As usual, since this IS a publishing journal (not a diary!) (technically!) (meaning I always have a lot to say about everything that happened!) let me first share the chapter of the diary* I edited:

I remember when we met | “1995” series
(with new 2024 art work/ picture)

It is a breakup diary*, taking place in January 1995, where a 22 year old Lauren looks back on her affair with her lover Bear, who broke things off with her in December 1994.

Back to current day, January 2024, and clocking in at .. *checks date previous post* 11 days!
Eleven days, needed to recover from the December 2023 breakup, as described in my last post here, January 1st. And 11 days without working on my book.
Well, for an affair which was broken-up only for the second time in 9 years, dropping out of attending to your most “slow moving”, longterm project of publishing your retro-diaries, is not too bad.

The first few days I had to talk it over, but now I no longer even mention it. It’s like after recovering from the initial shock, my coping seems to be to just pick up life and move forward.

A big difference between my retro diaries, a project I started in 2019 where I started documenting my life in a fictional format of living 25 years ago, and real January 2024 life, is that I am not in my twenties anymore, and that at my age you simply cannot waste that much energy on people making different life choices.
Even if that choice is cutting off what I think will end up being the most thrilling sexual relationship of my entire life, which is considerably longer and richer in experience than 20th century Lauren’s life!

Even then.
Let go.

And let’s say I did have the energy to spend on mourning my loss, the loneliness or even my wounded heart; Why, would I do that?
It was a voluntary choice he made, and in the end I think our loose arrangement was way more ideal for me than it was to him.

I loved having a lover, who represented all that was good about men, about life, and even about me!
I loved our times together.

But to him, as long as I knew him, there has been a deep desire to be a monogamous reliable man. Something he will never have with me, because even if we would be a couple, I would never encourage his monogamy.
Monogamy is my turf, I am so loyal the monogamy was in all probability coded into my DNA, because it’s certainly not backed up by my principal choices.
It just never happens, even when I can be in love with multiple men, and willing to make space for it and explore it.

I know these things now. And since then I know that in my relationships, if I want them to be healthy, there can be only one of us living an introspective predictable life, and that seat is taken.
The arrangement where he did whatever he wanted to, and we dated and had great sex, was an absolute revelation for me.
But it was not what he aspired to be.

So what else can I be but happy that he found a way to structure his life, and who knows our friendship, in a way that he is no longer tempted by me?
And that’s how I feel.

Of course I am bummed out this has been dragging on for over a year, since I have felt something shifting late 2022, and he kept dodging the subject every time I brought it up.
But those things were his choice, and freedom has always been at the heart of our affair.

Including the freedom to take 14 months and end it by casually mentioning the penthouse where we saw each other for 9 years is gone.
Including that freedom.

I don’t know if I can really flatter myself with the thought he had to sell real estate in order to not be tempted to have sex with me.
But it is little more than a fun thought, a good story to tell. Not something that I need to be true in order to be okay with it.

He was not as happy with us as I was, and he removed himself out of our affair to pursue happiness.
May he find it.

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.

Since this is after all a publishing journal – and because I have A LOT to say!- let me start by sharing the chapter, which I edited today.
The book I am publishing is the diary 1994-1996, and it consists of the entries of a retro/faux diary*.
I have translated my current day 21st century life, to a fictional life 25 year earlier. A literary construct that allows me to cultivate a sense of living in the past, as well as to fictionalizing my life.

This is the Chapter that was up next, which I revised today, and is now ready to go into the book. It is the diary entry of January 4, 1995
Sexual Innuendo | “1995” series
An entry which Lauren wrote within one month, after her lover Bear broke up with her, but the entry is not about Bear but about a second man in her life. One she calls “Slash”.
The upcoming chapters will be more reflective on the Bear situation, and will be very confronting because:
He broke up with me again, yesterday. Or Bear’s 21st century version Mr.Big did.
Yesterday, 31 December 2023, nothing faux or fictionalized about it, although technically it wasn’t a breakup but death by real estate.
But more about that later.

Now I know I am asking a lot of you, timeline wise, but this is the gist of it:
1.December 2019 my lover Mr.Big breaks up with me, for the first and only time until recent events.
– > I fictionalize these events to Lauren’s diary December 1994.
2.January 2020 I reflect on a second man in my life
->I fictionalize these events to a man called Slash for Lauren 1995
This is the post I shared with you today.
3.And now: 31 December 2023 my lover breaks up with me, for real this time.
->I let my shattered alterego on the last day of her 1998 write about this in her diary.
This is a blogpost that was published onto the main blog yesterday.
You can read it here:
-> And just like that. Gone. | 1998 diary

24 Hours ago, I still had a lover.
Someone with whom I had not slept with since January 2023 (true) but also someone who I had still seen a few times, and with whom I stayed in touch and he with me.
Someone whose birthday I remembered, who sent me the occasional photo he knew I would like and so on.

Someone who had refused all conversation starters I had given him about a shift I had felt in his energy, from as early as February 2023.
A shift I had brushed off in January 2023, in December 2022, when we had lovely dates, in which we both pleased the other, yet the sex was no longer the intense mental and physical pleasure dome it had always been!
Yes…. the shift was earlier, but because we obviously still cared a lot for each other, and still had the hots for each other, I had brushed it off.

It did not matter how I opened, which media I used, or if it was real life;
For the entire year, up until our final Whatsapp conversation yesterday the 31st, whenever I offered him the opportunity to tell me what was going on and what he needed;
He consequently, with no exception, ignored it, told half-truths and flat-out lied if needed.

At least that is all over now. Although I still do not know what is going on, I no longer have to. Death by real estate… of course I should have known he would find a way out.
An ugly one…. and WHY?!

All he had to do was say: “Goodbye. I can no longer have you in my life.”

I only function if I am not just wanted, but if a man works, every time, without exception, to be with me.
And makes it special.
Breaking up with me is super easy, because all you have to do is stop doing all the things you have done for 8 years (counting January 2023 as the end date), and we will never have sex again.

Even 2023 as a whole was proof of how easy it is to sexually break up with me.
Because apparently, he no longer wanted me, and tadaa! A year without sex.
After January; Still in touch, still had the privacy of his penthouse (I m guessing you can see the real estate construct coming!), still remembering birthdays and caring for each other.
But no sex.

He had no trouble having a good time with me, without doing anything drastic.
I think the breakup was totally uncalled for.
An unnecessary evil.

So how did he do it?
How does a man break up with his mistress after 9 years?
A mistress who had already asked him in the most direct fashion she had used the entire year, for a heart to heart, on December 11th.
Because she wanted to know what was going on.
And he had agreed, yet had not accepted her time frame, which she had planned generously before her holidays, in which she did not want any drama, but wanted to have peace in her heart, knowing she had left behind this year, what needed to be left behind.

And instead he pushed this heart-to-heart forward, to the midst of holiday season, but without saying a specific date.
And to then out of the blue, on the 31st of December, casually mention – closing with an emoji that was such a brutal insult considering the weight of blowing up their affair – that they could no longer use the condo to meet because he had had to sell it *insert any emoticon here, because they’d all be inappropriate*

I am convinced that that is not what he has been hiding from me this year. It is another woman, another life, a desire to be rid of me because I am a complication.
It is about not wanting a rerun from December 2019 when he broke up with me in a nice way, only to have our affair coming back stronger, and shining brighter than it ever had!

The condo was the way to end it. Selling the safe space we had for 9 years, the place he bought when he was in his early 30s, and that he never gave up for his wife claiming he needed it for his work here in the area – that sale, was literally doing the work for him.
He did not trust himself to be able to pull himself out of our affair, so he pulled his million dollar condo out instead.

After 9 years, he eliminated our affair by making it homeless.
And that was after not having sex for 11 months.
First starve it, then evacuate it.

And ignoring my attempts to have a conversation about it and instead blowing it up in the last hours of the year, made sure that it would as painful and cruel as possible.

9 years, and he has evicted me out of his life, without notice.
As if I ever gave the impression to be someone who will stay for even a minute, in a place where I am no longer wanted.

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.

I found the perfect chapter to be sharing with you on December 31st,

A Warm Safe Place | “1995” series

A diary* entry which really happened that way, just that it was written on January 1st 2020 and not 1995.
Because this diary contains my current day (in this case 2020-day) events, translated to a fictionalized past.

Which is no longer that fictionalized anymore if you embrace the idea of multiple timelines, including timelines for fictional characters.
Like actors who play a part in a movie or a musical or a play, really feeling like they have become that person.

A timeline appears, where a timeline is needed.
Like the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
This was the story as it happened on the 31st of December 1994, written down on January 1st.

A Warm Safe Place | “1995” series

I can only hope that on the 1st of January 2024, the Lauren who lives at 1 January 1999, has another beautiful adventure to tell, on the main blog.
Or that we can split her timeline;
And give her one.

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.

Straight to the chapter:

Welcome to the jungle | “1994” series

Contrary to what I expected, it is not the work of reviewing these diary entries, written in 2019 as a 1994 diary, that is “a lot of work”, confronting or requiring constant prioritizing.
In fact:
The work is almost doing itself.

From day one of starting this publishing project, and keeping a publishing journal, a habit which I intend to keep for all the books that come after this one;
This project seems to have been blessed.

So even rereading the posts about my 2019 breakup, and just in general, reading about those last auspicious months before the pandemic, is not something that particularly challenges me.

What is, are the blogposts that are in between, that do not belong to this project.

The first two days, I included them on my way. I would see if they accidentally belonged to this project, as in that they were diary entries from Lauren.
But mostly I would update the text, adding paragraphs and spacing, and replaced the fully outdated footer that contained a YouTube channel took down, books I never intend to publish, and a series under which banner I no longer write.

But soon I found out this would become the bottleneck of this project, if I kept doing that.
That if I want to finish publishing this diary early February (having updated all chapters before the end of January) I cannot be in any way emotionally invested in all the non-diary chapters that were also written between December 2019 and Fall 2021.
I have to let go, and let those blogposts wait for their turn to be published into a book.

But the glimpses I saw, illustrated that this project, of living as if it is 25 years ago and writing the diary accordingly, has been chosen by me repeatedly, with the resolution to go all in, do it in a more serious way, block out the current day digital reality, and so on.

With very little result, I must say. Because otherwise why would you have to choose and promise yourself you really are going to do this, over and over again?
It is tempting to see in it, a failure.
A failed project, that does not live up to its promising start, or that hampers going from idea to execution.

But I don’t see it that way, and rereading today’s chapter I understand why I don’t mind that over the entire time period from summer 2019 to December 2023, where we are now, I constantly had to remind myself to live in the past, and get it right this time.

Because, as today’s updated diary entry, where Lauren gets sidelined by two men
Welcome to the jungle | “1994” series
yet does not feel particularly disheartened by it, illustrates that the only thing that ever matters, is that you stay on the field, and stay in the game.

And I am.

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.

The next chapter in the retro 1994 diary*

Anything goes, Unfinished book on Consent Play | “1994” episode 6

is the handwritten manuscript of Lauren 1994’s book on consent play.
Every night she wrote in a spiral notebook, until she realized this was turning into a book she didn’t want to write.
But not for the reasons I found triggering today, rereading it!

The first time she mentions having felt so bad she had suicidal thoughts, I immediately thought:
“Oh we’ll take that out, no need triggering people (including myself)”

2018 had been the first year of my then 46 year old life I started having thoughts like this, which were apparently still there in 2019 which I translated into the 1994 diary* project.

And although I took them as a serious sign that something was wrong
– something that would have played out far less dramatic if I had had cats, which was not possible in 2018 – I was also old enough and had always been healthy enough, to understand my life was in all probability not in danger.
However, I had actually forgotten these thoughts were still prevalent in 2019, in a watered-down or catted-down version where they did not have a chance to bottom out completely.
Forgotten, until I read the diary.

“Oh, we’ll get that out”, initial thought.

I remember that at the time of writing it (2019) I worried a lot more about the sexual triggering concepts discussed, and not about the mental health aspect of it.
But rereading it, it was the first thing that stood out.

Fortunately for me, because I did realize it would be OUT of integrity to take this part out of the diary, even if I knew the topic would not return at a later date –
it was impossible to take the triggering topic of the thoughts of the protagonist out of this chapter, without cutting too deep.
Without taking out the heart, of this story.

So it stayed in.

Lauren 1994 concluded that the sexual consent play she had had with Bear throughout their 5 year sexual arrangement, which was on the cusp of breaking up when she starting writing down all elements she thought were relevant to keep and to preserve, untangling and safe-keeping her sexual legacy from their affair;
That the consent play had been part of a much bigger concept.

That the only reason it could exist was because they had such a loose arrangement, formally speaking, that they played a consent game all the time.
Not just between the sheets.

It was a relationship style they had invented, that had facilitated the groundbreaking sex for years.
It was not, a sexual preference you could write juicy books about.

Lauren quit writing her manuscript on consent play, and decided to go all in on becoming a completely renewed, amazing version of herself.

She was still unsure if she would be able to pull that off if it would have to be done without Bear.
But the presence or absence of a book, would be of no import whatsoever.

Anything goes, Unfinished book on Consent Play | “1994” episode 6

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.

To explain why the chapter I just found,

Rocket Queen | “1994”: fanfic inspired story episode 5

from the 1994 retro diary*, made such a big impression that I chose the above title;
It is because I am in the exact same situation I was in, in 2019, when this Chapter of the retro diary was written.
Worse, really, because it is even longer ago my lover and I were dating.
We did keep in touch initially, but just like in 2019, by now it is clear he has not been able to show up for us.

I feel as powerless now, as I did in 2019.
But reading how, in 2019, I let 1994-me rise to the occasion documenting what we had had, giving words to it, in order to hold on to it in an internalized form, like a treasure that was now mine to keep, and that would be my starting point for a new relationship with a new man, or even for a renewed relationship with him;
Those discoveries, were promising.

I’m making it too wordy here. The 2019/1994 Chapter is an easy, cute, and insightful read.

The part I loved most, because I had forgotten it, was when I concluded that in trying to document the recipe of our amazing sex life, something we had been “sporting” for four -and-a-half years before he stopped seeing me and things ended up weird, just they are now another four years later-
that it (the great sex) could not be seen separately from the emotionally risky and unpredictable relationship we had developed!

“Our mysterious undefined relationship, had been a prerequisite in order to do the consent play I intended to write about,” the diary says.

And: “I need to start remembering.     
Start becoming.             
Start embodying that bold virgin that asked him for an encounter over coffee, at a café December 1989.”

Rocket Queen | “1994”: fanfic inspired story episode 5

Enjoy.

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.

A new chapter! Revised and revisited.

Out ta get me | “1994”: fanfic inspired story episode 4

Written september 2019, but situated in 1994 in a city that has a bar named Warhol, the chapter is part of a retro, vintage, diary project*, which is still ongoing (we’re now late 1998) but I have picked up publishing the first two years, 1994-1996.
It is expected in March 2024.

Retro diary project means that events that were taking place current day, or as was the case here pre-pandemic four years ago, were translated to their (and mine) 20th century counterpart.
Emails became letters, Whatsapps became phone calls, and a lot more time for reflection in between the slow daily grind, was inserted.

All my posts written late 2019 hold a special place in my heart, because diary project and love troubles aside, it were these final pre-pandemic months, where we had no idea our lives were drastically going to change.

I often feel September 2019 – February 2020 were the last 6 months of an era, and I value everything I wrote then more than all my other work.
Maybe also because from a personal point of view, these months were absolutely dramatic.

If you click the link to the retro diary chapter(s), you may be able to find several other posts, letters to my coach Sara, but also other posts, about autism.
September 2019, was the month I really started coming to terms with the fact that I was probably autistic.

Due to events I will not get into here, I pulled myself from the waiting list for a diagnoses, February 2020. Right before the pandemic.
A decision I never regretted, because the pandemic brought my “condition” to the surface. It went from something that was understood by me on an intellectual level (see other posts on the main blog, written Aug-Oct 2019) to something that developed in a lived-through understanding of being different.

Yet ultimately it would take until November worst-year-of-my-life, 2022, for me to apply for help with presumed autism, again.
Which started this summer, and has been an incredibly positive experience.

But reading the diary I wrote 2019, translated to 1994, a time when my lover was already moving away from me;
Knowing, how that ended in December, and with the pandemic lurking…..
It is like watching a horror movie.

He would break up with me, and although things would work out later as well, the heaviness of the pandemic years would certainly take some of its glow.
The amazing times came under a dark shadow.

I am writing this in the final weeks of 2023, and again, my lover has moved out of my life, exactly in the year I am finding help to get a diagnoses.
2019 has repeated itself.
Although the reason he has been moving out, as far as I can reconstruct this, has nothing to do with me, it is tough that from my point of view, finding mental help has come at the cost of losing him;
Twice.

My professional life has evolved, and I am so happy with where I am right now, late 2023. I know myself better, know how I will live what I optimistically call the second half of my life;
And the psychologist that is helping me, is warm and loving, and highly respected in her field.
She has predicted I will make a full physical and mental recovery, to the woman I used to be.
Although I have not yet talked to her about how far back we can go there. The strength of 1994? ;)

But that late 2023, the same desert analogies would apply to describe my sexlife, as they did in September 2019/1994?
That stings.

Those are the moments you feel you’re diary writing your way in circles.
And God knows, what doom lies ahead in Feb/March next year, this time.

I am mentally preparing myself, for a long stay in the desert.

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

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

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.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

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

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.