 12, 2024 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Saturday, 25 July 1995

It was the birthday of the torrential rain.
Right at the moment when I had planned we would be picnicking, the flood started.
And it was the birthday of wanting to cry all the time.
For time lost.

Why did I stay so long with Bear?
Had it only been for sex, even when he had so little time to spare?

And lost time, that the first year of my working life is in a job I no longer want to do.

If I really want to be a writer, I can’t be spending 8 hours a day behind my desk for the publisher’s.
And yet at the same time:
Do I want to be a writer?
Do I have it in me?

And what are my bruised elbow and sprained shoulder blade trying to tell me?

But I think what bothers me most, is that I will keep losing men like Bear when I become a writer.
Not that I blame them: I write about my love life.
I can totally see why it would be a deal breaker for Bear, who has never been honest about his capability to juggle multiple women at the same time.
But also the painter who looked like Slash;
If he would divorce his wife, it would not be for a writer who would spill the beans on everything.
Hell, even if it was the real Slash, he would have issues with things like that being told!
And feel manipulated by my pen.

And I would understand that. Totally.
But the problem is; Is that really relevant?

Am I here on earth to listen to the objections of my body maxing out on its desk sitting hours, begging me to stop?
Or to the grievances of fictional lovers, who have yet to make their choice?

Or am I here on the first morning of the new year of my life, 23 years old and with one year 1994 – 1995 entirely lost, with absolutely nothing to show for, except that Bear officially broke up with me;
To make a different choice.
To not lose another year again.

When I was 17 I knew developing a full and satisfying sex life was the most important, but now my love life only seems to be hurting me.
And I am sick and tired of making a career out of having to analyze men and of not being chosen.

Do I keep giving it the next 5,5 years of my life, and once again arrange a sex life for myself?

Or is it time to go big?

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

December 2023/ early 2024

This series is currently being updated, and will be published into

A letter from a stranger
diary 1994 – 1996
including book 2, Dear Nikki

Expected March 2024, in the BOOK SHOP

You can follow this proces, including if I discover previously unpublished material like the entry above, on Facebook and Twitter.

My diaries en erotica are available at
my BOOK SHOP

And just like that. Gone. | 1998 diary

Published on December 31, 2023January 1, 2024 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Sunday 31 December, 1998 5 PM

There is a diary, it is a paper diary. It has two entries, both recent, and the idea was that I would indulge in slow longhand writing, instead of typing on my computer, whenever I had something to say. And I really thought that I would then, on a separate occasion, sit down, peaceful and quiet, to thoughtfully type them out into a chapter.

A new chapter for a new volume of my diary which I have kept since 1994.

I am currently publishing the first two volumes of this diary, which are called “A Letter from a Stranger” and “Dear Nikki”, and I encountered this before; A written book, written in a paper diary right before bed. On my relationship with Bear, but it was much more. And I did enclose it in the printed diary too, but added it at a later date. Exactly how it will go this time too.

Because that is what I will do with the few diary entries, of the paper journal. Written in the last week I still thought I had something with Bear. Aside from his physical absence since May, I had no evidence that things had ended.

That January 1998, had been our last real date, when we were together, really together. Fuck, I start crying just thinking that. Angry too, because he knew since May, I m sure of it… He knew he’d leave me -us!- and I opened conversation and he changed the subject. Only to then drop the bomb on the 31st of December.

There’s two things that are unthinkable right now. A. To write this down with pen and paper in that stupid silly childlike diary which I started when I still had fucking hope I was seeing things incorrectly. And B To write this down in the new year. I want this story out, right in the rotten year he walked away from all we had for over 8 years, 9 years if I count 1998’s 11 stinking rotting months of me feeling things were off. First time I felt it was February, when he helped me out at my request, and was really sweet and nice but already emotionally detached.

Let this betrayal, because that is what it feels like, stay in the worst year my love life has known. 1998, may you rot in hell. 1989 Was also a super bad year, but at least in 1989, when my heart was also broken (in my last post I already thought I had accepted his silence as a breakup AND believed my heart could no longer be broken. Both were proven untrue today and part of me STILL has not accepted, since all he and his girlfriend have done, is moving to another city, damn I m getting ahead of myself)- Anyway! 1989! At least then I had gotten myself together before the end of the year, because I had found Bear and knew he would be my lover in 1990. 1989 April’s very ugly mess heartbreak, would not leave a trace, entering into the new decennium. I had made sure of that. And having met Bear in December; On 31st of December 1989, I felt wonderful. I can already tell you that that year, and that moment in time, plays a big role in everything I wrote in the paper diary, that I will publish in another chapter, in the first days of 1999. Right now everything I wrote last week, is so marked and heavy for me. Because I didn’t know of the way it would end today. I just can’t read it now, those last days of hope. I can’t type the paper diary out now. I need to stay with this avalanche of emotions. But I did see one thing. I opened the diary, and I have no idea why I did that, but what I encountered where two separate notes I made yesterday night right before going to bed. It were two topics, I reminded myself to write about. Presumably today, because they were about something I did last night. Okay, so first (maybe I already said this, but I feel delirious with grief and fear right now. I feel I lost the love of my life, and feel the state of panic getting worse by the minute) Anyway. So maybe I already said this. But the paper diary is about a project I started to relive the first four years with Bear. December 1989 I had met him and explained my virgin-yet-aids-phobic situation, and if he would like to have sex with me, in the new year. This is the most blunt way, I have ever put this down, but that is how it happened. And until January this year (1998), that is how it was. It survived all his other relationships, and it was never blunt and ugly; And always beautiful, lovely, fun, great. But since he never chose me, I know you’re probably not going to believe me, and I even have to convince myself, that there was nothing wrong there. It was 10 out of 10, and I will never settle for less that’s for sure. However, for reasons to be revealed in this extra chapter (the typing out of the paper diary) I did lose something very important 17 year old me did have, in December 1989. Something that she lost in her arrangement with Bear, but that was probably worth more. And it was hers. This was something that had been so second nature to her, she did not know she could lose it. Nor that it would be the unwelcome price for her sexual relationship to Bear. That paper diary, was me setting myself up for reliving those first four years with Bear; Without, losing that. Or in my case: By regaining it. The paper diary asks: What could I have done different in December 1989, so that in July 1994, when I started this diary, I was not so empty? My position not so weak? My strength not decimated? How could the story of the 17 year old girl have ended in a different way? The paper diary was setting myself up, to relive the container of those four and a half years, until butting into the first chapter of the “Letter to a Stranger” diary, written July 1994. And then, 4.5 years from now, I was, hopefully, redeemed. And that regardless if I had had a lover, or lovers, or not; I had not made the same mistakes. That pretending I was only 17, and that it was December 1989, and that I would do it all again for 4.5 years; Would have healed me, and allowed me to kept that second nature thing, that had proven to be susceptibel to loss or theft. The first of the two notes the written diary closes with, was a note I made that I should write about doing 1.5 hours of yoga everyday for the upcoming 4.5 years. I know this needs context, which I will give in the future, for now I am just rushing this story out, before I have to leave the house. But it was the second note, that struck me right in the heart. It says: “- write about pain in my heart on Saturday night after looking up all dates relevant to Bear 1989-1990 and this year” January 1990 the first time we had sex, January 1998 the last time we had sex. December 1989 the first time we met, May 1998 the last time we met. Just last night I had gone through them, only to be punished by a pain in the heart I only knew too well…. 1994 The year he would break up with me, in December. Something I had felt in my heart, violently, for months. I had started this diary (volume 1, A Letter from a Stranger) back in that summer of 1994, one week before or after what would become our last date, I can’t remember. Until in December that year, he pulled the plug. It was as if I had felt it, and had wanted to write down what we had, because I had unconsciously understood I was on the verge of losing it. The second half of that year, in his absence, I suffered from pain around my heart, arm, jaw. The attacks were violent. I learned the signs, so I could control them. Yesterday night the exact same pain, mapping out my 1989-1990-1994, for what I should probably call The Redemption Project, scheduling in those dates that had been relevant to 17 year old me in 1989-1990; To 22 year old me, in horror year 1994; And then ultimately, to 26 year old me, in the definitely bigger horror of now 1998. Can you believe it? Just yesterday! “Write about how you got your old agendas and compared dates, Lauren, and how much your heart hurt, and how you still remembered that pain from 1994.” Write about how you had no idea that within 24 hours after going through those dates and having to stop because of your heart, on the 31st of December 1998, you will get a call from a Bear who will apologize for not having been in touch and thanking you for your Christmas Card. A Christmas Card you posted, addressed to the address where he was living with his girlfriend for the past few years and that you were welcome to use, yet at the same time you thought: “This could be the last year I get to write him one,” and you didn’t understand why you thought that, because sex aside, why would you two ever stop being friends? And then he will say that he is no longer living there, but that their mail is still being sent to the new address so that it was still received. He will mention, cruelly casually, that they have moved to a different city. And suddenly, you will feel the ground drop from underneath you. Suddenly, you will see how this is ending; the only way it ever could end. He has left, really left. “I’ll still be visiting,” he will say. “I will call you and then we can meet.” Bear is no longer here. He no longer lives in this city. The city, where we had our first coffee date. The city where he became my highschool lover, and we both graduated in the same year. Although on different schools. The city, where we studied and I visited his student house, and he visited mine, the labyrinth of 30 student rooms, weaved together over the second and third stories of the most infamous restaurants and night clubs this city has to offer. The city, where I got my first apartment and my two cats, in 1994. And where he got his first job and moved in with a woman a bit older than us. The promise of a future life as a father and husband. And just like that. Gone. . ~Lauren98 And just like that. Gone. | 1998 diary is the fifth chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1999

Providing Lauren1999 gets over rereading some of her best times with Bear, book 1, A Letter From A Stranger and book 2 Dear Nikki, of this series will be published in March 2024 in one bind (one title). You can follow the publishing process on Facebook and Twitter: @LSHarteveld My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

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Body first, business second, boy optional. | 1998 diary

Published on November 19, 2023November 19, 2023 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Thursday 16 November, 1998 11 PM

I feel so alone, so sad Bear left me and did not choose for me. I prefer his absence as a sign he no longer wants me in his life, to the breaking up from December 1994. I prefer having had the good times, the best times even, as recent as first half 1997, to having missed out on them. Which would have been the case if he had not returned and the breakup had been permanent. So I don’t have any regrets.

I prefer the coldness of this breakup to one where I crash and burn, something which fortunately has never happened with Bear. I was already over that when I met him. No man will ever break my heart again, and no man, ever has. I was 16 and it was a boy, not a man. I grew up quickly. There are many other things I like including: -being indifferent to new men, maybe I will fall in love again, maybe not. It is of no interest to me, I do not pursue. -knowing how to prioritize my career. One year ago I promised myself three things. 1. Do yoga every day 2. build a business and 3. to go all in on my writing I only did (2) and still I m mostly dependent on writing assignments from old contacts. But I’m sub-teaching yoga too, and I have my own class. I m starting teaching privates now. But this diary, the one I wanted to publish the first volume of, has fallen flat. I neither write for it, nor publish. I have no idea in what phase the manuscript is or where I have the file. But I think the problem with publishing the diary is that it is too confronting because it is about the time I was still with Bear, and I don’t want to read it. So it is time to recommit. 1. yoga every day 2. build a business 3. all in on my writing Friday 17 November 11.15 PM Feel 100% better than yesterday. The loneliness is transforming to a desire to do yoga. An acknowledgement that if I don’t want finding another man to be a priority in my life, or even resent having the task all together, then my task is to take care of my body. To give it pleasure myself. I only did yoga tonight but really see the absolute necessity (knowing the sexual ambition that I have) to do yoga twice a day: AM + PM And become familiar with my body and be aware of it, just like with sex. Saturday 18 November 10.45 PM Good news and bad news. The good news is I wrote an entire article for the Bon Jov fanclub magazine, and I also had a day out with a friend. Making this really feel like weekend, I was no longer pre-occupied with work. The bad news is I am so tired I barely made it through taking my make-up off and brushing my teeth. I feel utterly spent and there was no way I could do my yoga. So clearly, if I want that done I need it to earlier in the day, AND cannot afford to write in the morning. The other bad news is that I still miss Bear. I am both happy for all the incredible years we had, as well as shocked that apparently he can just walk away from it. I know what we had was damn special and that it’s hard to come by. All women want to pin him down and make him the father of their babies. But regardless of if he wants that too and shares their dream, the pinning down, or settling down, inevitably comes at the cost of sexual attraction being deminished. I don’t know any woman who would come close to offering him what I have offered. And the 8 years it lasted, prove we’re the real deal. That I am, the real deal. Combined with the actual, factual truth that in any sexual relationship the real raw sexual attraction always dies out, this leads to the conclusion that I always win. Either he doesn’t have that sexual chemistry with someone else, or he does, but then it falls to pieces by the very nature of their monogamous involvement. Smothered, by playing house. So logically, in the area of sex, I should always win. Like a casino, house always wins. Maybe I’m not afraid that he gains more, wins more, experiences more, with his real girlfriend. But that he quit gambling all together. . ~Lauren98 Body first, business second, boy optional. | 1998 diary is the fourth chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1999

Providing Lauren98 gets over herself and her issues of rereading some of her best times with Bear, book 1, A Letter From A Stranger and book 2 Dear Nikki, of this series will be published at a future date, in one bind (one title). My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

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Nederlands blog: https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Darling, Nikki | 1998 diary

Published on May 17, 2023June 5, 2023 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

https://youtu.be/j8oxXkUjYHg

Lauren writes to her penpal, bootleg trader Nikki.

Wednesday 17 May, 1998

Dear Nikki,

I think by now we have both forgotten who is to blame, for our correspondence being but a shadow from what it once was. How the compact packages where your letters provided the padding to the cassette tapes you sent me, and that dropped with a heavy thud into the hallway, turned into professional cardboard boxes that rattled in their hollowness. With 2 handwritten A4s, folded just once, and neither wrinkled nor marked around the edges in any way. If it wasn’t for your sexual remarks, your song lyric quoting, and the always present secrecy, that our correspondence has never lost; It would be as if my accountant had mailed me. That clean. But no more, my darling Nikki. No more. And neither will you have to wait for weeks for me to answer, oh no. Because I refound myself, Nikki. And you’re coming down with me. And found a woman, a girl, you have never met, and I know you’re going to like her! It all started last Queens Day, which is at the 30th of April. I never go to bars or parties or anything, but I do love to walk the flea markets, that are part of the festivities in almost all municipalities. And I found Prince’s biggie, Purple Rain. Although I have never owned the album before, I have always felt affinity towards it because it was one of the first grownup films I ever saw. They played it in the school auditorium, and I was only 12 years old, because that was not my regular school building. Still being in the youngest highschool class, our building was a different one. That’s why I so vividly remember going there, to attend this viewing for the whole school. So I was 12 and I saw Purple Rain. When I listened to the album it all came back to me, and it was like I had received a gift from the heavens. And one I had been searching for, for months; Just in the wrong places. Because I knew I had to get back to where it all begun, sexually. I knew that the answers to recovering my sexuality to what it was last year, my body to what it was in my college years, and my faith in myself to those first years with Bear; I had to go back in time. I knew that to recover from losing Bear, I had to go back to the time I didn’t know him. A time I had pinpointed at the year I turned 16. That had been the year when my sexuality was still in its earliest of stages, and my heart had been mine. I projected my infatuation at Jon Bon Jovi, who rarely (if ever!) broke up with me from behind the poster wall I had created for him. But no matter how hard I tried to get myself in the virgin state of mind I must have had in that year, it didn’t work. I had too little to go by. I knew the music I must have been listening to at the time (Bon Jovi!) but because I still listen to that, as you know since you always send me the bootlegs, they didn’t characterize a specific time for me. That music has become timeless. Which was one of probably a thousand reasons why my action plan to get myself back into a healthy pre-Bear state of mind, and back into an agile pre-gaining a lot of weight body, wasn’t working. Wasn’t working until two weeks after buying the Prince cd at the flea market, I put it on and immediately felt myself drop back in time. And the portal to the earliest stage of my sexuality opened itself.

Dearly belovedWe are gathered here todayTo get through this thing called “life”

You’re the first person I am telling this to and maybe the last as well. Because I wouldn’t know who else to tell it to! Who is an accomplice in my sexuality, now that Bear is no longer there, but also, now that there are no other men either? Who is an accomplice, a friend, to the deepest most intimate part of me, when the part is not expressed? When I feel as virgin as I did when I really still was that, then who is the male counterpart? Who is the man who is the yang to my yin, as well as the yin to my yang? Where is the male body that holds the memories of having sex with me? It is such a strange phase I am in, and I’ll get back to the Bear part and his role in this, but it feels strange to feel sexual, but not having someone to actually have sex with. And with the memory of sex having faded to where you no longer know if it was all but a dream. If you are still in a phase where you only know sex because you saw it in movies, and because you masturbate and fantasize, but your body, mind and heart really are the way we all start out; Blank sheets. Unmarked. Crisp. And your erotic thoughts are like an immaculate conception; They do not stain you. They are of the flesh, but not in the flesh. Yet. So, Bear. We have not officially broken up, but I have not seen him and I can feel he doesn’t want to be with me. Not at this point, not sexually. I’m positive that we’ll reunite as friends, and with our lives ahead of us I am a hundred percent certain we will one day have sex again. How could we not, with the chemistry we have! But the weeks or by now months without him, have also made me realize it really is time to take matters into my own hands. That regardless of how amazing our time together has been, that this was never meant to be an exclusive arrangement. He has found his real relationship, the real woman he wants to spend his life with. And if he would part with her, he would eventually get a new relationship and go with her. He has a need, a desire, to play house as I usually unceremoniously call it! And I have a desire to be a lover, and a desire to be a friend. To me playing house has the shape of being roommates, not spouses. And he knows this. We both do. I will never give up my freedom, and he will never give up his dream to have a real relationship and a family. But while he has found what he was looking for, I have not. I have not dated since I started seeing Bear. Something that is about to change! Because here I am, my darling Nikki. Standing before you, having refound the sexuality of being in an auditorium on canteen chairs row after row, on a floor that was also used for dancing. It was a pit, the floor was a few steps down, and during school hours the curtains surrounding the pit were open. But when there was a dance, or now that we were watching a movie, the curtains were shut and a few hundred high school students ranging in ages 12 to 18, were watching Purple Rain. And at least one of them, a twelve year old Lauren, came out changed. The castle started spinning Or maybe it was my brain I can’t tell you what it did to me But my body will never be the same I will write you, with the best words I can find. I will write you, until I see little Nikki grind. . ~Lauren98 Darling, Nikki | 1998 diary is the third chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1998

Book 1, A Letter From A Stranger and book 2 Dear Nikki, in this series will be published in 2023, in one bind (one title) My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

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Nederlands blog: https://zegmaarlauren.com/

The nights are nice but the days are deviant | 1998 diary

Published on January 26, 2023January 26, 2023 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Thursday 26 January, 1998

Okay, I paid attention now, to not let another date with Bear fall into what appears to be a Bermuda triangle in my memory, where all the sex stuff disappears. Or maybe other memories too, who knows. I find other areas of my life far less interesting and my expectations are much lower. But sex, I expect to remember. In December I even blamed alcohol for not remembering it although I knew it was good, because it is always good. It is always fun. Even when the second half of 1997, we did have some problems. I would not get that wet or things hurt, or honestly I cannot even remember the specifics. But I do know that both Bear and me saw it as a challenge. That we almost found it hilarious, that we had to deal with these common sexual hiccups, and we made it work. Like I said; Always good. Always fun. But the December date did not have that either. There were no problems. For lack of a better word, I suspected the sex had been normal. So this year I made the resolution to pay attention, so that at least I knew if it had indeed been normal, or if I was suffering from amnesia and missing out on things that were worth writing down. Things that befitted my ambition to become a serious diary and erotica writer, in the spirit of Anais Nin. So I did pay close attention, and the date had the same format as in December because it was a dinner date. Something we do not have a habit around, because it is harder for him to see me. Or at least it was, when he still had a girlfriend. Something I still don’t know or understand if that is still the case. Maybe the fact that for the second time in a row he could come over at night time proves he’s available or things have flatlined for now. But either way I felt lucky, very lucky. There is something so erotic, so mysterious, about having him come over for dinner. Especially in winter, when it’s already dark when the doorbell rings and I embrace him, cold face, thick coat, warm gloves, and bottle of red in his backpack. And my house is warm, I have candles burning, and I’ve already started preparing dinner. Use Your Illusion album playing, which is not romantic to others but it is to us, because we saw them in 1992 in Rotterdam. There is something tantalizing and special about night time dating, that lunch or even coffee dates will never be able to top. I really think that after being sidelined for years, when he had the girlfriend and he even broke up with me, which was painful and awful, that after all that we are back to where we started. We found back what we had. Just that instead of our noisy student rooms, I now have an apartment, and we are more deliberate in our dates. It’s not as casual as it was, when we were still students. We’ve grown up and after the meager years of having to accept however little came my way, even when it was a coffee date on Monday morning with not as much as a cookie or cake because I didn’t know he would come, we are now finally back at the level we had in our college years; And more. On paper, we got it made and we are on our way to recover from whatever dent his relationship made in our reckless and restless, young heart’s love. Except of course, we don’t. Because now I forget the sex. And I did not suffer from amnesia, I had been right: Sex was good and fun, and normal! Because this time I did pay attention, and it was exactly the nothing-out-of-the-ordinary sex as I suspected. And this time, I know why. The time of the day and the dinner dates are no longer working for us. I am not going to claim we would have earthshattering sex on a Monday morning coffee date now, but a warm lazy Sunday afternoon? Or closing the curtains for us after a Wednesday lunch, to the sounds of a neighborhood already coming to life outside? A date in a coffeeshop, or drinks in a bar? A movie and then after those things stalling if we’re going to my place or not? Or to his, when he still had his own place…. Oh the memories. The possibilities! The already so much better atmosphere these scenarios have to me, just thinking about it. Not in terms of love and coziness. Not in terms of feeling good and safe. But those casual situations do open up a feeling of excitement, adventure and sex, simply because it is never a given that we will even have it. And then there is the role playing! The first half of 1997 we had the best sex ever, in all the seven years (as it was then) we had been doing it. It was like we had discovered sex allover together. Like we had reinvented it. And then the second half of the year hit, and I slipped into a very dark place. When I saw Bear I was feeling great, there was never a question about that; But his presence went from being that little something extra, to the only days I truly felt alive. Yes…. in retrospect, our good instead of great sex is more than just a matter of planning more strategically. I am not the same person as I was at the beginning of 1997. So many bad things happened, things that really got to me, and that can still make me cry just thinking about it. Which I rarely do because I don’t want to. One of the things I did, was completely shut off my heart. I was so deeply hurt, I still keep everybody at arm’s length, emotionally. And I do that to this day. I’ve become quite the ice queen, that crappy second half of 1997. In response to all those who hurt me, I ve shut myself off entirely. In order to get my sex life back to the level it was one year ago, I do need to opt for days, not dinners, at least for now. But I also need to start breaking down that very effective wall I built around myself. A wall that has has kept me safe, and that has become my refuge. A wall that has become my home. To return to the deviant sex of early 1997, will require more than retrieving the dating style we used to have. It will require to retrieve myself. . ~Lauren98 The nights are nice but the days are deviant | 1998 diary is the third chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1998

Book 1, A Letter From A Stranger and book 2 Dear Nikki, in this series will be published in 2023, in one bind (one title) My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

Books

Nederlands blog: https://zegmaarlauren.com/