Auteursarchief: LS Harteveld

I forgot the taste of sex | time travel journal #4

photo: Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City. My healthy, vibrant, full-on writer vision for myself.

photo: Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City. My healthy, vibrant, full-on writer vision for myself.

I was resistant to even come back to my writer’s account in general, this original LS Harteveld website or the official Lauren Harteveld which I’ve had since late 2018.

Bar the blog posts  I sent to my coach Sara (on the official blog), it has been quiet and the last diary entry from Lauren 1998, THE most important project for me, is from two months back.

Yet despite my LS Harteveld work not exactly flourishing, and Lauren’s 1998 life not giving any exciting diary posts, I don’t feel the project is failing.
Just that it is going very, very slowly.
The things I am currently figuring out in my 2023 life, are not in a stage yet where I can emotionally or technically “translate” them to how they would feel or would have taken shape, in the 20th century.
My out-of-shape-ness bothers me because I am twice as old as Lauren 1998. I know I should just view it from her perspective, as just a recent mid-twenties weight problem, but it is difficult to not think:
“What if I never get my old body back?”
“What if it doesn’t work, because I’m old?”

And the online business I am building, working remote, and the blogging that I do, do not translate to the 20th century either. But as opposed to the body problem, the building a business and sharing your work as a writer, has actually become a lot easier, in those 25 years!

Maybe that is the way to view it;
In 2023 I can build a career as a writer and start a new business, as easy and effortless as Lauren 1998 would have been able to get her thin teen body back.
Which she has set her eyes on.

Maybe instead of focusing on worrying about my body, I should start rejoicing in all the possibilities technology and my experience has brought me.
That professionally, I have the easy ride.

But what both Lauren Harteveld in 2023 as well as my “Time travel” part in 1998 experience, is this;
A loss of sexuality.
Not masturbation wise, that is actually going well. Also because I cherish it, because I recognize this part as still healthy and fully functional. Because the other part of my sexual identity seems to have slipped with dazzling speed, and without any external explanation, I am intentional with my masturbation and try to keep my numbers on the high rather than on the low side.

So I was actually worrying about feeling so out of shape, on the field of sexuality and intimacy. When I thought of sex, it felt like something I had read about or seen in movies. But the physical recollection of decades of sex, seemed to have slipped.
Something which worried me, tremendously.
And I had no idea how to go about it.

Even during the pandemic years, which were the darkest time of my life and I felt forced into a frigid, sterile lifestyle that has done tremendous damage-
but even then I would go out to buy condoms and red lipstick.
I still identified as sexual, and when first half of 2022 I actually had the best sex life ever?
I thought I was out of the danger zone!
I thought I had made it, and that perhaps the pandemic years had twisted something to my advantage. That ultimately the years of quiet and zero flirting with other men than my lover, zero people I fell in love with, for two years meeting zero new people;
That it had all resulted in coming back stronger!

For a moment, I thought it had all panned out well.

And then there was the second half of 2022 which was an absolute disaster socially. It has made it my worst year ever, and my sex life stayed but my ability to be fully passionate was gone.
It felt like my sex was broken, compared to what it had been.
But because second half 2022 had many tragic circumstances, I blamed it on that.

And now it is 2023, and I feel my sexual identity- the foundation of that very sex life I still hope to retrieve- that identity is gone.
I no longer know who I am sexually, and my memories of it feel like a tv series, and not like something I have experienced firsthand.
It is like I am trying on a borrowed identity, of being a sexually active woman.

Whatever brought me The Amazing First Half of 2022, it seemed to have flipped. The sexual basket that had been lusciously filled with surprises and joy, and had a double bottom;
Was empty. 

Until I remembered that I did know this feeling of being fully sexual, yet not having a sexual identity yet. I had been here before. I even remembered the frustration of not having sexual experience, and how I was just dying to get this show on the road.
It was when I was in my teens.

For years, whatever experience I had with sex, it was way below my level of ambition. So I felt the frustration of not having been kissed, and then that was done.
But whatever happened, it was never enough.

Losing my virginity seemed to take years. 
And I buried myself in a relationship, which meant I could now develop my sexuality, but I knew a monogamous relationship was just a starting point.
That I would never stay for the rest of my life with the first man I had all the way sex with.

And I knew that with the second long-term relationship too..

It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s, became single, and started taking that sexuality seriously, that finally, it took off.
I developed the sex life I had been wanting since my teens.

My teens:
The time when I had the body Lauren 1998 wants.
My teens:
The time when I did not have a sexual identity yet.
And sexual experiences were borrowed memories from what I had read or saw in movies.

In the time-travel project, the loosely shaped experiment where I try to live as if it is 25 years ago, Lauren 1998 is inspired by her teen self.
She knows that her teen-self was mighty productive and fabulously in shape without doing anything artificial to maintain it.
Lauren 1998 wants that; The productivity for her writer career and freelance work, and the teen body to lose weight.

But what Lauren 1998 seems to have manifested instead, is the asexuality of my teen years. Of being ambitious, but not knowing where to start. Of always feeling that things are not working. 

I can look at what feels like asexuality, as a delayed response to the difficult pandemic years. Meaning: As a problem.
Or I can see it as a sign that Lauren’s 1998 idea to get back to her teen-self has been incredible successful.

And that it has made me a virgin.

.
~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
This is also where I write my Lauren 1998 diaries.
Plus letters to my coach Sara.

Follow THE TIME TRAVEL JOURNAL

Time Travel Journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow Time Travel Journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP

 

A quick review 2019-2023 | time travel journal #1

“If I was now living 25 years ago, how would I live?”

In 2019 I started my Time Travel project, where I wrote fictional diary entries from 25 years ago.

I write these diaries on what has been my main website since 2018.
https://laurenharteveld.com/ You can find them under headers such as “diary 1998”.

The diary entries are, not entirely unintentional, pretty difficult to find on my site.
But you can try the following pages:
1. https://laurenharteveld.com/1994-a-performance-art-project/
2. https://laurenharteveld.com/1995-1996-book-2-of-my-performance-project/
And the categories:
3. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1995-1996/
4. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1997/
5. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1998/

Starting at 2019 going on 1994;
The posts were inspired by real life, real time events, but I never “got” into that feeling of actually living 25 years ago.
My time travel project never reached the level and intensity I had intended. It stayed a literary construct, nothing more.

It staying at the surface had to do with the worldwide events of early 2020, when I was seven to eight months into my retro diary series, and toying with the idea of taking it up a notch and turn back time. But before I could decide, we all became dependent on 21st century technology to stay in touch.
Overnight, it became impossible to revive an analogue past, in particular because the social dynamics around real-life interaction affected my mental health.

I know I’m cutting corners here, but to this day I don’t understand why we, citizens, turned on each other and how the responsibility towards vulnerable people was made into a key argument.
Fast forward 2023, and those vulnerable people are still vulnerable, yet those same social dynamics have now entirely returned to normal.
There would not be a lasting protection, and this could be predicted.

You have to wonder who was the biggest villain: The one who openly defended their controversial choice back in the day, or the one who pretended to be with the good and responsible people, until they could get on with their normal life without having to care.
By now you have to explain yourself if you still wear a mask.
The only consistent factor seems to be that the numbers of a majority decide who is right.

It’s comparable with a situation where for example security at a concert would be very tight, and we all tell each other it’s such a good thing that all those weapons are not allowed on the premises, and people making an incredible big deal about it with families turning on each other, people losing friends and everything. And then one year those same people who enforced the tight security, don’t care anymore and no one talks about it.

I have no idea if these paragraphs are enough of a conclusion or attempt of trying to understand why I found those years so stressful, but for now that is all I can say about it.
I do know that my main blog contains several series trying to get my sexuality back as well as my retro-project back;
Both areas of my life were interchangeable to me.

The Lauren who was 25 years younger was living in a carefree analog world, with her lover Bear who was the same age as she was.
But no matter how many “Behind the scenes” (BTS) posts I wrote to write about the real-time universe and how to create space for Lauren 1995/1996/1997 to have a life of some sort;
No matter how many diaries I wrote about my personal isolation and frustration during those years, real life struggles, and regardless of how many quests I took to recover who I was sexually;
It didn’t work.

Everything stayed as dry and rooted in the now, as it ever was.

So now it is 2023 and the social dynamics have shifted. The situation is comparable to late 2019, and I can, and should, dive into the universe of the 20th century.

I am finally going to give Lauren 1998, the life she deserves.

He’s back alright | time travel journal #3

Mr. Big and writer Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

Mr. Big and writer Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

This year, I am “supposed to” live, 25 years ago.

It is my time travel project, and I started it in 2019, but because it stayed a literary construct where I basically only translated my diary to a fictional past (as if it happened 25 years ago) I decided to go all in this year.
To an extend the past week did become that “click” moment though!

I am sick, so I had to stay in and couldn’t work.
Although I had a ton of work scheduled for this week, I had to let it go entirely. I was in bed with a fever, and when that cleared up I was still too miserable to do anything else.
But the payoff has been that I finally dropped into that reality of being Lauren in 1998, being at home during the weekend.
I’m convinced that how I feel tonight, is as close as I have ever been to feeling like 1998.

If she had had a week where she’d had to cancel all her freelance stuff, and then stay in over the weekend, because she was just recovering, this is how her Saturday night would have looked.
There were no blogs yet, so she would not be able to type online like I do now.

This inspired me to look up when blogging started, and I found that Open Diary started in October 1998. That means I can make Lauren 1998 an early adapter of this.
The more popular platform Blogger didn’t start until August 1999. 

Open Diary was relaunched in 2018, so I can even consider using the real Open Diary website, although I think that considering my diary content is sexual (hopefully!) it is not a good idea.
But anyway, it means that I can give her an online diary at the end of this year, bringing our lives even more in line with each other.

I have been trying to cultivate being offline, but until I got sick it was unsuccessful. Now it almost feels too easy, but wonderful. The separation between online hours 2022, and the rest of my activities, is taking shape.
So there are a lot of desk hours which in theory could take place in 1998, as long as you’re not too strikt. Doing my finance, doing email, all desk work as long as you don’t touch social media or news sites.
But I could never do that.
I never reached the stage where I had a peaceful, calm, 20th century relationship with my computer.

But now that I am taking my first steps back behind my writer’s desk, it is easy to not get entangled. Also because I have not been active on social media for a week, with the exception of some very specific things that I really wanted to do.
I now feel I can recreate the atmosphere of the 20th century.
The time travel project I wanted to dedicate myself to this year, is finally taking off.

But something I wrote about in my previous Time travel journal, is also still true:
Instead of thinking about my lover as Bear, a man in his 20s, I keep seeing him as Mr.Big.
Something that does not go with being Lauren in 1998.

Naming him Mr.Big dates back to the beginning of our relationship.
I started writing about him as Mr.Big in March 2015, until summer 2019 when I started this time travel project and he became Bear.
For a short while he had two names: Bear when I wrote about him in 1994 and Mr.Big when it was 2019, but I felt he belonged in 1994.
That our Mr.Big and Carrie days were over, and it was now time for our Lauren and Bear days.

In my last post here I wrote how instead of feeling a deeper connection with the younger side of the character, Bear, Mr. Big had been making a comeback.
And this is continuing to be the case.

This afternoon I went back to bed, because I was feeling so sick. The past two days I managed to stay awake during the day, but today I just had to first of all take Paracetamol, which I normally do not take during the day.
And secondly, I needed sleep.
So I slept for two hours, and I dreamed about Mr.Big.

We were in an open relationship, but I felt jealous because I knew I had so little to offer him now. I knew my life had been so boring, and that I was in danger of losing him to someone who would love him, and have adventures with him.
Someone who could offer him a life I never could, but the last remains of my happy carefree adventurous lifestyle has been wiped out during 2020-2022.
I am a shadow of the woman I was, and my life seems to consist of separate events and separate people.
It is no longer integrated.
There is no bigger picture of who I am, and what I am about.

I never even understood that having a structure, an invisible beat to your social life, work life, to your year; That that meant something, and that it was worth fighting for.
I didn’t know what it was, until after 2020, and it was no longer there.
It feels like my Life has ended, in 2020. The beat has stopped.

I’ve been going without ever since, and I have been very aware of that.
Very aware, that I no longer have to offer Mr.Big, what I once did.

So instead of feeling like Lauren 1998 and her lover Bear, I feel like Lauren 2023 and her lover Mr.Big who waits until she finds her inner-Carrie.
But I don’t know how.

And I dream about seeing him flirt with other women and locking eyes with me:
“Baby, I would wait for you, but I have my needs.”
And as I already wrote in the last post as well, I m just happy that at least one of us, is still in the game.

I can’t wait to forget about these past few rotten years, where I lost everything I once called a life, yet didn’t even realize that was a life;
And to be reborn as Lauren in 1998.

Shiny and new.

.
~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
This is also where I write my Lauren 1998 diaries.
Plus letters to my coach Sara.

Follow THE TIME TRAVEL JOURNAL

Time Travel Journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow Time Travel Journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP

 

A quick review 2019-2023 | time travel journal #1

“If I was now living 25 years ago, how would I live?”

In 2019 I started my Time Travel project, where I wrote fictional diary entries from 25 years ago.

I write these diaries on what has been my main website since 2018.
https://laurenharteveld.com/
You can find them under headers such as “diary 1998”.

The diary entries are, not entirely unintentional, pretty difficult to find on my site.
But you can try the following pages:
1. https://laurenharteveld.com/1994-a-performance-art-project/
2. https://laurenharteveld.com/1995-1996-book-2-of-my-performance-project/
And the categories:
3. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1995-1996/
4. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1997/
5. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1998/

Starting at 2019 going on 1994;
The posts were inspired by real life, real time events, but I never “got” into that feeling of actually living 25 years ago.
My time travel project never reached the level and intensity I had intended. It stayed a literary construct, nothing more.

It staying at the surface had to do with the worldwide events of early 2020, when I was seven to eight months into my retro diary series, and toying with the idea of taking it up a notch and turn back time. But before I could decide, we all became dependent on 21st century technology to stay in touch.
Overnight, it became impossible to revive an analogue past, in particular because the social dynamics around real-life interaction affected my mental health.

I know I’m cutting corners here, but to this day I don’t understand why we, citizens, turned on each other and how the responsibility towards vulnerable people was made into a key argument.
Fast forward 2023, and those vulnerable people are still vulnerable, yet those same social dynamics have now entirely returned to normal.
There would not be a lasting protection, and this could be predicted.

You have to wonder who was the biggest villain: The one who openly defended their controversial choice back in the day, or the one who pretended to be with the good and responsible people, until they could get on with their normal life without having to care.
By now you have to explain yourself if you still wear a mask.
The only consistent factor seems to be that the numbers of a majority decide who is right.

It’s comparable with a situation where for example security at a concert would be very tight, and we all tell each other it’s such a good thing that all those weapons are not allowed on the premises, and people making an incredible big deal about it with families turning on each other, people losing friends and everything. And then one year those same people who enforced the tight security, don’t care anymore and no one talks about it.

I have no idea if these paragraphs are enough of a conclusion or attempt of trying to understand why I found those years so stressful, but for now that is all I can say about it.
I do know that my main blog contains several series trying to get my sexuality back as well as my retro-project back;
Both areas of my life were interchangeable to me.

The Lauren who was 25 years younger was living in a carefree analog world, with her lover Bear who was the same age as she was.
But no matter how many “Behind the scenes” (BTS) posts I wrote to write about the real-time universe and how to create space for Lauren 1995/1996/1997 to have a life of some sort;
No matter how many diaries I wrote about my personal isolation and frustration during those years, real life struggles, and regardless of how many quests I took to recover who I was sexually;
It didn’t work.

Everything stayed as dry and rooted in the now, as it ever was.

So now it is 2023 and the social dynamics have shifted. The situation is comparable to late 2019, and I can, and should, dive into the universe of the 20th century.

I am finally going to give Lauren 1998, the life she deserves.

At least one of us is having Big fun | time travel journal #2

Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City

Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City

My time travel project seems to be moving in the wrong direction.
I’m going back alright!
But instead of feeling like the 20th century me, a 25 year old Lauren who is figuring out life and enjoying a carefree relationship with her lover Bear;
I’m sucked into a rerun of 2015-2016, the time I still identified my lover as “Mr.Big”, based on the character in Sex and the City.

And if he was Mr.Big, I was of course Carrie Bradshaw, the in-love writer, who cannot bear that Big is behaving entirely uncommittable.
Every time she thinks she is entitled to a sign, a gesture, a promise, she ends up being deeply hurt by his ability to deflect them.

My lover and me met late 2014, and I started writing about him approximately March 2015.
I removed those stories from my website, but they’re bundled up in my book “Big” which you can find among the others, in my bookstore.

When in 2019 I started my first diary I wrote as a 25 year younger version of me, I rewrote our storyline and renamed him “Bear”.
A name that immediately clicked.
That I was able to transfer our relationship to the 90s, was a major reason why I knew this Time travel project would be a success. It was one of the main pillars.
The other pillar was my work, where young Lauren needs to figure out how to become a writer, when she can hardly manage finishing her freelance obligations.
A question I still ponder about in 2023.

There are developments in that area, maybe I will tell about them in a future Time travel journal, but just like Carrie, I prefer talking about my love life.
I find career irrelevant, compared to the love life that is supposed to inspire my writing.

To be a writer means to live in a way that there are stories to tell, has become my personal rule of life.

So maybe the jealousy I am about to share with you, is really not so much about feeling jealous in my love life, but about realizing that my ability to write the interesting things, the things I want to write, the things Lauren 25 years younger wants to write about as well, is hinging on one man:
Mr.Big
Or 25 years back, Bear.

If he would move on to greener pastures, and it’s one where monogamy rules and he shuts the gate behind him, I am left without the man who has become my creative lifeline.
And the past few weeks, I have been able to feel that…. the risk is almost tangible, and the danger almost palpable.
Like Carrie, I long for a sign, a commitment. I long for him telling me that there will always be room for me, his little Carrie, in his life.
That he will not leave me without love, without sex, without rendez-vous and stories to tell.
But just like Mr. Big. he doesn’t, and I am left feeling as desperate as Carrie but also with an overwhelming realization:
How did it come this far?

How come, that after eight years, my entire creative core has become synonymous with one man?
When the years prior to that I nourished entire calendars with all the dates with all the different men. They were not conquests, far from! There was nothing to conquer. 
But I cherished how I, an introvert whose most intimate relationship is with her keyboard, had gone out and had made life fun. How we had created good events, good memories, and yes, sometimes sex.
The calendars were a way of hanging on to a lifestyle I wanted for myself.
A lifestyle I did not invest in since 2015.

When I did meet new men, as I had all those years through various internet platforms, it was never the way it was before I saw Big.
It was so clear that my heart, and further south, were his.
The dates felt not-right, and I know I made the right decision to stop searching. To stop creating a “calendar worthy” dating life.

But it means that every time Mr.Big drops out of communication, or if I can feel any sort of change in the way we communicate, I am paralyzed with fear.
“Oh God, what if he leaves me!”

The most stupid thing about the whole situation, is that I want him to see other women.
And I also want him to drop out of communication, when he is occupied by other things including other women.

My worst nightmare would be that he would pledge his undying faith to me, build his entire world around me, and that our love would go from a waterfall of passion to a slowly dying pond where nothing can live.

It’s way better to have him creating waterfalls en enjoying green pastures, with other women – in fact, him doing this is why OUR waterfalls have not fallen flat! It’s certainly not because I have spent eight years behind my desk, I can tell you that! – than to have him standing still, and risk our passion dying.

This is what I have been thinking about.
Instead of dropping into full 90s mode, I worry about the very real 21st century reality that my dating life with new men, has become non-existent.
All my male friends have been my friends for years.
I absolutely love going out with them, but it is not the internet dating game I so enjoyed before Mr.Big. A game I stepped away from, and that was the right decision.
But it does sting, that Mr.Big is very capable of doing that. And even worse;
It stings that if he wouldn’t, we also would not have what we have had for eight years.

My creative lifeline is not just somewhat disturbingly tied to my relationship with Mr.Big;
It is also tied to him making waterfalls and visiting unknown pastures without me.

I depend on him bringing sexual energy, the energy of untold sexual adventures. I see the invisible crown of someone who has made his relationships, including the sexual ones, his priority.  

At best we have a co-dependent relationship, where he depends on me crafting stories, and embellishing his qualities and highlighting the meaning of what comes so natural to him.

In the light of him being so good at something that I have given up on, because it was just causing so much stress, and nothing compared to him;
My biggest hope is that I am giving something back, he craves as much as I crave him.

And my biggest fear, is that I don’t.

.
~Lauren/LS Harteveld

An unexamined life is not worth living

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
This is also where I write my Lauren 1998 diaries.
Plus letters to my coach Sara.

Follow THE TIME TRAVEL JOURNAL 

Time Travel Journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow Time Travel Journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP

 

A quick review 2019-2023 | time travel journal #1

 

“If I was now living 25 years ago, how would I live?”

In 2019 I started my Time Travel project, where I wrote fictional diary entries from 25 years ago.

I write these diaries on what has been my main website since 2018.
https://laurenharteveld.com/
You can find them under headers such as “diary 1998”.

The diary entries are, not entirely unintentional, pretty difficult to find on my site.
But you can try the following pages:
1. https://laurenharteveld.com/1994-a-performance-art-project/
2. https://laurenharteveld.com/1995-1996-book-2-of-my-performance-project/
And the categories:
3. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1995-1996/
4. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1997/
5. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1998/

Starting at 2019 going on 1994;
The posts were inspired by real life, real time events, but I never “got” into that feeling of actually living 25 years ago.
My time travel project never reached the level and intensity I had intended. It stayed a literary construct, nothing more.

It staying at the surface had to do with the worldwide events of early 2020, when I was seven to eight months into my retro diary series, and toying with the idea of taking it up a notch and turn back time. But before I could decide, we all became dependent on 21st century technology to stay in touch.
Overnight, it became impossible to revive an analogue past, in particular because the social dynamics around real-life interaction affected my mental health.

I know I’m cutting corners here, but to this day I don’t understand why we, citizens, turned on each other and how the responsibility towards vulnerable people was made into a key argument.
Fast forward 2023, and those vulnerable people are still vulnerable, yet those same social dynamics have now entirely returned to normal.
There would not be a lasting protection, and this could be predicted.

You have to wonder who was the biggest villain: The one who openly defended their controversial choice back in the day, or the one who pretended to be with the good and responsible people, until they could get on with their normal life without having to care.
By now you have to explain yourself if you still wear a mask.
The only consistent factor seems to be that the numbers of a majority decide who is right.

It’s comparable with a situation where for example security at a concert would be very tight, and we all tell each other it’s such a good thing that all those weapons are not allowed on the premises, and people making an incredible big deal about it with families turning on each other, people losing friends and everything. And then one year those same people who enforced the tight security, don’t care anymore and no one talks about it.

I have no idea if these paragraphs are enough of a conclusion or attempt of trying to understand why I found those years so stressful, but for now that is all I can say about it.
I do know that my main blog contains several series trying to get my sexuality back as well as my retro-project back;
Both areas of my life were interchangeable to me.

The Lauren who was 25 years younger was living in a carefree analog world, with her lover Bear who was the same age as she was.
But no matter how many “Behind the scenes” (BTS) posts I wrote to write about the real-time universe and how to create space for Lauren 1995/1996/1997 to have a life of some sort;
No matter how many diaries I wrote about my personal isolation and frustration during those years, real life struggles, and regardless of how many quests I took to recover who I was sexually;
It didn’t work.

Everything stayed as dry and rooted in the now, as it ever was.

So now it is 2023 and the social dynamics have shifted. The situation is comparable to late 2019, and I can, and should, dive into the universe of the 20th century.

I am finally going to give Lauren 1998, the life she deserves.

A quick review 2019-2023 | time travel journal #1

MADONNA BY STEVEN MEISEL FOR VANITY FAIR APRIL 1991“If I was now living 25 years ago, how would I live?”

In 2019 I started my Time Travel project, where I wrote fictional diary entries from 25 years ago.

I write these diaries on what has been my main website since 2018.
https://laurenharteveld.com/
You can find them under headers such as “diary 1998”.

The diary entries are, not entirely unintentional, pretty difficult to find on my site.
But you can try the following pages:
1. https://laurenharteveld.com/1994-a-performance-art-project/
2. https://laurenharteveld.com/1995-1996-book-2-of-my-performance-project/
And the categories:
3. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1995-1996/
4. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1997/
5. https://laurenharteveld.com/category/the-time-travel-project/1998/

Starting at 2019 going on 1994;
The posts were inspired by real life, real time events, but I never “got” into that feeling of actually living 25 years ago.

My time travel project never reached the level and intensity I had intended. It stayed a literary construct, nothing more.

It staying at the surface had to do with the worldwide events of early 2020, when I was seven to eight months into my retro diary series, and toying with the idea of taking it up a notch and turn back time. But before I could decide, we all became dependent on 21st century technology to stay in touch.
Overnight, it became impossible to revive an analogue past, in particular because the social dynamics around real-life interaction affected my mental health.

I know I’m cutting corners here, but to this day I don’t understand why we, citizens, turned on each other and how the responsibility towards vulnerable people was made into a key argument.
Fast forward 2023, and those vulnerable people are still vulnerable, yet those same social dynamics have now entirely returned to normal.
There would not be a lasting protection, and this could be predicted.

You have to wonder who was the biggest villain: The one who openly defended their controversial choice back in the day, or the one who pretended to be with the good and responsible people, until they could get on with their normal life without having to care.
By now you have to explain yourself if you still wear a mask.
The only consistent factor seems to be that the numbers of a majority decide who is right.

It’s comparable with a situation where for example security at a concert would be very tight, and we all tell each other it’s such a good thing that all those weapons are not allowed on the premises, and people making an incredible big deal about it with families turning on each other, people losing friends and everything. And then one year those same people who enforced the tight security, don’t care anymore and no one talks about it.

I have no idea if these paragraphs are enough of a conclusion or attempt of trying to understand why I found those years so stressful, but for now that is all I can say about it.
I do know that my main blog contains several series trying to get my sexuality back as well as my retro-project back;
Both areas of my life were interchangeable to me.

The Lauren who was 25 years younger was living in a carefree analog world, with her lover Bear who was the same age as she was.
But no matter how many “Behind the scenes” (BTS) posts I wrote to write about the real-time universe and how to create space for Lauren 1995/1996/1997 to have a life of some sort;
No matter how many diaries I wrote about my personal isolation and frustration during those years, real life struggles, and regardless of how many quests I took to recover who I was sexually;
It didn’t work.

Everything stayed as dry and rooted in the now, as it ever was.

So now it is 2023 and the social dynamics have shifted. The situation is comparable to late 2019, and I can, and should, dive into the universe of the 20th century.

I am finally going to give Lauren 1998, the life she deserves.

 

~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
This is also where I write my Lauren 1998 diaries.
Plus letters to my coach Sara.

ABOUT THE TIME TRAVEL JOURNAL 

Time Travel Journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow Time Travel Journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP

 

I got this | Time Capsules

Madonna 1983 ish 2 tumblr_76136949b6ab94a17f4d73805bd47396_b45e4187_500There is a story of Madonna having her “Do I really want this?!” moment. It were the years before she had made it, and on top of the poverty, the endless hustling and the uncertainty of never knowing if YOU can really make it despite the odds, she had a really bad experience that would have been enough to discourage the bravest of us.

She stared at the wallpaper, horrified and fighting her racing thoughts, alone in her tiny room.
Perhaps it was even the cockroach infested one where she left the door open, because it had been forced open so many times, she chose to not lock it in the first place.

The whole night she pondered, she doubted, and she was well aware that this was the right moment to quit. To give up her dream.
Or did she really want to continue?
We know the answer.

And it was that story I was reminded of today.

I had woken up after way too little sleep, for the second night in a row. And I stared at the ceiling like Madonna had been staring at the wallpaper. Only I did give up on my dreams.
Due to a series of events, and none of them remotely as serious as what Madonna pushed through, I saw no other option than to bail out on a career, on fame, on anything that looked proper and together.
I was going to 
abandon it all.

I wouldn’t even bother to save the good parts, and instead I would delete all my accounts, my blogs, my videos, and THEN ask Google to forget my name.
The rest of my life I would mysteriously live under the radar and be a writer under this alterego, but without ever making a public appearance again.
We know the answer.
Because when after hours of staring and contemplating in which exact order I was going to kill off my entire online identity, I had put so many elements back in, I had my entire plan back!
Bar one or two elements. It really wasn’t that big of a difference, but because in my mind I had deleted it all, and had only put back the things I really didn’t want to let go of, it felt so much lighter!

So by the time I got out of bed, I felt incredibly joyful about my new life!

The darkest days of 2022 brought me the best breakthrough, that I really, really needed.

What the past week did teach me, was that I wasn’t ready. Just like Madonna must have been aware that she needed to get out of that hellhole and free herself from the misery that she could control, I spent the whole day cleaning my online life up.
And suddenly the things that I ve known needed to get done, some of them for years;
They suddenly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, got done.

And I knew it.
I got this.

~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
Currently featuring my 1997 diary and letters to my coach Sara.

ABOUT TIME CAPSULES 

My time capsules are a written out collection of things that I have come into contact with, and that will influence my art.

The project is Inspired by Warhol, who created one time capsule (box) a month, collecting physical objects.

Time Capsules is a stand-alone project.
You cannot subscribe to this blog, but you can follow Time Capsules on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP

 

Never forget who you are| Time Capsules

Clipping from an early 21st century Elle, that I identified with as being the writer me, LS Harteveld.

Clipping from an early 21st century Elle, that I identified with as being the “writer me”, LS Harteveld. I ve always felt more like her than like my real self, and often dress similarly to her.

It seems ironic that out of all people I am the one who writes a post about staying true to your own identity.
Because I have had an alterego,
this alterego of LS Harteveld, since 2006.

This was before I identified with Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell. I have loved Sharon Stone’s portrayal of her since the release of the movie in 1992, and even copied her clothing style to a degree, and still do to this day;
But in the 90s and early 00s I never identified as being so bold in my sexuality, nor as being a writer.

So although I would later write many blogpost of how I identified with Catherine Tramell being my role model for being a writer, it wasn’t “her” that lead the way, in 2006 when I started writing.

It was something else:
A fashion shoot for denim in a glossy, I think it was in Elle.
This was how I identified myself, when I decided how to define myself. 
Years later I made a promotional photo inspired by this clipping, and I used it on the cover of my collected works “Het Boek Benjamin”.

Both the book about my love for Catherine Tramell, “The Beach, C” (2021)
as well as “Het Boek Benjamin” with the cover photo can be found in my bookstore at Lulu:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/LaurenandLulu 

Since it’s 30 years after Basic Instinct and 20 years after that Elle, when I say “Never forget who you are”, I clearly do not mean there is some super authentic, deeper down version of your universal self, that defines you more, than movie stars or clippings.
No, I mean your true identity is defined by things you were automatically drawn to right from the first moment you saw them.

And there is a good chance it were things (works of art, or performances) that were designed to speak to an audience and to tell a story. And this will have made it all the more difficult to understand that they struck a deeper chord with you.
That what you were feeling was important.

I have had a few of those defining moments, and I have transported or started using many of them, for my work under my real name.
And it feels good: It feels like the identity under my real name is growing in authenticity, as I am giving “her” the same freedom to be who she is, and have her own identity, just like I gave it to LS Harteveld all those years ago.
But this automatically means that although those elements have been present here, under my work of LS Harteveld, they no longer are.
Part of the stories, and memories, will no longer be covered here, because I moved them to my “new”, real identity.

But there are aspects of myself,  which will always stay here.
That will always be LS Harteveld, and that will never be anything else.

The sexual part, the Catherine Tramell part, the Carrie Bradshaw part, the having a lover I call Big part; 
But also, way more general, the me “A Writer” part! 
Which is, as I said in my previous Time Capsule as well, the largest part of me.
That identity, my true identity, will only, ever, be LS Harteveld.

That part of me that shows up for her writing, in the same way Carrie Bradshaw showed up for love. As she said in the final (double) episode of Sex and the City, when she breaks up with her last boyfriend before ultimately returning to Mr.Big;

“I am someone who is looking for love. Real love.
Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.
And I don’t think that love is here, in this expensive suite, in this lovely hotel, in Paris.”

Regardless of how successful I will ever be under my real name, and how lovely it will all be, that ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love?
That can only be found here.

.
~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
Currently featuring my 1997 diary and letters to my coach Sara.

ABOUT TIME CAPSULES 

My time capsules are a written out collection of things that I have come into contact with, and that will influence my art.

The project is Inspired by Warhol, who created one time capsule (box) a month, collecting physical objects.

Time Capsules is a stand-alone project.
You cannot subscribe to this blog, but you can follow Time Capsules on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP

 

I would choose this life if I knew how| Time Capsules

Carrie Bradshaw download (6)It’s been 8 months since I made a time capsule and I m resisting the urge to reread the last one. But I could see the photo (a vision board photo of a business woman with red lipstick) and  understood the general gist of the post.
About finding a business or success identity, no doubt.

It’s not that it didn’t stick, it’s just that all my Lauren Harteveld work has been marginalized over the winter. I let it because I just didn’t know what to do with it. I have three Lauren Harteveld blogs, but only use the third one with the exception of brief outbursts on this one you re reading right now (a blog that doesn’t give out notifications and you can’t subscribe to it, which allows me to write as often as I like without feeling I m burdening people), and an occasional burst of enthusiasm on my Dutch blog.

For years I ve only been using my third blog, and by now I only use it for two things:
Letters to my creativity coach and diary entries from Lauren 1997.
All other topics and series, things I started in the Covid years, have fallen by the wayside.

Lauren 1997 is my performance art project, where I identify as if I am Lauren Harteveld in 1997, which is a double challenge. Because not only am I in reality 25 years older, and reality looks quite different now. This is already two things, I realize now: My body/ me is 25 years older AND the world has moved on 25 years.
But let’s count that as one.
And then the second challenge is that Lauren Harteveld is an alterego. I am not, Lauren Harteveld. At least not on paper. But I FEEL more Lauren Harteveld than I feel “real me”.

There is a Dutch movie from 1981, High Heels, Real Love (Dutch trailer below post) where a CEO goes undercover in his own company because he envies the comradery of the workers.
He starts a relationship with a woman who works at the cafeteria, and the whole situation gets very explosive when in he also compliments her in his real identity as CEO.
Under his alterego, he challenges his real self to a duel.
The movie ends with him choosing his alterego identity over his real life.

And I remember a similar case, although only vaguely because I didn’t watch the show, but it was a British television program where you learned a new profession in a relatively short time, and went undercover as a professional or as a trainee, with a new name.
There was one candidate, I believe his new name was Mike and his new profession bouncer, who stayed in his new role.
He refused to come out because he liked his new life better, where nobody knew who he really was.

There are some aspects I would love to keep from 2022: I love blogging for example, and that didn’t exist in 1997.
I can be a writer in 2022 without anybody’s help, and I can write a lot. I don’t have to go through the process of editing and cleaning up an entire novel: I blog, I write multiple time a week and instead of cleaning up the old I write something new.
Under my real name I have now decided on a structure for my work, by taking it online. And although I never planned to be so rigid, and to no longer have a real-life professional life as an independent, once I had decided on taking all of my art online and stop being available as a professional in the real world. it clicked and I m now very happy with it.
It is as if my real self is only an avatar, a virtual identity.

And the full creative freedom I now have under my real name, is unprecedented and would not have been possible in 1997.
So I like that.

But the irony is that as the months went by, and my mission and work became clear, I grew quiet here. LS Harteveld got quiet, even though as always, this is the most important part of me.

The reason I grew quiet is because I desire to remain unknown here.
With my work being online under my real name, I do not want the paths to cross, and I write as little as possible. I only use the third blog, and only for Lauren 1997 diary and my letters to Sara, the two must-dos.
The diary, because it IS the performance project. Writing Lauren’s 1997 diary is the closest thing to being Lauren.
And the letter to my coach is my way of preparing for our call and communicating with her.

But it feels strange to not write more for these accounts, of LS Harteveld. And if I could choose an identity, I would choose to be LS Harteveld or Lauren 1997, and drop all my work under my real name and give it to her instead.

I think I am LS Harteveld, undercover in my real life.
.

~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

.
ABOUT TIME CAPSULES 

My time capsules are a written out collection of things that I have come into contact with, and that will influence my art.

The project is Inspired by Warhol, who created one time capsule (box) a month, collecting physical objects.

Time Capsules is a stand-alone project.
You cannot subscribe to this blog, but you can follow Time Capsules on
Facebook
and
Twitter

My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP