Fear got me thinking I was anything less than Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Updated post.
First chapter of small, soon to be (re-)published book, solely about Basic Instinct and Catherine Tramell.
Subscribe to this blog to receive a notification, or check my shop if it’s already printed.
2021 10 29 | Lauren Harteveld

I’ve been fascinated with Catherine Tramell from the moment she appeared on the screen.       
And then I’m not counting the opening scene of Basic Instinct, where a naked, anonymous blonde with the same breasts as Sharon Stone murders a retired rock ‘n’ roll star and we’re supposed to assume that was her, but the first time we see her face.          
This is after detective Nick Curran and his partner Gus have arrived at the beach house of a sexy as hell, blonde, millionaire writer (!!) to ask her where she was the night of the murder.              
“How long were you dating him?” Nick asks.      
“I wasn’t dating him,” Catherine Tramell answers. “I was fucking him.”
Mind blown!

It was 1992.
I was twenty and in a steady relationship because of two reasons.
One was that I wanted to lose my virginity and secure having a good and steady sex life after.
And the other reason I chose a steady relationship was because I got such bad anxiety attacks from giving oral sex without a condom, because I was so afraid of hiv/aids, that staying single and at risk was definitely not an option anymore.
I had enough of nights trembling alone in my bed, afraid to tell anyone why I was so afraid. I had obviously put myself at risk by doing that and now I could get really sick and nobody was going to love me anymore.

I had a deep understanding that I wasn’t strong enough, or tough enough to deal with that shit.
So at seventeen I threw in the towel, and went steady.
Like a normal person. 

Except that a normal person would probably not see Basic Instinct about ten times in cinema (there was a time when they ran it for 2.50 per ticket).
Not rent the VHS a couple of times, at a time when they didn’t have their own player and had to rent that as well.
Not buy a Basic Instinct dvd as soon as they had a dvd player and then to top it all off, buy Basic Instinct 2 on dvd as well.
Together with three other people 😉

Those were signs that something was up underneath the good girl “facade”. Facade obviously doesn’t stand for that I would cheat. It’s actually surprisingly easy to stay faithful if you think cheating will get you killed.
Facade means that everything in my teens had been about me loving sex so much, but also the thrill of being in love, and with new men, and clothes that come off for the first time.
Nothing in me had dreamed or longed for a long term relationship, aside for the longing to put an end to the anxiety attacks.
It was all so obvious.
In hindsight.

images (2)
Basic Instinct 2 has some unusual clothing colors

Because in 1992, I was absolutely certain I had zero in common with Catherine Tramell, except the farfetched wish that I had been anything like her.
Wouldn’t that be awesome!
“I wasn’t dating him. I was fucking him.”
Man, that would be worth a million, to be that emotionally contained.
But I knew I wasn’t, and I just focused on her style of clothing, adopted some of that. Which I still do till this day. I always wear white long coats, only wear uni (never print), and my entire wardrobe consists of black, white, grey, beige, dark blue, every flavor pink, and bright red.
That’s it.
Aside from pink and red, those are all Catherine Tramell colors, and smooth fabrics.
In Basic Instinct 2 they gave her two furry coats. One dark brown, one green. I immediately was all like:
“She would never wear that!”
Maybe the stylist of Basic Instinct 2 went on maternity leave and somebody else stepped in, but it looked totally out of character. Maybe the critics were right it was a bad movie.

Later on, when I became a blogger, I sometimes presented myself as Catherine Tramell, by using stills from the movies. But for me it was more tongue in cheek. Surely nobody would think I was that sassy, that chic or anything like her.

Because although I have learned to manage my fear of hiv/aids, to a degree where I actually could have a life where I fuck people, not date them, my sexual orientation turned out to be a little bit different than Miss Tramell’s.
Because I’m a monogamist: I like to have only one lover, one pair of hands touching me, one dick to give blowjobs to.
Thinking I would ever go around having multiple lovers, was more an idea that stemmed from thinking that was simply how a sexually free woman would live.  And how I would live too, I assumed, if I didn’t have all that fear holding me back.

That image, or ideal, had nothing to do with who I was and what really made me tick. I know now that for me one partner is ideal. If I ever fall in love with two men at the same time, I’ll up my game. But me preferring one partner doesn’t have anything to do with fear anymore.

Because something else about my arrangement, is very exciting. Not to say nerve wrecking.
And although I speak very little of this – as if I’m so worried that only confessing I feel this way, and that it does scare me, and that I don’t have anxiety attacks yet but that I can feel the layer of calm and collected is so very thin – is this:
I am a secret mistress and that might get me killed.

After more than three years, and working through a ton of inner stuff, I own being secret mistress.
I’m not ashamed of it.
I have many things to tell about it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And yet… I cannot stop being scared that this could cost me my life.
Either by social exclusion or literally, because someone wants revenge.
I know my lover will leave me.
No way he could afford standing up for me, when all hell breaks loose. He would have to choose her side, even if she does give him his appropriate punishment of whatever she thinks he deserves. But nobody will take it out on him.
They will project that on me.
Because somebody has to pay for the betrayal of his wife. And it only takes one person with aggression issues who thinks that way.

That thought sickens me to my stomach.
Like I said, I could easily flip into having anxiety attacks over this. And I’m currently planning out how I want to proceed with my writing career:
If I want publicity yes or no.
If I want a regular publisher yes or no.
If I want to even be known in the Netherlands, or if I want to immediately focus entirely on the English market? Or is that decision based on fear for the Dutch market? Fear of getting killed for my ideas?
And if it’s based on fear, then is it a bad thing?
Those are my thoughts.

And I actually considered, and I haven’t told this to anyone, to end my relationship..
To stop being a secret mistress.
And to say: “Yes, I was a secret mistress, but when I realized I had to choose between telling my story and risking my life, or staying quiet, I ended it. I am more a writer than a lover.”
That’s legit.

And it would take the sharpest edges of my mistress status, and of the hatred that it could trigger, since I would now be an ex-mistress.
Except it would not be me any more than locking myself up in long term relationships from age seventeen to thirty-four was. I was hiding from the real me then, because I couldn’t deal with the threat of death and social exclusion.
And I was considering running now, either from my career as a writer, or from my relationship, because I couldn’t deal with the threat of death and social exclusion now.

It was exactly the same scenario and the sequel was not becoming a particularly good movie.

Until I realized something that my lover, this lover that I have now, pointed out to me at the beginning of our relationship.
I informed him about my fear of std’s, but we also fantasized together about sex that was really exciting and didn’t fit into the warm, cuddly, intimate corner of sexuality.
There wasn’t anything we didn’t both look forward to test out, play out, dive right in.
We were a match made in heaven and I had finally found someone willing to play at my level of desired sexual tension.
“No wonder you need this,” he said, after we had spoken of yet another thing that would be a very hard limit in most relationships. “You grew up being so scared of aids. It was so filled with tension. Unless the pressure is dialed up, you don’t feel a thing.”

In all those years, I had never looked at it that way.
But of course, he was right.

I’ve always had, perhaps “unsettling” is the best word, sexual fantasies, but the aids phobia certainly amplified it. From that moment on I would always associate sex with risk. The only time I didn’t, was in my long term relationships. We had great sex but I only felt the thrill, I only felt truly alive the first couple of months.
Then it died.
Everything after that didn’t move me to my core, because I knew I was safe.

The tagline, or subtitle of Basic Instinct 2 is Risk Addiction.
It is explained when a psychiatrist evaluates Catherine Tramell for her trial:
Psychiatrist:  “Her behavior is driven by what we call a risk addiction.
A compulsive need to prove to herself that she can take risks. And survive dangers others can’t.”
Judge: “Why would a person do that?”
Psychiatrist: “The greater the risk, the greater the proof of her omnipotence. Her existence, really.”

I know that my current relationship, as a secret mistress of someone who totally supports me in my sexual fantasies, is the best thing that ever happened to me. I am so happy I found him, and that we have a relationship form that will always push me, and test me, and yes it frightens the shit out of me.
I still don’t know how to balance the risks of fame or speaking up for my sexual orientation.
But I do know that I need risks in order to “get it up”.

That I will ever be satisfied having sex the way normal people do, is an illusion.
Judge: “When you say she has a risk addiction, is this condition likely to get worse?”
Psychiatrist: “I think the only thing that’d stop her, I suspect the only limit for her, would be her own death.”

~Lauren
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU
New books, among which a book about Basic Instinct and Catherine Tramell, will be added.

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

I m taking the red pill to abundance and success

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I m so not afraid to take it.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 26, 2020

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

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

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

~Lauren

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

->

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

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

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

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

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

Het boek De Candystop is hier te koop

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

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

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s keep this civil.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 25, 2020

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

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

->

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

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

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

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

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

Het boek De Candystop is hier te koop

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 

 

The Mistress Manifesto: in praise of an unknown sexual preference

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

*mistress means a woman who falls in love with married men*

I’ve once heard Yoko One screwed it up for mistresses. That it was either her snatching John away from his wife or – more likely – her snatching him away from the Beatles, that marked the end of an era where having a mistress, and I assume also being one, was probably one of the more uncommon relationships, but it wasn’t unheard of.
And it certainly wasn’t demonized, the way it is now.

I have one friend, only one, who knows a former and lifelong mistress. This now elderly woman had a relationship that stretched decades. With the same man. Until he died. And just like my lover he was married with children.
Like so many married men with children before him.

I’m not going to pretend being a mistress is the only unknown sexual preference: you can easily argue that being a man who needs a mistress is equally uncommon.
Uncommon meaning that he can be easily mistaken, first of all by himself, for a man who doesn’t have a good marriage.
Or a man who has commitment issues.
He can be mistaken for a man who likes to cheat and fool around.
All things which do not have to be the case.

He can simply be a man, hard wired to love two women at the same time. And who has a choice to abstain. Or to not. But who can’t change himself anymore than anyone who is gay can make himself be straight.

And if we switch the genders around, with a man in the role of the mistress, and the woman in the role of a wife with a secret lover, two new sexual or psychological profiles pop-up.
So no.
I m not going to make a whole song and dance about “The Mistress” being the most misunderstood, sexual lifeform. But it is the only one that I am.
And the only one that I can talk about from experience.

Both the experience of joy when embracing, and understanding, your sexual preference. As well as the sadness and the loneliness of knowing that no matter how open-minded  people say they are when it comes to sex, their minds will barely ever stretch far enough to include you.

And it will probably never include you, unless you start dating a married man who is open and honest about dating you;
Because then you can belong to the poly-amorous people.

It won’t include you, unless you choose a man who lives alone, and what you have qualifies as a LAT relationship.

It won’t include you, unless you keep it at seeing someone just a few times, and what you had can count as a mistake.

And even if you are having sex with a married man?
As long as you’re not in love, you can still get away with it. You simply have a friend with benefits. A married friend, but still.
Pretty harmless.

To understand why the mistress, as well as the other sexual orientations I briefly mentioned, are not some flawed-something-else, but genuine sexual orientations that can never be fully fulfilled in any other type of relationship form,  there are two aspects to sex and relationships that need to be understood.
Liking it secret and liking competition.

First, secrecy.
Both of the relationship itself, as well as within any love relationship. I’m sure this whole idea of transparency and honestly, and two partners communicating all the time, must have been a good idea at some point in time.
But as a mistress I almost feel like it is my personal mission to convince people to start having MORE secrets from each other.
And here it comes:
ESPECIALLY if you are in a monogamous relationship.

Look.
Let’s look at this with a fresh pair of eyes.
If you think your relationship will benefit from you being honest about that you want to date multiple people or whatever, because you think that it prevents getting into trouble over it in the future (it won’t, but okay) Go right ahead.

But if you both know that most likely, both of you will not be very adventurous and outgoing with other people, then PLEASE!
Keep secrets.
Don’t tell the other person where you’re going.
Be mysterious.

I once talked to a Catholic Priest and he was really modern because he said that it wasn’t his job to convince people God existed. It was his job to preserve the mystery.
Well, whatever is good enough for Jesus is good enough for you.

I honestly think, at least in the Netherlands, the moral righteousness of looking for “the truth” can be directly linked to the Netherlands’ official religion being protestant.
And therefor “truth” biased.

It is my personal opinion that we need to start taking a very hard look at ourselves why we ever thought “honesty” was a virtue.
Isn’t this what we crave for:
To be seen.
To be looked after.
To be cared for.
But also, the other way around:
To see.
To admire.
To gush over.
To love.
To support.
Where now, is honesty?
Nowhere.

Honesty, is completely irrelevant in the list of all the things we truly desire. But because we are afraid to ask for what we truly desire, we come up with some kind of monstrous binary measurement system, in which all the people who are honest are on the good side.
And all the people who aren’t are the bad guys.

For me personally, if me telling my story as a mistress, would only lead to normal monogamous relationships bringing back the mystery into their relationships, and start appreciating each other based on the things that make all human beings happy as fuck?
My mission is accomplished.
Keeping secrets from each other, about actual events and also about your emotional life, is a way to keep the mystery in, the garbage out, and to honor the sacredness of your relationship.

The second aspect of secrecy is of course the secrecy of the relationship itself. Which is not something that can be duplicated in a normal relationship.
Many relationships go through that phase of:
“Are we something? Should we tell the others? Or are we just having three day sex sessions like any normal adult would do when giving the chance?”

And I don’t think it’s just the not knowing, that makes us cautious to tell the good news to the world. I think it’s also because we know that we will lose something with it.

Sure, initially, there is that thrill of excitement, of sharing the news. And showing up in public together.
It’s absolutely intoxicating.
Even now, as a mistress, I know fully well that if it had not been for the fact that he’s married and we can never make such public displays of affection, I would have gone that route.
It is practically impossible to “make yourself” have a secret relationship, and keep yourself from going public with it at some point, unless there is a massively important reason why you can’t.

Being a mistress is the only relationship form with built-in secrecy.
Secrecy that evaporates in normal relationships, the moment you come out and present yourself to the world as a couple.
And the thrill of being a couple turns out to be short lived.
I remember so vividly the feeling of loss, when after keeping the relationship with my college sweetheart a secret for over half a year (we had our reasons, it wasn’t because we were involved) we came out as a couple.

But then again: I “am” a mistress, meaning I have a certain set of preferences surrounding sexuality and relationships.
So this loss of secrecy will probably not be experienced so strongly, by those who thrive in normal relationships.

The second aspect that makes a mistress a mistress, and not a chance victim of a married man, is that it arouses her to know that she’s not the only one. Now, I ll be honest: For a while I thought “we” were beyond the “ego” thing of needing a man for ourselves.
I honestly believed that monogamous women were deeply insecure and basically needed to have their wounded ego mended by a man choosing for them. And that “we” mistresses, were in a way elevated beings, because we went without that childish game of:
“If you love me, you choose for me.”
Not pretty. I know.
I’m sorry, and I don’t think that anymore.

– By the way I do believe that many looking for a faithful partner are basically saying: “I want to feel loved, and special, and as if I am the only one.”
But that’s not for me to find out –

Okay, but, initially I thought; monogamy is an ego thing. And us, mistresses are more detached on these matters.
Until I looked a little deeper, and realized we were far, far worse. Or that maybe not “worse” but that we took that whole game up a notch… I ll explain in a moment, maybe I shouldn’t have brought the ego up.
Because there is a fairly neutral explanation too, for liking “competition”.
It’s called “compersion”.
And means getting aroused from knowing your partner has other partners, or seeing him or her do it with someone else.

“Compersion” is what I experienced when I saw my lover charm a gorgeous woman practically out of her skirt. So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, or on other women, by making this about how often we need to boost our egos. So no judgement.
But I want to illustrate this dynamic of competition.

The difference between having a partner who is sexually active, or ambiguous, or secretive, with other women, and having a partner who isn’t, is that you have competition. My lover can end things with me at any time. In favor of his wife, or a new lover, or in favor of having mental rest and calm.
So every time I see him?
I win.

He chooses to see me, there is no entitlement. This motivates me to always be at my best! And you get three guesses who benefits most from that? Well?
Me of course!

It’s a bit related to the secrecy thing, but feeling my best, and sharing only the things which connect us, or how we can learn more about each other?
That is amazing…
And not only does it give me a feeling of accomplishment because I’m giving it my all. He may only see the best part of me when we’re together, but so do I!

Having competition is an extremely good motivator to be my best self. I may not get him to choose me once, like a normal relationship.
But I get to be chosen time after time.
That’s what I meant when I said we mistresses were even more ego driven, and/or we are more compersionists. We like to have a partner whose attention we have to win, every time.
But we also get the reward of being chosen, every time.

I m not going to pretend I don’t understand why the world would be a better place, if mistresses didn’t exist. I do.
And I also understand how tempting it must be to blame us, for everything that has gone wrong in any marriage where a man cheated on his wife.
If I could choose, please believe me, I would choose to have a different type of sexual preference. One that rewarded loyalty, and frailty, and where I made one man really happy, and he would devote his life to me alone, and no one would get hurt.
If I had a choice, I would.

Now a second choice is that I would abstain from having sex and not date a married man, until he was divorced, and so on. If you want to blame me for not choosing that, I understand that. You hold the popular opinion for sure.
But I don’t think that mistresses, unlike child molesters, should be trained or treated to learn how to control their needs. A mistress and her lover are consenting adults. And a real mistress, someone who has the preferences I talked about, is not out to destroy any marriage.
She is simply a woman in love.
And a woman who can peacefully coexist next to a marriage, and even turn out to be quite effective, and discrete, relationship glue.

But as long as we keep seeing mistresses as villians, “she” cannot find or refind her place in society. She is stuck in being judged for her preferences, because everybody assumes they’re a sign of ill will or poor character.
They’re not.
She’s a mistress because that’s how she was born.

It took me until I was well over forty to figure all this out. And yet in retrospect it is all so clear: I was always so interested in sex. I liked my partners adventurous, but I myself liked to have only one partner.
I found no joy whatsoever in being promiscuous.
I kept my relationships secret, for as long as I could. I had a feeling of loss when we came out. I fell for unavailable, taken men, time and time again, and I just knew it had nothing to do with lack of self-esteem no matter what anybody said.
All the pieces of the puzzle fit, once I had made my peace with being a mistress, and started “counting back”. It’s so easy once you know what you’re looking for! But as long as you don’t, or as long as you’re biased because you Can Not Be That Because That Is Evil?
Then it will take you over forty years.

A gay friend once tried to explain to a friend who I was, and what my mission in life was. He said:
“Lauren is going to emancipate the mistress.”
Which is not a very sexy way of saying it, but I do think that is what it comes down to. Educate on this.
And not just educate potential mistresses, but everyone.
In a society where half of all marriages fail, the come-back of the mistress could actually save a couple of them. And if not by direct participation, then still what better person to ask how to spice up your relationship, then someone who truly masters the matter?
A woman who knows what the Catholic Church has known for two-thousand years:
How to preserve the mystery.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

The first two years with my lover were published in my book
“Big” diaries and erotica

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 

 

50 Shades of May This Last Forever

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

*disclaimer: sexually explicit, contains references to porn*

On the fourth day of my project of living planning-free, and basically doing whatever the fuck I want to, I accidentally discovered the upside of NOT being able to do what you want to do: Abstinence, not doing your soul’s work, does heighten the sensations of pleasure after.

Because before I had this day going, before I had dived into all the stuff I felt like doing, the ball got rolling on something that I had been wanting to do for a long time. But this morning I got a cue that I had to do it immediately.
No time to lose.

The cue was that a writer about whom I had written a book four years ago, was publishing his second novel today. And this meant that today was the ideal day to reblog the diary he had inspired; to publish it online.
I ve published ten books and my ultimate goal is to have them all online, for free. So then either you could read them for free on my website, or buy a paper copy. No pdf’s or ereader stuff.
I m sure that’s not the choice most authors would make, but that’s my choice. It’s the way I have envisioned it, and that’s what’s going to happen.

Except that nothing was happening because reblogging stuff is pain in the ass work I don’t want to do. Not unless of course there is this HUGE incentive of a book suddenly becoming current again. Like today.
So I knew I wanted to reblog my Dutch book De Candystop, and I did.
Which cost me four hours, instead of the ninety minutes I had estimated.

By the time I finished it I was terribly hungry because I had skipped my lunch and was way past my feeding time. But on a soul level, I also felt unfulfilled. Thirsty. Desperate for anything that could take away feeling this unaccomplished.

So maybe it was because of my deprived state, that I shamelessly clicked on two tweets in my Twitter timeline that were both blatantly my kind of kink.

Steve Holmes and Stoya

First I clicked [ #nsfw ]  Steve Holmes’ retweet of a movie called Darker Side of Desire
Steve Holmes is a porn actor who I know from a video of him and Stoya in Paris. It was a series that Stoya shot herself, taking the camera with her all over the world. I was a paying member of TrenchcoatX, and watched all of them. Until I realized that the only one I really liked was the one in Paris.
Where beautiful young Stoya (my favorite porn actress) hit it off with this middle aged man I didn’t know… yet. I couldn’t quite figure out why I liked that video so much..
Until I looked him up.
It turned out the Actor Steve Holmes was also the Director and Producer Steve Holmes. And now I saw it… yes.

Stoya and Steve in “Paris, Tourist Style” (Around the World in 80 Ways)

Steve Holmes had more or less directed this video, by operating the camera, and had filmed the close-up shots that I had liked so much. Stoya’s other videos were more filmed from afar. With the camera on the night stand, or sometimes held by Stoya.
But Steve had a better view while filming, plus decades of experience.
No wonder that video of him and Stoya totally rocked.
Anyway, that’s how I know Steve and I started following him on Twitter, and he posts or retweets trailers of movies he has worked on. They’re always really kinky and I totally love them.

This one, Darker Side of Desire, was more high budget and with a real story line. It was about a young woman whose relationship with her dominant had ended, and she missed having a dominant so much. Suddenly I realized that if my lover Mr.Big and me would end, I would feel the same way.
That the breakup would mean so much more than “just” losing the man I love.

It would also mean losing the only man who knows exactly what makes me tick. I don’t see myself succeeding at dating “vanilla” style, any more than the girl in the movie did.
And with Mr.Big and me, it’s not even that we would count as being into BDSM. But our preferred roles, of him being dominant and me submissive, are fixed. And I know that’s hard to come by.

The second tweet I clicked was a piece of Girl on the Net about Being Lazy in Bed, in which I immediately recognized my preference for being submissive and still.
Girl on the Net is the only woman when it comes to sharing kinks, who I can relate to. All women who write about their sexual journey, make me realize that my sexual preference is surprisingly narrow. With no need for leather, whips, or sex dungeons. Nor for tantra, massage or valley orgasms.

I want it exactly the way I want it, and nothing else.

I remember a conversation with a friend a little while back, where I confessed that I had never been very interested in the physical part of sex.
“I like the mental part, you know?” I explained. “Where you dive into the depths of your mind, and tell each other stuff you don’t dare tell a soul.”
She immediately replied: “Yes, you mean perverted.”
Exactly.

Whenever I hear good sex in relationships is about intimacy and connecting, I always think: “Yes. And No.”
Because intimacy is only arousing, after you first had a fight of some sorts.
Honesty is refreshing, when it comes from someone who usually lies.
And trust is only an aphrodisiac if there is also something you’re scared of.
You can’t have the yin without the yang.

But to have your sex life rooted in shared sexual fantasies?
That’s amazing.
It’s a win-win, never a dull moment kind of relationship. And it’s also very rare, unfortunately. It’s that aspect, of two perfectly matching sexual preferences, that I would miss the most.

We’ve been together for way over three years, yet I feel there’s still so much to discover. We barely got a taste of everything we’re capable of. Maybe because we’re apart 99% of the time, with him not necessary lying to me but definitely unavailable 99% of the time.

It makes the 1% we’re together intoxicating and delicious.

Reading the article from Girl on the Net on being lazy or submissive, and watching the trailer of the movie about the young female submissive, made me realize that my relationship with Big has amplified my sexual preference.
That the submissive part, the fixed role playing part, the carte blanche I’m getting to share whatever deviant desire I have, and to then have someone who is eager to play it out, and to fully dominate me.
It has become who I am.

This, being submissive in bed, has become non-negotiable.

And if I ever, God forbid, become single again – technically I m still single of course, since I m a secret mistress I don’t have a status –  that I will start dating new men not only based on who I like.
But also on who wants to play.

The trailer of the porn movie ends with the young woman interviewing a dominant (Steve Holmes) for her thesis. He answers the questions but then interrupts her: “You’re not here to ask me questions.”
She replies that she’s no longer into that sort of thing.

He offers her a gift, a little box with a small insertable toy, with which he can control her.
“Give me twenty-four hours to change your mind.”

I would say Yes.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

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

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/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
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She Bangs

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Nothing changed, and yet everything has changed. As soon as I tossed my planning aside, my life shifted into the highest gear of both productivity and fun!

For months I was ruled by a (let’s be honest) self-created workload that covered every “Should” of the business coach I learn from.
Which boiled down to daily messaging, daily content creation, and showing the fuck up. And I took that on for my writing, my yoga biz and my new online program, because by now I had three businesses.

I reserved my least productive time slots for being social, yet people wanted to see me when I wanted to work. And I spent weekends alone which I didn’t even mind because work was never done anyway.
The moment my “holiday” week began, and God smacked my thumb to remind me that life was not all about work, but also about fun and play and not being a dull gal, it still took me a whole week before I understood the full consequences of His intervention. Initially I thought it just meant that I wasn’t meant to work the holidays.
Or the weekends.

But then last Sunday I chose to start my new life.

Not so much about taking more time off, but a life with minimum “Shoulds”. A life about Freedom. About saying “yes”.
And so it began.

That Sunday I wrote a three hour blogpost, listened to motivational audios, had a long nap; went out for a walk in the sun with a friend and we went for lunch. I chose nachos with creme fraiche and chilisaus, and hot chocolate with whipped cream after.
At night I went behind my desk to prepare this week’s classes and that’s when fate struck: when I logged into my bankaccount I found out I had been the victim of a thousand dollar hack. And that it was both very unlikely I would get it back, nor would I be able to pay my bills which were due the next day..
I freaked out, and called my mother, who was able to help me out. Not just financially but she also offered that I could sleep at her’s, instead of being alone at night and keep going over the theft.
I accepted.

If I had not committed to my new “Yes” life, where I go with the flow, instead of plan against it, I would never have accepted an invitation like that, because it would mean using the first productive two hours of my Monday.
But now I did.
I said “Yes”.
And started the workweek having breakfast with my mother, who I love more than anything in the world. What better way to start!
After that, I went home and took care of paying the bills, and wanted to see how my yoga studio was doing. At night there had been a storm and a lot of basements had flooded. Since my studio is below ground level I wanted to know how it was doing, before teaching that night.
I called a friend if he felt like having lunch, and he accepted.
Making that Monday’s second social event, after the breakfast.

Other accomplishments Monday: wrote a blogpost for my yoga studo; gave  math tutoring; taught two yogaclasses and wrote a blogpost of my last sexual encounter with Mr.Big which I still had not gotten around to. I wanted to say: “I had not gotten around to processing the notes yet,” but that sounds so crazy right, that I make notes after sex..

Today I got up absolutely hungry for another productive day like that!
After two of them I knew living like this, basically came down to acting on first instinct and not sticking to anything premeditated.
So when this morning, mid-desk work, I wanted to look up one song, because next week I have to make a playlist for the Pop Quiz Yoga group and I knew a great song to open it with, I gave into the impulse.
And one song became a theme, which became an entire playlist, that took me two hours to create but it brought me so much joy.

There was one song that I couldn’t use for Pop Quiz Yoga, for various reasons, but that did struck me as my “theme song”.
It gave me such a high vibe. I think I have always have identified with it, but I suspect it’s especially now that I love my life so much, living it from instincts and enjoying it so much more, that it resonates with me even more:
Ricky Martin’s She Bangs.

And she bangs, she bangs
Oh baby
When she moves, she moves
I go crazy
‘Cause she looks like a flower but she stings
Like a bee
Like every girl in history

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

The Grateful Mistress

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

*disclaimer: sexually explicit, and potentially triggering for anyone who believes monogamy is a virtue*

It was painfully obvious the Universe was against it:
Mr.Big asked me to join him on a business trip in the one week I didn’t have a passport. I had turned in the old one the week before. They stamped holes in it so it wasn’t valid anymore. And in exchange they took my application for a new one.
Along with the new passport photo.

I had thought of Mr.Big when I had that photo taken. Because I thought it would give me a happy, content look. And that it would somehow miraculously cure my asymmetrical eyes, a feature that had gotten stronger since the last passport photo five years prior.

I was aware that getting an acceptable portrait would get more difficult with age. And I also realized, when the photographer handed me the horrific passport photo where everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong, that I had chosen the wrong photographer.
This was the same shop that had fucked it up ten years ago.
And not the one that had given me the blushing portrait five years ago.
The blushing one that now had holes in it…
“You can pick up the passport next week,” the employee told me. “It will be valid for ten years.”
Great.
By the time I need the next one the good photographer will have retired. And who knows in what kind of detrimental state my own life will be.
Or my relationship with Mr.Big.

On the moment I had to put my autograph on the papers, I fantasized I was signing our wedding papers. Even though I don’t believe in marriage. Nor do I wish for Mr.Big’s current marriage to end.
And apparently, neither did the Universe.
Because Mr.Big asked me to join him for a secret getaway, for the first time in years, exactly in the week I had no other choice but to refuse.

When he took his return flight he started messaging me if I would be interested in sharing breakfast.
He had used that trick once before.
The first hours after landing, and before his first business appointments, were probably a grey area. A time window for which he would not be held accountable, and it wouldn’t make sense to go home. He would take a shower and change suits at his condo.

When he opened the door he was freshly shaven and wearing jeans.
When we lay in bed later – and I’ll tell you in a minute in which advanced state of being horny he had brought me before I was even invited into the bedroom – I recalled that moment, when he had opened the door.

I said that I never went to his house with the idea of having sex, but that he was always so courteous and easy going. He really made an effort to play his cards right.
There are many men with whom you can have great sex if you’re in love. You’re more forgiving in the beginning.
But after a while, it starts to count.
“You score ten out of ten. I’m so spoiled. You really know how to get me to want it.”
Mr.Big laughed. “And then every time you think: What the hell just happened?”

In all those years I was single, I had to put up with so much.
And now I had Big scoring ten out of ten!

We have had dates when we didn’t have sex, but that was usually because I was in my period, or because I had not seen him in a long time and I wasn’t settling for a quickie.
But even on those dates, Mr.Big knew how to connect with me in a way that we both felt happy and appreciated. It was never a tug of war kind of standoff, with me “refusing” to have sex.

Big was a master at working whatever boundaries there were, with regard to time, lack of privacy, or my physical needs. He didn’t hold any preconceived ideas about what a good date was supposed to look like, except that he seemed determined to always make sure I had a good time.
So my ten out of ten was more figuratively speaking:
He always honored what we had, and if I was in the mood for sex he picked up on that and did something to arouse me.

After breakfast we were on the couch, snogging a bit, and although we were still fully dressed things were heating up quickly. There is something about him returning from a business trip, that makes him extra attractive.
Maybe it’s just the thought that he’s had sex, or kissed other women.
He knows that thought arouses me and he’s always happy to play along. I confessed that I masturbated to him. To us. Playing that he had paid me to do anything he wanted with me.
And that he took advantage of that.
“It makes me come so hard,” I shivered, thinking back to my masturbation sessions, in which an imaginary Big, and only Big, ever accompanied me.

I was not just faithful to him in real life. Even in my imagination, there was no one I was more fond of.

“Want to play that now?” he asked, and showered my cheek with kisses so that my mouth could answer him.
“Yes…. can we go to the bedroom? I always imagine this takes place in your bedroom.”
“You know the rules for the bedroom,” he said, as he looked at me with a sparkle in his eyes that was out of character for someone who was about to play-abuse me.
“I do,” I said.
I had to be fully naked.

He slowly untangled our bodies and headed towards the bedroom.
“Just knock when you’re ready.”
I undressed myself, and stacked my clothes next to the bedroom door. My shoes, my socks, my jeans, my string. My sweater, my top, my bra.
I knocked the door. He opened. I gasped.
“I had no idea you’d be naked!” I said. And I loved the shock of surprise. And that it made clear I didn’t have a say. He made the rules.
He had paid for it.

I whispered a lot during sex. Whenever I wanted to tell him how in awe I was over how horny I was. In less than an hour together, I was role playing and loving every minute and every inappropriate intrusion and abuse of my body.
We spent even more time cuddling and talking after.
When I told him how special he was, and how gifted when it came to sex. And warming me up to it.
He brushed it off: “Well I wouldn’t know. I only know myself.”
“Well take it from me,” I said. “You’re something special. Do you have something like that with me too? That I always do? When other women not so much?”
He seemed to immediately know the answer:
“You’re so grateful.”

Yes. I am.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

The Rebel’s Way: Committing to an Unplanned Life

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past,
stop planning the future,
stop figuring out precisely how we feel,
stop deciding exactly what we want,
and just see what happens.
~Carrie Bradshaw

This is going to be the hardest detox ever. Just last night, I created a miniature planning, for in my phone, and an extensive one, in my Passion Planner. 
Only to throw them out, when I realized what I was doing.
Relapsing to planning.

After basically wasting an entire holiday week on the consequences of getting my thumb stuck in the balcony door. Three medical visits, two sleepless nights, and a lot of pondering over: WHY LORD WHY?
When I already knew the answer.

The only other time God put me in ER was when I had also figured out my life; Scheduled my workweek around achieving my long term goals, my short term goals, my fitness goals. And leaving blank time windows for social events. EVERYTHING.
Bang!
ER for you.

So of course I knew the balcony door accident on the first night of my holiday was no “accident”. It was a wake-up call that I was living entirely against my nature.

The first time I realized I was walking on thin ice, was in the weeks prior, when I was studying a personal development system called The Four Tendencies. To my surprise, it classified me as a Rebel:
Someone who resists both outer and inner expectations alike.
And it dawned on me that my fancy planning, my accountability instruments, everything that I thought it was helping me, was the fastest way to unhappiness a Rebel could wish for.

Now I LOVE to plan. “Playing with my notebooks” as I like to call it. But what I failed to see was that the fun was in the making. And that in my case, it was undesirable and also unrealistic to then follow through on it. I was way better off getting up every morning and do whatever the fuck I wanted to do. Instead of sticking to a plan of first doing yoga, then have breakfast, then shower, then work. And to not do social events on week days, because I wanted to have the weekends off.
And so on.

I didn’t actually stick to the plan (although not without feeling guilty), but I do remember that the only part I did master was saying no to social events…  And regretting it to up to fourteen days later, knowing:
“This is not the way Life is meant to be lived.”

Well, turns out, for other people it is…
They thrive on knowing their priorities, being able to stick to their goals, and have far less need for spontaneity.  And although the other Four Tendency types have their own internal mechanisms to help them stick to their plans, there is ONE type who has virtually no way of getting himself or herself to do anything they don’t want to.
And that’s the Rebel.

It explains why I get pleasure from planning (the activity itself is the reward) but then fail at executing it. I don’t have mechanisms of accountability that work.
And there is more.

Whenever I felt well… “accomplished” in life, would not exactly be the right word, but whenever I finished something I dreaded doing, it was NEVER finished or done at the time, or by the system I had put in place.
It was always done after first trying to plan it, failing, planning, failing, planning, failing, planning AND THEN?
I did it.

My thesis from Uni got done after writing at my parents house, for weeks. Yet I know that it wasn’t “a magic formula” that I could have tried earlier.

All my ten books were published in the slow summer weeks of 2017. After spending eight years (!!) working every trick in the book to make myself publish them.
And again: there was no magic recipe. It was just… time.

And now, we’re in the last days of April 2018, and I already decided this week that I m no longer going to plan, schedule and spend 15 hours a week on PR and other extras for my yoga business.
And that I am going to invest those hours in promoting my writing.

Until today, when I got up and realized this was the first day of my UNPLANNED life. So whatever I wanted to do with those freed up hours? Was unplanned as well!

All my major achievements had come from me doing whatever I wanted.
And all disappointments had come from me wanting to make myself do stuff.

Sometimes it was understandable that I tried to make myself do things; When you want your diploma, or you want to publish the books you wrote.
Of course it is completely valid to try and give it your best shot. Work against your nature. Even if it does cost you eight years before you finally, for unknown reasons, are able to muscle through it and do what you were set out to do.
It seems to be necessary evil.

But planning the daily stuff you want to do for your business, your art, or your fitness? That’s unnecessary evil that completely knocks the fun out of life.
And in my case also sets me up for failure, which is in itself a good enough reason to never do it again. I need to stop making the fish climb the tree and tell it off for not being able to do so.

And something else to consider, something which I have experienced so much the last few years that it brings tears to my eyes:
Planning speeds up time.

It takes you out of the moment, and into your internal rat race with everything you need to do. And if you have to pull your head out of your daily to-dos to savor life, be conscious of what is going on around you, what your body or your soul needs, what other people need; You re not going to do it.
At least I wasn’t.
It took so much concentration to shift gears, mix up tasks, that once I had that focus on all the shit I needed to do, I simply could not afford to drop the ball, and LIVE my life. I just kept speeding.

They say planning takes the guess work out of your day, but now I realize I have no desire at all to live a life without guess work. The guess work in the sense of moving from intuition and instincts – or how other people formulate it starting the day with; What do I want to do?
That instinct was how all my books were written.
They were written by LS Harteveld and her guess work.

It’s how my books got published too.
It’s what brought me all my lovers, my friendships, and what marked all the great and memorable days of my life.
Guess work. Intuition. Doing whatever the f I wanted to do.

And all the other days of my life were lost in the void of trying to make myself do things I didn’t want to do.
That were not my first instinct.
That have already shortened my life.
Damaged my productivity.
and probably also my financial success, by trying and planning, and making myself do stuff that was not my free choice.
That was not aligned.

Maybe that is what this post, or my life’s choice, is really about; Alignment.
It’s not a sexy or catchy word, but I would say I m moving from planning life, back to being in alignment with life.
I don’t want to speed up one single day of my life, by unnecessary planning.

Even if my aligned life doesn’t bring me success, in the monetary sense, it will still be highly successful.
Because it gave me back my Life.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

I’m ready to live on my own: #DailyKat stops

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

The #DailyKat archive is on this page.

day 41 Thursday 26 April

I m here behind my computer to do #DailyKat, 11 P.M., and suddenly I know: I’m done with #DailyKat, my project of reading one Katrina Ruth blogpost a day and reposting it.
But I m done for the best reason imaginable: because I ve moved on in the direction she encourages you to take.
Closer to my heart.
Closer to being FULLY me.
So I’m now committed to my own daily posting here, on this blog Daily LS Harteveld.
And today I announced that from this day forward, I will see myself as a writer. No longer as a yoga teacher.

Which is a strikingly similar choice to the one Katrina Ruth made, when she switched from being a personal trainer to seeing herself as a writer, although she intended to quit personal training entirely if I recall correctly.

Another thing that happened this week is that her team upgraded the website and now I can access all Katrina Ruth programs, which I bought over the past 18 months, all at the same time!
I want to start (re-)doing those!

For those two reasons (finding my own power, and the possibility to go deeper with her paid content) the weeks where I needed the daily boost of her blog are over.
But I could never have come here without this project. I ve internalized so much of her advice.
“Success can never come from a place of the wrong service!”
“ALWAYS listen to your soul.”
“Have FAITH.”

All things which can be directly linked to me choosing writing over trying create more profitable yoga classes. I like my current students and my current classes. And yoga will serve as a welcome time away from my desk, as a writer. Ironically I feel it will make me an even better teacher, now that yoga doesn’t have to pay the bills anymore.

Although I intend to keep teaching yoga until I m old, I feel that by choosing writing I am turning the page. The second half of my life will be about something else.
Writing.
Speaking.
Messaging.
Exactly the things Katrina Ruth knows best.

I started #DailyKat as a fan. And I m ending it on the same high note. I feel she kind of shaped me, in -dare I say- the most pleasurable way imaginable. I doubt I will ever get enough of her! And my new identity and profession, as a writer, only allows me to put her words to practice even more fully.

So if you want a similar experience, follow Katrina Ruth’s blog, Facebook, YouTube.

And never forget Kat’s most important lesson:
Life is now. Press play.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

I m breaking up with yoga

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
this is me tying the knot with writing

The buildup to this major life event was unceremonious: squashing my thumb in the balcony door.
And the slow and painful recovery that followed.
But even on another inspection by the doctor, it wasn’t broken nor infected.

My mother also had an accident. Five days before me. She fell and was covered in blood, half her face was damaged, her eye thick and closed.
Seventy-two hours later?
Eyes clear, wounds/ skin fully healed, and the only thing that reminded of her accident was one black bruise that had settled itself along her cheek and nose lines.

When the doctor was done with me, she asked me how my mother was doing.
I answered:
“She’s great! It’s one of the reasons I keep thinking something is wrong with me. She recovered from that horrible fall within days. Not dragging it on, like me.”

I heal slower than someone decades older than me and with a fifty percent gene overlap. Good thing I stopped drinking, in response to this accident, because my body is obviously going to need all the help it can get. I did finish what was still in the bottle. Half a glass. I didn’t wanted to throw it out. And I also didn’t want my last glass to be right before my thumb got stuck.
That would not have been festive at all.
I wanted my step to abstinence to be happy, peaceful and conscious.
And it was.

I m now midway in my holiday week, and yesterday was my “active resting day”, as they call that in fitness. With me, that meant socially resting.
I didn’t have anything planned, aside from the doctor’s appointment. 
I went shopping for presents, took myself out for a meal and pondered a lot about my work as a yoga teacher.

The past few weeks I started creating an online yoga program, but it was based on the idea that creating those videos would take the place of a normal yoga practice. After the thumb accident, and my mother falling, I knew I had to do better.
More rest, less work, and a genuine home yoga practice were required, if I planned on getting as old as my mother, without turning into a whining, crackly old lady.
Working seven days a week, or skipping my home yoga practice were not an option anymore.

Seated at the restaurant, counting, scheduling, writing in my notebook, I came to the conclusion that was inevitable but that I could not accept before I had the hard proof on paper.
I had to stop my online yoga program.
The only way I could sustain my yoga business, and focus on writing (more about that later) was if I downsized teaching yoga to the absolute minimum. Which would mean:
– no online yoga program (which cost me fifteen hours a week)
– only create content for my yoga studio blog after I had spare time.

The moment I will get serious with my writing (yes, yes, more about that later) I can spare about five hours a week, for my yoga business.
And there will be times (like now) when that will go entirely to studying my new course topic, as the topic changes every eight weeks.
So I prepare my classes, and also create yoga schedules for my students if they want an outline of what we did in class.
That all comes first.

Which means that a lot of the time those five hours, will already be dedicated to creating my classes and my studio program.
I kept puzzling, planning, writing my notebook between courses, and realized:
Choose writing.
Cut back studio.
PERIOD.

This is the way it has to be.

My ideal would be not doing ANYTHING, ever again for the yoga studio, that wasn’t about creating classes or teaching.
I don’t want to invest in marketing yoga anymore, nor in creating an online program.

Not if I could also put all that effort into something else:
marketing my writing.

Since my books came out, I ve done ZERO.
Absolutely nothing.
At the time it made sense, since at that time in particular I saw myself as a yoga teacher first. It has been my source of income since 2003.
And I knew writers didn’t make any money (unless they accepted assignments) so it made no sense to even try and put my work out there.
But things have changed.
Something bigger is at stake.

Maybe it’s because I don’t feel comfortable fully showing myself as a yoga teacher. I am still, to this day, trying to stay within the lines of what is accepted of a yoga teacher. 

I have chosen.
I am a writer.

Not because I think being a writer is easier, or make me more financially successful. But because it allows me to totally be myself, and to develop as a human being, an entrepreneur, and even a yogi, in the way that suits me. Without having to fit into a box.
It’s a relationship that accepts me, for me.

From this day forward, for better of for worse, in sickness and in health,
I choose to be a writer.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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

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

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/