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.

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Nederlands blog:
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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.

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Nederlands blog:
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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.

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/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

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

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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.

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Nederlands blog:
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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/

 

 

 

Harlot Holiday (alcohol free)

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The first Monday of my holiday week was not  “harlotty” at all. But Harlot refers to a magazine that was looking for copy, and I sent them my Dutch White Tigress guide, on how to live a strong and sexually active life on your terms.

That email was by far the most frivolous thing I did. The rest was all work.
Despite this weekend’s profound insight that God would keep throwing bricks (and this time I might not get off with squashing my thumb with the balcony door) unless I changed my ways and started enjoying things like weekends and holidays, instead of using them as an extension of my workweek, I suspected one day didn’t matter.

One day could still be sacrificed in order to finish things up.

I had planned to do hours of admin and I had a business appointment, but it would all be done at 4 PM. Except that the heating failed on me, and I had to stay home the entire day to get it fixed, push my appointment back, and also – my injured thumb required medical attention.
Which by the way, it still didn’t get, even though I tried the best I could given the fact that I was unable to leave the house.
So in a way I manifested my own prediction.

Instead of being off at four, my finance and waiting and trying to reach the doctor’s office, really did take me one entire day.
At 9 PM, I made my escape out of the house and I cycled to my yogastudio to clean it, so that I had at least some exercise. And also so that I didn’t have to do the cleaning today, for the other teachers who are not having a week off from teaching.

Now I do have the rest of the week off, my heating and hot water are up and running, my finances are taken care of, and my thumb is still attached to the rest of my body, so I m just assuming it will hold up for the rest of the holiday week.
Time for fun.
Time to get harlotty.

Which brings me to the major changes I made after Thumb Gate.

The first was, like I said, the decision to start taking time off.
Holidays and weekends would from now on be “reserved” for writing, or hobbies, or men, or anything spontaneous or absolutely nothing.
They were free.

But there was more, that I got clarity on.
Based on the fact that Thumb Gate proved that I was prone to accidents, when I worked too hard.
First half of that sentence  being:
I was prone to accidents.
Now, from all the things a body or a mind can default to in times of stress, I will choose this weakness anytime over getting depressed, getting burned out, getting fatigued, or having some unsanitary part of your personality taking over your life and causing mayhem and despair.
I’ll take the accidents.
But it is also a pretty scary weakness, and one that deteriorates with age. Falling and breaking bones is the number one scare among senior citizens, so it is a weakness that will not get better by itself.
In fact it will get worse.
And that’s when I made my next two important decisions.

One.
I was quitting all alcohol. Again. I have been on and off for a couple of years now. My longest time without Chardonnay was fourteen months and two weeks, and although I suspect to this day that it was this habit that allowed me to only need four, five hours of sleep, I didn’t really regret it when I started it again.
Not-drinking had not brought me what I had expected (I didn’t realize the needing less sleeping, until later) and I wanted to have that bourgeois feeling of putting my lips to that glass.
Now I m more focused on the totally not bourgeois idea of falling down the stairs or whatever. Plus not drinking will improve my hormone levels, and make it impossible to waste time doing things that require drinking in order to level them out. Such as working too hard, or agreeing to social obligations without genuinely looking forward to them.

Abstinence is the quickest way to detox my life from anything that needs toxins in order to deal with it.

Two.
I was going to do my own yoga practice, in addition to, but definitely before, making my yoga videos. I installed making yoga videos for a number of reasons but one of the main ones, was that it would make me practice yoga.
And with that, I had an alibi to give up my struggle of getting a home yoga practice.

But I now realize that making videos will very likely not give me the self-control, the calm, and the stability a real yoga practice does.
And more importantly; Making yoga videos will not to prevent me tumbling over and break shit. I really need more than an alibi not to practice.
I need to do real yoga.

By the way, other (normal?) yoga teachers usually believe they have to practice yoga in order to be a good yoga teacher.
I still resist that whole idea.
I have never, in my entire history of doing yoga, or taking classes, been able to see a connection between how much someone practiced yoga, and how good a teacher they were.
And if I did see a correlation, it was a reversed one.
The best teachers surprisingly often broke every rule in the book, including the one that said they had to practice.

A chef doesn’t have to cook at home. A painter doesn’t have to paint his own house. And a yoga teacher doesn’t need a self-practice.

But a 45 year old yoga teacher who knows that her weak spot is working too hard, relaxing herself by drinking, and hacking her self-practice by making monotizable yoga videos?
She would benefit from old-school yoga, quitting drinking, sleeping in, saying yes, getting laid, laughing more, and throwing her planning and her work schedule over the balcony.

And this time without getting her thumb stuck when closing the door.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books 

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God whispers. But if you don’t listen he’ll throw bricks at you.

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

The most annoying thing about getting my thumb squashed by the door to the balcony, was that I wasn’t able to write.
Not because my left thumb was instrumental to either holding a pen, or typing, because it wasn’t. But because the pain would get so intense it would immediately draw all awareness to the band-aid covered digit.

Instead, I was allowed to do what normal people do on a weekend.
Meet a friend in Utrecht.
Sleepover at my mother’s house.
Travel.
Go to warm sunlit birthday parties.

But the moment I reached for my new diary to take some notes in order to write about it, when I could write about it, the pain in my thumb shrieked.
“You CAN’T write about it!”

Aside from not being able to write there were other costs as well.
Cab fare to and from the hospital in the middle of the night.
One whole night of sleep, because I couldn’t sleep from the pain. Not even after they had drilled a whole in the nail, to take the pressure off.
It got the edges off, the strongest pain was gone, but it was still not enough to be able to sleep. I think I slept 2,5 hours total that night.
The thumb cost me a show from Rafael, who turned out to have a gig in Utrecht that night.
I was convinced I was predestined to go, but in the end I realized I was more predestined to go to the ER for the second time to get my thumb checked out.

The nightly treatment had not been the miracle cure the doctor had promised, and I wanted to make sure the thumb was not going to cost me a second night of sleep.
But all the other things?
The things that after the incident, I knew I HAD TO change and I was DONE with?
The things that suddenly became crystal clear?
That was the message this whole accident was about.

Because I have been in ER only once before in my life, after a strikingly similar buildup of events!

Just like now, I had totally nailed “life”.
I knew exactly what to do, and when to do it. I had a planning, which included an editorial calendar for both my writing biz as well as my yoga. I created content for both on a regular basis and I knew where I was going, why, and what I was doing along the way.

I was a productivity machine then, as I was now.
THAT’s when God started throwing bricks.

In 2014 it was with a painful burn with boiling water, now it was the balcony door. And in all the other years, the rest of my life, where I just did whatever I liked?
Nothing.
God was quiet.

He only steps in when I plan out my life to the minute and promise myself I can take the weekends off, if I have everything done by Thursday.
Fridays are always filled with obligations and appointments that take me away from home from 10 AM till 8 PM, so my desk workweek is four days.
And if in those four days, I do what my calendar tells me to do?
Then I can have the weekend off.
….
?
No.
No, no, no, no no.

The weekends are ALWAYS off.
And the moment you forget that, on a Friday night opening a work filled “holiday” week by writing a blog post (Mr.Big) which you consider a downtime activity after coming home at 8 PM;
Then God will throw you a brick.

A black, pierced nail.

And for six months it will stick to you and be a visible reminder that;
The weekends are off.
Holidays are off.
And you can write any time you like, but if He catches you again, wearing yourself out and punishing yourself with a crazy woman work schedule;
He will take writing away from you too.

Because God whispers.
But if you don’t listen he’ll trow bricks at ya.

<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/

 

Mr.Big

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I know what Mr.Big hates most about being my secret lover;
That I deserve more and that he cannot give it to me.
From his point of view that makes him an accomplice.

I never saw it like that, aside from the first weeks or months at most. I was still convinced what we had was
A. him initially shutting himself off from my post-sex neediness but also
B. him seeing that his marriage didn’t work, and choosing a new life.

What I didn’t understand back then, and I doubt if Mr.Big would ever confirm it (I know he would plead innocent to it being deliberate) was that;
Yes. It was him shutting himself off for my post-sex neediness.
Yes, it was seeing his marriage didn’t work, and also choosing a new life.

But it was the life of someone who could make his marriage work, if only he allowed himself to have a that little something extra….
And that little something extra?
Was me.

Just like so many mistresses before me (I mean in history, I don’t think Mr.Big had a regular mistress before me) our affair was a key ingredient to let his marriage survive.
It wasn’t a reason to divorce.

And here we are, over three years into our affair, and I could not be happier with what we have. I m not going to lie, there are a million downsides to being a mistress. On my most gloomiest I will think things like;
Will I be there at his funeral?
But on a “day-to-day basis” (the irony is of course that we do not see each other every day) I happily choose this.

A relationship in which you have been in love for way over three years?
And you don’t see any decline or rough edges?
Your feelings for him are as strong as ever?
As is your longing for him?
Your willingness to try anything, be anything, as limited or as profound he wants it to be?
That’s worth something.

And it’s worth A LOT to a woman who left her long-term relationship age 34 to start dating again, because she missed that feeling of butterflies and first times. She missed it so much she was willing to sacrifice the relationship with the love of her life.
To meet new men.
Fall in love.
Have first time sex.

A woman who over the course of eight years tried and tested every flavor in the book, including men half her age, and those much older than her.
I can’t say I was promiscuous.
My top year was 2009 and I had three partners then.
But there were also years when I didn’t have sex at all.

Because it was so straining for me.
It took so much effort to smooth out communication fails, ignore character traits I didn’t like, and let him get away with things that showed so little respect for what we had.
And so much shame to be seen with me.
All those things to have sex?

I didn’t understand how people could stay horny given the countless flaws of imperfect sex. Where imperfect basically stands for any sex where two people are not mutually in love or infatuated.
By the time I took my pants off, I had invested an amount of tolerance and negotiation skills that could have brought peace to the entire Middle-East.
All that to get laid.

So no, I wasn’t promiscuous, but I did have enough partners to immediately recognize that sex with Mr.Big was something else.
That I wasn’t the one doing all the work;
He was. 

He was the one who initiated our first kiss; perfect timing, no waiting until our goodbyes. But not too soon either, and he had announced it. In a way.
He had done the risk taking way before the first kiss. He had given me the opportunity to reject him, over Whatsapp. Which may sound unromantic, but I can’t tell you how wonderful that was, to have a man saying:
“I wanted to kiss you tonight.”
When you’re already back home alone, safe.

That is a guy giving a lady an opportunity to think about things. He’s giving her time (in our case, it would turn out to be a whole week) to figure out if she wants this. Him. A married man.
Or if she doesn’t.

This is not a man pressing her, or groping her on a time when she could feel awkward rejecting him. It’s a courteous gesture… one I had not seen in all those eight years before. He was a man who didn’t press for a “Yes”. He was someone who would only accept me as a lover, if I had thought it through.
If it was a “Hell yes!”

So the first kiss which he initiated, was unexpected. And then again it wasn’t. Because I had agreed to see him again, and I had confessed that I had been taken aback as well.
By my desire to kiss him.
That night when nothing happened.

Me feeling nostalgic is not because we’re having an anniversary. We’re in over three years, but no milestone. And either way; neither one of us are really into that sort of thing.
Maybe because the strong point of what we have is that it always feels new.
And never a given.

I still feel those butterflies in my belly, the uncertainty about what to text back. I still feel new and unsure every time we have sex.

In the end, I really got all those exciting first times I looked forward to, when I ended my long-term relationship. I just never expected, that those perfect first times, where you don’t have to first allow the annoying and the draining (on both sides, no doubt); that all those super arousing first time sex encounters would be with the same man.
I never thought that.
But I do now.

On a quiet Friday night in April 2018, writing my post, no one kissed me, it’s all memories and looking back but I can see;
Damn this is all worth it.

I remember what Mr.Big said, after that first kiss;
“You’re a great kisser.”
Immediately labeling our experience as something positive and memorable. He was doing the work. And ever since then, he has made sure we only had good times.

I know Mr.Big feels guilty for not being the single man “I deserve”.
But all the men I dated before him?
Those men were single!

It’s so much better to have the right man, for whatever fraction of his time is available, then having the wrong one completely to yourself.

<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/

We were never meant to be tamed

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

**  I think I should put a trigger warning on this post….
Let’s put it this way; This blogpost is for those of you who accept nothing but the highest standard of personal freedom,
for themselves and others.**

This post was originally supposed to have a different title. Be about a different thing. A thing that made me angry, and on which I held a ton of opinions.
Cheating.

How someone “testing” their partner by bringing up the hypothetical scenario of cheating, is such a great way to see where their loyalty lies and how quickly they are willing to make your whole relationship about being right (they).
And being wrong (you).
How all feelings, your whole history, your entire future together, how the depth of your relationship could all be distilled into:
“You are a bad person because you’re having sex with someone else.”
In a blink of an eye.

How easily you could be at:
I am going to speak badly of you
Divorce you.
Or even hit the lows of:
“I am going to take revenge on you.”

If you would ask the hypothetical question on your partner’s well thought through balanced view on the subject.

And in reply I’d say: “Wow.”

And we all know that a woman saying “Wow” is the worst thing anyone can bring onto himself.

And I would say “Wow” even if their “if you love me you don’t do that” message was delivered in the most thoughtful, non-aggressive way imaginable.
I would flip that thing right back at them saying in the most thoughtful, non-aggressive way imaginable:
“I’m glad I know this. Before I waste the rest of my life with you.”

Yes, I am afraid that my answer would have been somewhere along those lines.

Until, when looking for a Carrie Bradshaw picture to go with this blog post, I stumbled on this quote about wild women.
And wild men.

Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed.
Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them.
-Carrie Bradshaw

And I thought: “That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”
Wild women and wild men should pair up.
As well as the domestic ones.
Problems only rise when we start cross breeding.

Personally, no, I am not a cheater. Yet if I do want to;
Kiss that man.
Fall in love.
Have that encounter.
Cross that line.
I want a partner who can say:
“I love everything about you. Including the parts that hurt me. “
And I would answer:
“That’s how much I love you too.”

<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/