This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

In all the years you have been my coach, this time interval between our calls has been the hardest, and the most challenging.
Even now I do not have a coherent story of what happened and why.

There is “only” one actual event I can pinpoint, which must have been the one that is bringing this all to the surface now.
And it can also explain for a Nightmare Before Christmas I had, as well as for the taxing months of October and November 2023, when I ended up needing medical help twice;
I even blame this event for the entire 2023 undercurrent that something was seriously off on a deeper level-
but because that suspicious feeling started after an intense crisis October 2022, one I never wrote about nor will I ever do that, I thought it were my own nerves.

So the only event I have to go by, is my lover breaking up with me in a sloppy way last December 31st, and then the entire 14 months prior to that dropped into place. I had been feeling something was off between us.
(2023’s mysterious undercurrent)
Even though nothing was visibly off between us!
Not counting the fact that he was energetically and then ultimately literally, moving away from me.

So the only thing predicting the events of 31 December were his energetically withdrawing from the “Us” that had been the affair for over 8 years.
And even on the day itself, he didn’t say what had happened until I kept asking very direct questions.

2023 was the first year I had started asking those because he was giving me absolutely nothing.
By asking the direct questions, I have forced him to lie, tell half-truths, which was still one half more than what I would have gotten if I had not asked anything.

So in a way you can say I broke it up for him, because I defined what he did as breaking up.
Something that should have made it easier or harder, but that I can find no emotional response to whatsoever.
Him, me, what difference does it make.

So now I am going to tie the beginning of this to the end of this;
Because I think, no I know, he was already moving away from me October, November 2022.
I know because I asked him on a date, and he agreed, yet I could feel it was getting more difficult for him to see me, but because I just had my crisis beginning of October 2022, I had a terrible feeling of not being good enough.
As if the crisis had been my fault, and it was either condemned or not understood by him.
I felt like I was falling short or disappointing him, October November 2022.

Then we had treacherous December and January where our affair seemed back to normal. My crisis had become manageable, and I had learned not to bother people with it.
Few understood it, and they just made me feel bad, just like he had.
The affair seemed normal and genuine, but it was like there was spice missing. We were not as adventurous as we had been in the bedroom.

But again:
Coming from seeing my life fall apart the beginning of October 2022, our dates were an absolute blessing.
Again, I blamed anything off on my own wobbliness. Not on what in retrospect were his first strides on his way out.

From February 2023 on, the current became apparent, very apparent! We no longer had dates, we had appointments where we could help the other out, cheered the other up. 
But they were all initiated by me.
And a good thing I did, because otherwise I would not have seen him anymore.

And also:
Now, in May, I had the chance to ask him if he wanted out.
But I didn’t ask it that directly (I didn’t get direct until the final months), and he used the room I gave him to ignore it, and as a cue to put in more effort and make our date (appointment!) more fun.
He did not use it to have a conversation and end things.

And then we have June to November 2023, where I understandably stopped initiating dates that were actually appointments, and it became Whatsapp check-ins around the same topics we once had appointments for and see each other in real life.

“Us”, was dying.

Until late November when I started being more direct, culminating to the 31st of December, when it became apparent he had moved himself physically, away from me.
Without ever telling me anything, and still not admitting the symbolical implications it had.

Even on the 31st, he was still behaving as if nothing had changed between us. As if there had simply been a change in real estate, that didn’t need any addressing.
A move by which he effectively denied there had ever been an Us;
His way, of ending things.

Okay, so those were the energetic ebbs and flows, covering 15 months.
And what I also want to point out, and this is the best place I can find in this blogpost because it really is a topic that has no place in this storyline;
But ever since 2022, maybe even sooner, I can “see” weird, extra-terrestial or paranormal things happening when I close my eyes.
I assumed it was an involuntary reflex to too much computer-time, like a song you can still hear in your head.
But I no longer think that.
The images are vivid, like a movie. They’re actually quite entertaining, but because of their “Hieronymus Bosch” like quality, and because I cannot answer the question:
“Can you prove you’re not looking into another dimension?”
And because this entire post is about taking a good look at anything, that can explain the what appear to be unseen, yet very active, forces, causing disturbances in my life and quite possibly having influenced how I have reacted, or how other people in my life have behaved, I did not want to leave  this possible open portal to hell, unmentioned!

Picking up our story, we’re at Christmas 2023, when the portal opened into my dream world:
I had a terrible nightmare about an entity. It was so violent it woke me up, and I couldn’t go back to sleep either.
Which then turned out to be exactly as the Universe intended, because something happened that night, that was clearly meant for me to witness so that something could be done.

Again, just like October 2022 trauma, I do not want to talk about it, but it was super intense.

But now it comes:
After December 31, yeah sure, I cried a lot, the first day, but it was more of shock. Not because I was actually feeling the loss of a lover, the man who I consider the love of my life.
Although not without the disclaimer, that I may have been wrong!
Which is what this blogpost is about.

But anyway, of course, I was happy that I didn’t fall apart!
To me, it meant that I had grown not just since breakups with the two other men that ever really got to me, but also since the crisis of October 2022, which had absolutely floored me.

Clearly, whatever I had put in place as scaffolding in order to be able to deal with October 2022, was equally if not more effective, in preventing the walls coming down, after Dec31, 14 months later.

The house was standing tall, and so was I.
Nothing, revealed I had lost him.
And I felt like a frickin’ grownup!
Eat this motherfuckers, I am nobody’s bitch anymore.

Where I had once felt a strong connection to one man, or where I had once expected anybody, to be there for me unconditionally;
I was now at the point where the love of your life could leave me on the last day of the year, and I was fully recovered before the sun set on January first.

I called it progress.

Until strange and weird things started happening. I am still looking for the right words, but the best way to describe it, is like feeling your foot suddenly steps through the ice.
You expect something to be there, and then there’s nothing.

Instead of experiencing a meltdown, like I used to do when someone broke my heart, I now I experience “fallout”;
Entire parts of my life just no longer being there, because the thing that was holding it all together, was him.
No, “us”! (even worse)

So my genius mind, after its decision to never have one man, or one person, hold your heart in their hand ever again, had found a way;
They used our affair as the mortar, tying the entire life together.

I had hidden our affair, that had been secretive since day one, January 2015, into the very walls of my existence!
Where it had been dripping out off, since late 2022.

This week, every night, I can feel darkness within me. I remember having violent heart complaints in 2018, the year my cat had died in January.
I remember having them in 2008, when my lover had broken up with me. 
And I have them now, but not in the way I used to.

They seem to be tied to a darkness I have never felt. Tied to a rustling sound of the heart, a quickening not the numbness of 2008, and not the violent complaints from 2018.
This time it feels more venomous.
Like a literal blackness, of the heart, the way you sometimes see those pictures of tar lungs.

And I am reminded of Christmas night, a night so disturbing I cannot speak about it.
I am reminded of the dark current, underflowing 2023, and probably sooner.
I am reminded of the biggest personal crisis of my entire life, October 2022.
I am reminded of eight years with my lover that were never allowed to exist, where technically there was no Us.
The only place we were real was in my LS Harteveld blogs, like a fairy tale.

I am reminded of the pandemic, where I lost my faith in ever belonging in society, and accepting my fate of (hopefully) being able to serve her, but knowing I could not afford the price of being part of it.

And I also remember how incredibly light I had been,  before 2018.
That I had so many one-line diaries, where at the end of the day all I wrote down was:
“It was such a great day!”
Before I dropped into a blissful sleep, with dreams I did not remember.

I was an entirely different person, before January 2018.
I was light.

And I started counting and wondering when it had started, and I have to say I don’t know.
In 2017 my best friend left, but otherwise, I was still okay!
So if that is true, then my current state doesn’t have anything to do with my lover brought, or carried with him, that has been causing this darkness, because the affair started in 2015, years before 2018.

And yet, things that are denied to see the light, things that are not allowed to have a name, and to be known for who they are;
It would not be strange to assume our affair mutated into an evil, because denied, life form. 

What it has done, is that I am viewing everything that happened in a different light, and no longer assume so easily, that I know what was cause and what was effect.
I remember the ugliness of the crisis of October 2022, and thinking:
“Something more is here at play.”
The effect it had on me, was so incredibly forceful, like I said my whole world fell apart. I couldn’t believe this was due to whatever it was someone else had said or done.
My grief and falling apart, was disproportionate.

So the good news is: I did not fall apart, when my lover left.

The bad news is:
I have absolutely no idea what forces I am dealing with, where they are hiding, and what my fate shall be, if I do not figure this out.

But I do know it could cost me my life, if I don’t.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I hope, and intend this to be the shortest email in our 5+ years of working together.
Because although from my great suffering, has indeed come great art;
Ending what feels like the, consciously lived, best year of my life, no longer needs words, nor art.
It just is.

I am still intensely grateful for choosing your coaching in 2018. Not just because you have been my companion, on this otherwise terribly lonely road, but because you have been an example of the type of professional I hope to be for others.
This is because of many things, but I think the crucial element here, for me, is that you offer both a service (coaching) as well as that you are an artist.
This is intrinsically different to “just” being an entrepreneur.
It comes with different pitfalls.

Regular business coaching, would never have been able to save me in these darkest of years. But you did.
Or, if you’re more comfortable with that, our work did.

I am working on two projects now, and both feel close to vanity projects, compared to the past few years.
That I even have the clarity of mind to think:
“You know what would be fun? – “
Indicates we’re talking pure luxury here.

The first project is publishing the first two years of my Lauren 1998 project. So these cover the fictionalized diaries of summer 1994 (2019) to fall (2021). I had started this spring 2022, and the manuscript was like 90% done. Just some spacing issues in the second part of the book, as far as I can tell.

I found the manuscript and am working on it, keeping a publishing journal on my oldest website, for which I have not had a purpose since in December 2018, when I started this new one (laurenharteveld.com)

This summer I had to invest in getting it updated, because the old software didn’t allow for the update of the host. Having invested a few hundred euros motivated me to find purpose for it again.
And also because I have to work with real WordPress Gutenberg software there, and don’t have the escapes I have on all my other websites which are hosted by wordpress.com.
Knowing that when wordpress.com stops facilitating the mastodons who still want to use classical editor, at least I will be having some years of experience under my belt using their Gutenberg editor.
Even when I obviously do a dirty hack job posting on that website, but still!
Valuable experience.
A girl should be prepared for the worst, which for me is wordpress.com taking their pre-installed classical editor features down.

So publishing my first retro-diary is the first project I am actively working on. And once this book is ready, I will keep this train rolling, publishing all the unpublished material, and doing it in tandem with keeping a publisher journal. 

As sort of a million dollar ps, that should probably have an entire new blogpost on its own;
I have come to the conclusion that I should start seeing my body of work, as my greatest work, just like Anais Nin’s diaries, the record of her life, were her biggest contribution.
Her erotica got wings because of that, but it was the diaries, that were both the heart as well as the glue keeping it together. 

In the upcoming years I will be publishing all my work, with dates included in a “this post was written on” footer.
And then I will explore options of sharing my work with a publisher or foundation, who will commercially exploit it and curate it.
I want to be the 21st century Anais Nin, or already know I am. But what I need is an international publisher who sees the value of the diaries and dated articles as a whole;
Not as singular books.

Okay, is blogpost is getting really long after all!
😉 

And the second project is one I still have no idea how to do it, it is like it is there on the edge of my consciousness, drifting in and out;
But I am bringing myself, or “us” because I am also bringing my 20th century alterego Lauren 1998 there as well, to December 1989.
I’m putting us on a different timeline;
The month a 17 year old Lauren met Bear, the boy who would become her lover in January 1990.

In December 1989, Lauren was in her final year of highschool, gearing up for her exams in May.
And losing her virginity, in which she probably put even more thought 😉

But what made Lauren’s 1989, going 1990, lifestyle so appealing to both Lauren 1998 and me, in 2023, is that she had a very healthy daily rhythm.
Homecooked meals, no junkfood whatsoever, walking, cycling and fresh air, ingrained in daily activities. 
No going to the movies at night, nothing spectacularly dysregulating on weekends, and so on.
As a 17 year old I/ she, had the aspirational lifestyle of any adult.

Now of course this was largely due to the fact that my mother took care of me, so as an adult I have tons of tasks 17 year old me didn’t have.
But still;
I know it was in how she/I was feeling, more than what I did.

So this means that after the second timeline, where I live my life as if it is 25 year ago, which I have been doing since 2019 (1994);
I have now added a third timeline.

Of a 17 year old Lauren on the cusp of the 90s, and taking matters into her own hands, with regard to her sexuality.
She will be with Bear to lose her virginity, and they will like each other so much that they will keep seeing each other.
He will have other women too, but she will only have him simply because she is most in love with him, and the two men she falls for during their time, are in no position to answer it.
Or at least they choose not to.

In December 1998 (!) Lauren will reflect on the year, marking January as the last time they had sex and May as the last time they saw each other.
She wonders if she has lost him forever, or at least for a few years.
In December she did not count the new year, she didn’t say “I have been with Bear for 9 years.”
January rounds off to the previous anniversary.
Eight years.

Unsure what to do, or how to proceed, she decides to live the first 4 years of their relationship again;
From December 1989 to summer 1994, when she started her diary.

Because she may not have been able to save her relationship with him, but she will try to save time itself.

The time they had, together.

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I feel that despite having gone over the scenario of what the f went wrong, not making my first career in yoga a success, despite being talented, skilled, schooled and experienced in every and any area that would be relevant for such a thing;
The rockhard bottom of it managed to knock the breath right out of me, regardless.

I woke up this Saturday with a two decade long hangover, thinking:
“My God, I really never stood a chance. No one does.”

Plus I identified there was an extra complicating factor, which I managed to overlook as well, but I’ll get to that later.

First:
Why does no one teaching yoga in the Netherlands stand a chance making a living out of it?

This is because teaching yoga is at a toxic crossroad of:

1. lack of recognition of all Dutch professionals who work independently in general, as being entrepreneurs or having a business.
Because the number one executive task for an independent is to create revenue, not to execute their profession.
Their measure of success is a financial one, and in no way entangles the professional accountability of a payroll job professional.

2. me, as a woman, in the women dominated profession of teaching yoga, being in the corner of women who work as independents.
A subcategory in the aforementioned already tricky category of being an independent in general.
We’re now in the corner where we’re barely paid, rarely paid, and an obligation to be nice to everyone. Recognition does not go further than that either you apparently have a hobby to the level that you can ask money for it.
Or, that you have an opportunity to be of service, which is code for that you should never overcharge and be grateful with whatever pennies you get.
Your real reward is in the good you bring into this world.

3.This is the new one: The taboo we have on really BEING someone.
I discovered a long time ago, that for a female independent professional in the Netherlands, it is very difficult to step into their identity of BEING an entrepreneur.
But what I did not see that this is part of a larger, and less gender specific, taboo, where your head gets chopped off the moment you ARE/ identify as,  something.
This is seen as hugely threatening.
Everyone is passive aggressively forced into being some toothless tiger version of themselves, where any OWNING of STRENGTH, IDENTITY, and characteristics, is immediately punished.

To compare: This also means that in the Netherlands anyone owning their sexuality, whatever that sexuality is, or owning their gender, again regardless of whatever that gender is;
Is going to have a really hard time.
The problem in the Netherlands is not lack of tolerance to WHAT you are;
It is that you ARE!
That you have the actual audacity to BE something.

“I am” is where the problem lies.
Not what comes after it.

And then, yes, being a woman in a service-provider profession makes it even more frowned upon to stand in your I AM power;
But that the problem where I live (and maybe in other countries too?), definitely lies in claiming identity as a whole.
Any, identity.

Recapping, all that time, I really thought that the root cause of unprofitable professions was IN THE NATURE OF THEIR PROFESSION!
That when someone is an artist, or a yoga teacher, or a musician, it is something in the very nature of their work, that makes it difficult to make a living.
Nothing which a good dose of marketing, branding, packaging, and stepping on those sales, would not fix!
Or so I naively assumed.

Because now, I understand independents not making any money has absolutely nothing to do with any nature of any work.

It has to do with how uncomfortable society is, if that person commercially sells that work!

Mind blown, Sara. Mind blown.

As a woman, the box you’re dealt with and are supposed to stay in, is so unbelievably small and so terribly plain, that even our casket will be a more spacious and colorful experience.
Pity we’ll be dead by then.

The closest I have been to fitting into that box was around the turn of the century when I worked an office job and was in my longterm relationship.
A time I was so inauthentic to who I am, it’s a miracle my heart did not stop beating out of protest.

So the above is an exploration and an explanation why even at the most no-frills level of entrepreneurship, I was setup to fail. Together with all the other independents, in particular the female ones.
Well at least I now have a better view of the headwinds I can expect in my second career in yoga, and that everything I experienced the past couple of weeks, was just the beginning.

And a sign, I’m actually doing the right thing this time!
That headwinds mean you have not fallen into the same trap this second time around, because deep holes in the ground are always windfree.

So there was that.
Finding the root cause of why we’re all going to fail as independents, unless we buckle up, ready to take on any storm coming our way!
Of which there will be many.

But then, to make matters worse, I discovered something which was more personal than just “being” (identifying) as an entrepreneur, in a society that does not want us to succeed.
And this is;
That I am an artist.

That although I believe as an entrepreneur my job is to build a successful business;
As an artist, my job is a different one.

And that this makes the money streams of the business unpredictable.
On one hand, it gives you the competitive advantage, because  artist-entrepreneurs, by the very nature of who they are, create more beautiful, enticing and compelling products and services.
They know how to pack that up, and make that thing look pretty!

But.
Also.

Unlike most entrepreneurs, an artist is someone with A MESSAGE. And one susceptible to change!
Where a regular business can work very well, staying at surface level, the artist has to not hold back on the deeper values backing up what it is they do.
To them staying at surface level playing nice feels like that grey, crampy box closing in.

To an artist, making generic, liked by everybody art feels like death.

It is why Disney became a business, yet Andy Warhol stayed art. He even made the commerce part of the art.

At the fork in the road between being a business or being an artist, I will never choose being a business.

And after finally and fully understanding how to navigate that business road,  and what to expect and to bring in order to conquer it, it just sucks knowing I’ll never be able to set foot on it!

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

“Remember, remember the fifth of November”

old English rhyme, Guy Fawkes day
.

Dear Sara,

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

There is a four A4-pages long diary entry, written at 3.30 A.M last night, that I honestly intended to type out and send in as this week’s debriefing.
That’s how important it was!
Or so I thought….

Because as I mulled over it today, I realized that what I had written out was actually, in all honesty, just BASIC stuff!
It was the bare minimum, covering little more than the foundational levels to be put into place in all areas of life.
And sure!
There were important elements to remind myself of, at future times, in order to make sure I held on to the clarity of what my strengths were, and to-  can I say “ruthlessly”?- monetize the talents that I had failed to bring to the limelight the past 20 years or so.

But it could hardly count as a vision, last night’s document.
I wasn’t exactly dreaming big, but an almost scientific dissection’s of where my talents lay.
A roadmap to the career I always wanted, although in theory career was only one aspect of it.
But it was the most important one, because if I have learned and realized anything in the past years, it is that the more financially successful you are, the freer you become in being who you want to be.
That freedom is not earned, nor does it start with financial freedom;
But it sure makes it a hell of a lot easier.

The easiest way to illustrate is that monogamy is the dominant choice because people are financially dependent on each other.
If you’re not free to leave, or your partner is not free to leave, because either one of you cannot afford to live on their own, and in the Netherlands that currently includes close to a hundred percent of couples because of the biggest housing shortage in our history-
Well, then a discussion about if monogamy is right or wrong, or opening up the relationship, is threatening not because of the sexual aspect, but because of the financial one.
If you guys would break up, then you’re homeless.
Monogamy is just one of the many examples where personal or sexual freedom, is intimately linked to the degree of financial freedom you have.