Category: art

“He has risen, Baby Girl!” | Deadpool’s Lessons will last me a Lifetime

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

I know, right?
Who butchered one of Deadpool’s widely available perfectly good pics into this hell spawn of an AI breed? 

Short answer?
Me!

And spending copious amounts of time replacing the random background, removing an even more random pillow that was tucked behind the head for unknown reasons;
And I added the katanas behind Deadpool’s head.
All to make it a little more pleasing  to the eye than just a mannequin head with a Deadpool mask and a winter cap.
You’re welcome!

The reason I resorted to this, instead of using a real photo of Deadpool is because this was the only Deadpool photo available in the copyright-covered database from design software Canva.
And therefor, the only picture I dare to use ever since criminal organizations in the Netherlands have found they are allowed to attack bloggers for IP infringement, demanding hundreds of euros for use of a single picture, and not just get away with it, but are actually operating within Dutch law.

Therefor you will not catch me posting anything, that is not either mine or Canva’s!

So here we go on this boundary stretching, genre breaking piece on the Lessons in the new Deadpool!

And just as a little disclaimer;
If you want a REALLY GOOD piece on life lesson’s one can learn from Deadpool’s latest movie?
I suggest leaving now, and ask AI to write you a piece!

AI has gotten quite skilled at coming up with structured, easy to understand content, closing with a summary of the key points.
Which is great, because it means that we writers can do whatever the f we want.

So off you go!

So now that it is just you and me, let’s get going with this post which from the looks of it, and from what I recall with my sober, highly functioning, memory since I have only drunk alcohol on a handful occasions for the past 18 months, and have been regenerating my body with female hormones to make up what menopause has undone;
Promises to be the most important blogpost in my entire career.
Plural, careers, since I was actually a writer under a penname over a decade before I found pen and paper or its 21st century equivalents, under my real name (Suzanne Beenackers).

This is the blogpost I have been waiting for, for a very long time.

Even though I have felt the matter at hand (not Deadpool, but its lessons) was addressed, done and down, multiple times already.
That I have been here before, but have been moving in circles instead of forward…

Just like this Deadpool movie, the lessons learned have been in the making for eons of false starts, half-truths and disappointments.
It was not one lucky strike.

This Deadpool movie is without a doubt Ryan Reynolds Magnum Opus.
And if my lessons have even an .001 percent of its weight, it was in fact worth the wait.

Because just like the movie, finding my calling and the One Truth has been postponed, delayed, and pushed to the backburner of an unknown universe, held together by little more than willpower.

Yet Deadpool’s challenging production, would be the first lesson.

A lesson to always believe in what it is you are here to create.
And at the same time;
To understand that it is not up to you.
That it is never, up to you.

Partially, yes, you can blame your reasons for having difficulty, the power dynamics that get your creative projects crushed, whatever they are.
Your version of Disney buying Fox.
But ultimately, just like the secret of Life itself, there is also a magic to things coming into being.

It’s never just up to the things we can see or understand.

As a creator, you are just helming a project that has come to you from another realm, or in the case of Deadpool the right word would be coming from another Universe!
It (the idea) has come through the Marvel Sparkle Circle to land on your timeline.
But it will make another jump, if you fail to foster it.

We cannot command things to come to our timeline, we do not control the ideas that come to us.
Just recognize that something has landed, and that we can serve it by helping it manifest.

But it is not up to us, whether we get the satisfaction of seeing it fulfilled.

This goes for Ryan Reynolds fighting to seeing this third Deadpool movie made, and not letting it get crushed in the Disney takeover of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And it goes for Wade Wilson, Deadpool’s real name, seeing his career as Deadpool blocked, when we see him apply for The Avengers and being turned down.
His girlfriend leaves him, he starts sharing his apartment with a friend, and he accepts a job as a car salesman.

Wade Wilson/ Deadpool wanting to be a working superhero, Ryan Reynolds making another Deadpool movie, and – moving past the awkwardness of putting myself in that same line – me understanding creativity and Life itself;
We all have to make our peace understanding that we are not, the creators of our own lives.

It’s not our business whether we succeed or fail.
Our only business is to not stop wanting what we want.
And if you have seen the movie you know this is the point where Deadpool is at the beginning of the movie;
He has let the rejection get to him.
He has stopped trying.

I don’t know about Ryan Reynolds, but for myself I only have to look back at the last post I wrote for this blog, to see where I failed as recent as last month.
As I quote myself saying:
“If writer’s block came in a bottle, I’d pay for that.
A lot.”

So yes, I have given up too. Many times, because that quote was not new.
I have been willing to stop my superpower of being able to write every day and all day, all in order to be some sort of version of a car salesman in the 2024 Universe.
A mentor, a yoga teacher, a proper independent whose marketing does not get flooded and drowned with her creative expressions.

I had a “Please God take it away from me!” attitude towards my writing, and towards my too-muchness (we all know Deadpool did a better job there! he never stopped being himself!)
Knowing what I know today, after seeing the Deadpool movie four times, I can say I was not as much desperate to fit in;
But I was definitely holding back on who I really was.

And for professional and practical reasons rather than for wanting to be liked or fitting in, but that does not make it a wiser or more honorable choice.
You are either an authentic expression of who you truly are (who God made you! Hello, how many paragraphs until we see how unholy this whole façade thing is)
Or you are not.

But before I move to that part (the unleashing the real me part), I want to first give the punchline on the creator/creating/artist rant.
Because creating against adversity?
Like Deadpool being rejected by the Avengers?
Reynolds having to deal with his movie being tossed between giants?

That was never my biggest problem.

Like the quote about wanting to pay for a writer’s block already indicates, my biggest frustration has come from being unable to not-create…..
An “if only I could halt this creativity” kind of wishful form of thinking.

The frustration of not being able to plan my life, career nor business, even though I know VERY WELL, what proper marketing looks like.
I know very well what proper EVERYTHING- looks like.

It’s just that the powers that inspire me and guide me are way stronger than my desire to plan and execute the things that I know lead to success.
Hence, the funny-not-funny but dead serious quote on wanting to pay for a writer’s block. 

However!
What Deadpool has shown me, and OMG FINALLY!

THIS IS ABOUT SEX!
I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BORE- WRITE MYSELF TO SLEEP/DEATH

.
The first thing seeing this super authentic, being 100% himself and pan-sexually totally rocking it Deadpool character has taught me;
Is to start owning my sexuality even more. That I have been absolutely coasting it.
But that conclusion was a bit to be expected.

It would be weird if you walked out of a Deadpool movie thinking it would be a great idea to start leaning more towards a celibate or monogamous lifestyle.

Promiscuity after seeing Deadpool must be considered an inevitable and in my opinion fortunate side effect. 

But the real surprise, at least for me, was how this led to me accepting myself creatively.
And events are slowly coming back into my memory, because it happened when I invented the word:

pan creativity

.
Just like pan sexual people, feel sexual tension with different types of people (don’t ask me the difference between Bi and Pan sexual- there’s people far more knowledgeable than me on the subject, who would still not dare to touch it) I came up with the word pan creativity, to describe my creative poly amorous nature.

This term, Pan creativity, then takes the place of concepts like “multi potentialite”, “poly creative” and even the still fairly bland “multi passionate”.
I think this new word is more accurate because it honors the force, the innate power of it, where other terms still speak of it as a nice to have toolbox with a diverse set of skills.

But just like sexuality, that is not how being pan creative works.
It are urges, forces of nature, that define who you truly are, and that will become an uphill battle, trying to repress.

It is ironic that I have long understood how dangerous monogamy is. How you cut yourself off from Life itself, if you make that your God.

That there are in my not so humble opinion, few things as brutal as two people wanting to touch, explore, be together in a physical and visceral sense, and to then overwrite this beautiful chance to create something memorable and delicious, with some moral code that just stamps everything down to the ground and shames anyone participating.

I know there’s nuances here, morgages, children no one wants to see grow up with parents who have divorced, and I get that.
But you know very well, it is not these nuances that are usually leading the conversation, which is always about making infidelity (nature) wrong, and mental constructs which society has made up, right.

Yet although I have been keen to defend my stance on the matter of sexual restraint, which is you must be VERY AWARE what you’re cutting yourself off from, if you’re thinking about being monogamous;
I have made the same exact mistake myself…. just that it has been in the field of creativity, and not sexuality!

I have been cockblocking my own creativity, thinking I needed to be “proper” (the creative version of monogamous) if I want to be worthy.
But like people who cannot help cheating despite their own moral code, I have been creatively promiscuous, while at the same time condemning my own behavior as being irresponsible to my business and my readers.

Deadpool’s unapologetic sexuality reaffirmed my own already fairly unapologetic sexuality, Yes!
But only to have it backfire with the force of a 15+ years delayed orgasm;
In the field of my creativity, I have been going against everything I logically and morally stand for.

For 15+ years I’ve tried to brutally force my poly amorous and pan creative nature, into creative monogamy or even celibacy.

 

The character of Deadpool knew what he wanted;
To join the Avengers.

Ryan Reynolds knew what he wanted;
To make a new Deadpool movie.

But I have been pretending I wanted to have a business in something that looked proper (and for which I have the experience and capacity), when in reality?
The person who ever wanted that, either never existed, or she is no longer among us.

Because you see, that is the biggest lesson from Deadpool.

Even though there is car salesman Wade Wilson, and the costumed superhero Deadpool;
There really is, only Deadpool…..

It’s not like a normal regular person, who pretends to be this stage persona; In this case there only is “the stage persona”!

Wade Wilson ceased to exist when he was turned into Deadpool, an immortal killing machine.

Now, whether Wade Wilson/Deadpool is selling cars, in his normal attire, or whether he is in his superhero costume;
He is exactly the same person.

You know who he is?
Deadpool!

Wade Wilson died in that laboratory. He no longer exists.
And although the Avengers do not want him in his new superhero shape, between their ranks, that doesn’t make “Wade Wilson” less dead.

When he is selling cars, he dresses up like Wade Wilson.

And it is the same for me.

When I have these fantasies about using all my work experience and worldly skills, I am denying what has happened in “the lab of 15+ years of writing”.
I am dressing up as an old version of me, whom I would love to be, because it’s a hell of a lot easier than living with what came out of that lab;
But I can’t.

I used the word travesty, in a post I wrote last week. And although I immediately felt uncomfortable using it, I left it in, because it was the only accurate word to describe what I meant.
I could replace it for something less triggering, but not for something more on point.

And this blogpost again, I am resorting to that word:
I am a travesty, of the young woman who once existed. Although even then, she was more complex than I make her out to be.

But like Deadpool posing as Wade Wilson, whenever I pretend to be a normal yoga teacher (in particular) or regular business owner, I am actually pretending to be someone who is no longer with us.

The writing desk gave birth to a completely different persona, the penname I have been carrying since 2006 and which from the get go has felt like “real me”.

And not counting a very brief period late 2018;
I never tried to make that work my priority.
Deadpool may have been rejected by the Avengers, but I never even applied for what my version of Superhero Writer Me would do.

Instead, there was the daily blocking of my creativity because This Is Not Correct For A Yoga Teacher and That Is Not Professional Marketing.

Instead of the realization that maybe in 2024, just like on Marvel’s Sacred Timeline, the biggest mistake anyone can make is to not be who you truly are.

From Deadpool’s unchecked pan sexual magnetism, to his non-stop string of self-depricating jokes;
The Deadpool franchise will be somewhat of my sacred well of sexual and other wisdom, for years if not decades, to come.

But for now, 10 September 2024, suffice to say, that I am home.
And that I feel born again.

Or in the words of Marvel Jesus Deadpool;
“She has risen, Baby Girl!” 

.

Suzanne L. Beenackers
20th century writer, diarist & yoga teacher
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal
 🇳🇱Tikkie van de week 

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my World Between Worlds blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

my businesses

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become the Rock Star you were born to be

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The Artist’s Drip | building a creative empire & life

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

I have said it countless times already, and with many more waiting ahead:

“If writer’s block came in a bottle, I’d pay for that.
A lot.”

And the reason is very simple;
Because creativity is really the last thing you need building a business.

Consistency.
Connection.
Showing up.
Being visible.
Having a plan.
Being resilient.
Being smart, and I mean the intelligent kind of smart, not the Productivity Is My Religion kind of smart where the letters stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely goalsetting.

Something that will appeal to few people who call themselves creatives. My guess is each and every one of us would rather burn our whole body of work to the ground, and pick up a job in the weapon industry, than to start setting “smart” goals.
Unless of course setting smart goals and monitoring data is your actual creative expression!
Then this is your art, and you should totally own that.
But I doubt if you do “smarting” with all your heart, it is still the optimization tool others claim it to be.

Your smart has become art.

And it may have you crying out to the heavens that if the ability to NOT look at numbers and to not invest every waking minute monitoring your numbers, you would pay for that.
A lot.
Just like I did with my writer’s block.

So I think all these extra free bonus sentences, clogging up the rhythm of this “info-piece”, is already a great example of how the creative mind (in this case mine) is different to the productive, goal driven mind.

If we had asked AI to write this piece it would probably have done a great job at writing a coherent, easy to read, concise piece.
That you would have read in its entirety, whereas I’m guessing 30% of readers will have stopped by now (so congratulations if you’re still here!) or is browsing, skipping, to the actual model of the creative drip.

And that’s great too.

You know why it is great you are currently sighing and struggling your way through this post?
Wondering why the f I cannot just come to the point?

Because that, is your problem too.

Your creativity expresses, expands, grows, flows, creates just for the sheer joy of it.
Not for the job, of it.
It has no sense of time, and it doesn’t even have a sense of purpose other than this desire to feel the rush of being into the realms of knowing you’re doing your highest work.

The joy of being lifted out of your daily grind to new heights and never explored worlds.

But it are these (daily?) trips to Lalaland, that make it so hard to navigate the capitalist waters while also being a secret frequent flyer of the realms most people will never go.

For the sake of this piece, I will limit my focus to those overwhelmed by a desire to create something which we all recognize at creativity.
Writing, painting, designing, and so on.

But in truth, the areas of creative expression are infinite such as activism, curating someone else’s work (for example in Bon Jovi fandom we have multiple fans who do this work), and so on.
If you are interested in this, I can highly recommend doing the Creative Constellations course from Sara Saltee:
https://www.salteeacademy.com/liveprograms
If you’re reading this in real time, you can still join for the course starting September 2024, and learn your own creative chart this fall. 
(link not sponsored)

So the flow captivating us and transporting us to higher realms, is definitely not limited to activities that result in “art”, in the narrow sense.

And it is THIS flow where whatever it is that you do, pulls you in and doesn’t let go, that is YOUR art (whatever it is) and that is the TOP layer of your Artist’s Drip.

Imagine a coffee drip.

Everything that goes on top, drips down to the bottom.

Your purest, most natural, most irresistible expression, is the thing you are pouring on top.
So it’s not wasted at all.
It’s just that because it is so natural to us as boiling hot water to everyone who owns a kettle, we fail to see how this is a suburb resource, and essential in order to get a working coffee drip!

we’ll call this top level Self-Expression
it’s where you do whatever creative expression comes naturally to you

Then we get to the second level where we do everything that relates to money and building a business.
Here we work what we have already poured in under one, package it up, write a sales page for it.
Here we make your work user-friendly, provide context and so on.
We give it whatever it needs, or we take from it whatever we can use for our commercial endeavors.

Here you may also find activities that you wouldn’t normally do, or that are not part of your core creative expression, but that you know connect you to your buying audience.
All content creation falls under this category, and this is why you see why it is a drip-> all content created as your primary creative expression automatically drips down to the second level.

we’ll call this second level Business
it’s where you do whatever is needed to build your audience and sales

Then we move down to the third level, and this is where your belonging and connection comes in.
It doesn’t have anything to do with your commercial or artistic success, and is about being loved and appreciated by your family, friends, partner, lovers, colleagues, neighbors and so on.

The reason it is low in the filter or drip, is because it doesn’t go back up. It doesn’t feed into those top to layers, but the top layers do trickle down here.
If you have 1 and 2 in place, you will find yourself having an easier “job” maintaining your personal relationships, than if you haven’t found your voice (layer 1) and are struggling with the business side of things.

But you will find your time spent on this layer to trickle down directly, building your LIFE (the cup of coffee)
Some relationships at the layer of connection will come straight from your highest work (level 1) or be clients as well (level 2), but many will be unrelated to your work under 1 and 2.

we’ll call this third level Connection
it’s where you maintain relationships with everyone who is important to you

And then there is a fourth level.
And I have no idea if everyone will want this, but I am definitely including it, because if you do want it;
This one, needs its own focus, plan, budget and so on.

Do you want your work to be preserved?
Live on after you die?
Then you need to start planning for this.

If you want only the work itself to be preserved, you can look for ways to sell it or give it to archives or museums.
But if you want the work to remain active/current, and its message to go on, then you need business models that can stay up after you retire or die.
Ones that generate enough money to pay for a curator or commercial director, whose work it will be to helm your work.
Or you can sell the rights to your work off for a high enough price, so that the new owner has an interest in monetizing them.
It is the potential of your work to keep making money, which will ensure its  place in the spotlight.

we’ll call this final level Legacy
it’s where you do what is necessary for your work to outlive you 

Knowing these four levels, Self-Expression (1), Business (2), Connection (3) and Legacy (4) does not solve their conflict over resources.
Something you will frequently be facing.

But it makes it easier to surrender to the task at hand, whether that is giving into your passion (level 1), something that will ultimately drip down, directly contributing to all other levels and is the core ingredient to your delicious cup of Life Coffee!

Or whether it is diligently setting time aside to publish your collected work, a book that will stay in print forever, level 4 (your legacy).

Whether it is showing up every day to sell what you have and run your business (level 2), or making it a daily habit to answer messages from family and friends and be there for your loved ones (level 3).

The four levels of The Artist’s Drip cannot just help you stay afloat in the challenging waters of living authentically in a consumer driven world;

It can help you raise the sails and set course to the harbors that you actually, and deeply, care about. 

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
20th century writer, diarist & yoga teacher
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal
 🇳🇱Tikkie van de week 

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my World Between Worlds blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

my businesses

Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

de Club
yoga voor generatie X

NEW founded in MAY 2024:

SUBSTACK
free memberships provided

the socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn

 

 

 

 

The Male Muse | The Secret Diary episode 1 (free/ open)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
📷19 March 2023

I’m back!
Exactly like a little over two weeks ago, when for a few short days I could celebrate the return of lightheartedness, silliness, but above all of overwhelming happiness, that had always been mine until in 2018 the ground fell away from underneath me and suddenly;
“It” wasn’t mine anymore.
I was gone.
And not in a Buddhist-dissolving-the-ego kind of way, but in an everything-that-made-me-human, kind of way.

The blueprint of who I was had switched to its negative, and positivity became the exception, instead of the core of who I was.

The very short version of the story (leaving out loss and recovery of physical health as well), is that last month I found out what medication I needed (Femme hormones!) and they changed my life around.

Until a week of debilitating and entirely avoidable stress kicked in, and I found myself back on the concrete of misery overnight.
Clawing my way back, and understanding that although the pills were a miracle cure, they did require a price to be paid, to be effective:
I would need to regulate my life.

Every time I would let the events that had caused the stress, to happen again, I would be choosing losing another two weeks of my life.
On top of the 6 years that were already down the drain.

I needed to clean up, clear out, and to stop letting the ugliness of the world in so carelessly. An ugliness that had not bothered me at all, in the previous years, because it had given me an opportunity to crack my mind over it.
To think of a solution.
To get involved.
Or the very least: To lose myself in a roast/ rant about it.

For six years, my baseline emotion had been rage.
Constructive rage, funny rage, rage where people could warm themselves by and feel acknowledged for the unnamed pain they had felt, and I put words to.
It was a world I had never lived in, and I honestly wondered how I had managed to miss it!

There had been something fascinating about waking up in such an ugly place. It was like it gave me permission to unleash the darkest most diabolical Self and presented an intellectual challenge to boot.
Its novelty made reality something I studied with undivided attention, but I loved poking where the loopholes were.

Every year, I understood its dynamics better.
And I learned to wield the knowledge like a sword.

You could even say I had weaponized my rage into a thing of beauty, but all the time I was aware it was far from beautiful.
That the negative can never be a positive, and that although I was happy with how much I could bring to the world (for the first time I felt of use!);
It wasn’t me.

Real me doesn’t live here.
Never has.

I lost real me in 2018, then had her return for a few days which was such a profoundly moving experience… Suddenly I was myself again! And this was also the moment I could see, how NOT myself I had been since 2018.
And the world regained its ethereal beauty, and I regained my lighthearted happiness.

And then the stress kicked in.
My reckless behavior caused what I will call “Happy Suzy” to leave, “Dark Suzy” immediately taking her place again, pushing all the things back in place, cancelling appointments, writing watertight letters and making practical plans.

With the storm under control, today, after 2 weeks of Dark Suzy, is the first day I can feel Happy Suzy again!
And although I see I need Dark Suzy, and can definitely not live without her pragmatic, no bs skills, I also know that Happy Suzy is required as well.

I do not want to lose another day to the ugliness that kills Happy Suzy, and summons armed-to-the-teeth Dark Suzy, taking over my life.
And today, I really do know how to do that;

With male muses, as a representation of what makes Happy Suzy, happy. The thing she will stay for.

Because muses or men in general, are mutually exclusive to Dark Suzy. Dark Suzy does not care for men, unless they are either powerful adversaries or equally powerful allies.
She doesn’t have sex with them, she just bonds with them, conspires with them or she fights them.
She’s a fighter not a lover.

A striking thing about the 6 years I was “her” was that my emotional life flatlined. I have fallen in love twice, and I had a lover as well (whom I had met before that time), but it was like I couldn’t really enjoy it, or them, anymore.
There was a vital part of deep caring and emotional commitment and involvement that just wasn’t there.

Falling in love, living for love, and being inspired by a man, would be my markers of having regained my pre-2018 life.

And then this morning a video on YouTube about muses (The Anatomy of a Muse 19:24) made me recognize that although I speak of lovers, not boyfriends or partners, there was actually an even better word.

That what I am on the lookout for, to give Happy Suzy a new life, are not just men, they are;

muses

The video made me reflect on the men in my life, past and present, that I still consider muses, and how my relationship to them seems so different to what they have with other women.

Or let me rephrase that, because that is not entirely correct, because the way they feel or relate to me, is not necessarily different to how they relate to other women. Any measurable indicator (time spent, commitment given) would even tell you I have been of less importance  to them, with which I am fine.
But the way I relate to them, seems so different to what I have seen other women asking of these men.
None of them have asked them to inspire them.

I know multiple female writers who work under alter-ego, just like me, but even among them I only know one who protects the erotic space she and her lover are having.
One, aware of the invisible pillars holding their house of love.

She makes sure their love stays under the cover of this erotic universe, and is not taken into the relentless brightness of reality.
She is the guardian of an affair that is not necessarily a secret, but that has achieved all the hallmarks of a secret because she protects it.
She is the watcher of the affair’s potency, and makes sure it doesn’t spill its artistic juices.

She, is protecting her muse.

And it’s not even the case that because you write about sex, you will have a muse-artist relationship with your lover.
There are female writers who write about sex, who do not have muses they nourish and protect, and who find purpose in being open and transparant.
But I also know women who do not see themselves as artists, but who instinctively resist their affairs settling down into normal relationships.
Indicating a deep understanding it would kill the very soul of what makes their bond so special.
The end, of the sacred erotic space between them.

So this very first post in my Secret Diary series (a paid-subscriber exclusive for Substack) is where I recognize the presence of these muses of a sign I am in my original, happy healthy mode.
And their absence or having a comradery relationship, or even an antagonistic one, is a sign I am not myself and am in Dark Suzy’s 2018 and up – mode.
Which is not a bad thing (as I said: I do not plan to live without Dark Suzy!) but the muses are the indicator Happy Suzy is here.
And that she is not being crushed or driven out, again.

Which is why I am choosing this Secret Diary series, to revolve around nourishing my feelings, for men I call my muses.
The feelings that had disappeared, not necessarily the men themselves.

The feelings were independent from men being in my life.
Independent from whether they were choosing me, or were taking a different path.
But this does not mean that I was unresponsive to their signals, nor did it mean I did all the work of keeping a bond alive.
They worked, but in different ways.

The muses in my life have always left the erotic space open.
They could return at any given time.

Not all muses though. Some did shut the door. It only takes a glimmer of indicating they don’t want you, but if such a man is a muse, then it is as loud as thunder.

I recognize I have dropped the word Erotic Space here, a few times. I think it’s originally from Esther Perel, the relationship therapist, let me check.

I cannot find her using the term Erotic Space, but I did find this quote:

“Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.”

― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

To me, my relationships with men I would now call muses, are a mutual cultivation of that eroticism.
It takes just one of us to break the code of eroticism, one of us bringing the world inside, a topic or a third person;
And the Erotic Space we have between us is gone.
The spell is broken.

In my experience, containing that erotic space, the sacredness of it, to not insult it, to not tear it, to not burden it and destroy it, takes a wordless understanding and appreciation from both parties.
You cannot make it a rule that you are going to defend it.
It has to be felt, it has to be instinctive.
And this only happens if both parties, in this case both the muse and the artist, have an aspect, an archetype of who they are, that lives only within that space.

An erotic space, is not where you visit the other;
But where you visit the part of yourself that cannot live anywhere else.

Whether we have been lovers or not, all my muses were men with whom this erotic space existed.
A world between worlds.

And the men I still consider my muses are the ones who left the Erotic Space intact;
And the door open.

These erotic spaces are not there for our affairs to restart, although they could. But they are the space I can visit, to bring me back to who I was.

Erotic Space, is what the Muses left me.
And it is my one true home.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

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There are stranger things than throwing out your tech

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

“It’s one thing to set a TV series in the 1980s;
it’s a whole other thing, however, to make it feel like it was actually shot during the Reagan-and-Rubik’s-Cube era.”

That was the opening line of an article in Rolling Stone magazine, July 2016. Six years later the series Stranger Things has lost none of its 80s nostalgia.

When I started this blog early ’21, and called it World Between Worlds, it was to create a playground for, and a better understanding of, that reality just behind our day-to-day one. The reality where art comes from.
I knew this space had something to do with the imagination, as main inspiration for art. With online interaction with others, communities and connections based on mutual interest, and thereby creating a social circle of affinity.
And I knew it had to do with what is currently referred to as digital minimalism, a choice to limit being online to the moments it is functional, and aligns with our values.

Artists have always had to find a way, to avoid being claimed by things that required or desired an immediate response. This is why women with children have traditionally been excluded from being artists, because they were always on call to take care of their children.
There is a meme about male writers, that their work becomes less impressive if you realize it was created with the luxury of someone else attending to your children 24 hours a day.

So having the opportunity to wall off the day-to-day, and having the luxury of time and space, in the infamous room of one’s own, has been a frequently featured prerequisite, to being able to do your artistic work.

But, and I expect you ve seen me heading for this, since digital technology and in particular the Facebook sparked algorithm revolution that spread like wildfire to every corner of the internet, we are dealing with a way our time and brains get highjacked that has more to do with addiction, and less with systemic exclusion.

Without wanting to underplay the cunningness of how our brains are being hacked, compared to the systemic exclusion of women as artists, and with the age-old elitist nature of having the time to create art;
resisting the urge to spend time online, and to avoid a symbiotic relationship with your Inbox, is an individual responsibility.
The latest challenge added to being able to do your creative work, is not an additional one of social inequality, but about fighting big tech.

interview Former Google employee Tristan Harris:
Your phone is trying to control your life [8:43]

Original story and report that got the ball rolling: 
Brain Hacking [ 13:47 ]

Right from the start of this blog World Between Worlds, I ve imagined the artistic space we should keep an eye out for, to be somewhere offline.
Or to be within an online context where we are emotionally involved, making us relatively immune to being distracted.

I ve come back to that desire to walling myself off from the ever expanding, ever evolving online claim, in a structured way. Not an ad hoc one, that you would have to change with every new feature.
But to look for personal rules and regulations, that you can then apply.

As the book Digital Minimalism says: This is about autonomy.

Can we reclaim our artistic space and harness our power, by being more discerning to how we show up online?

One of the ways I ve tried to grapple with that question is through the lens of time capsule work. 
This means pretending you live in another era.
Examples are a Dutch artist who lives as if in the 30s and an American couple that works under the name “The Victorian Couple”. You can read a 2019 longread about their work here.  
A quote from that article:

Many of us have realized [ .. ] that technology intended to make our lives easier has hideous hidden costs.

Where the book Digital Minimalism, and warnings that the addictive consumer technology will prove to be the smoking of our time, go for an emotionally detached, productivity based, and value based, approach;
I believe the perspective of doing it from the idea of living in a different era,  is one that is more appealing for creatives.

That walling off our time and life being hacked by big tech, becomes easier if we replace it with a project that comes with a bubble, a capsule, to live in.
And that does the work of filtering the world, for us.

Once again, the concept of digital minimalism, and of deliberately creating a world between worlds, has entered my life.
The same ideas as I ve had before, but perhaps this is something that requires mulling over in phases.

One aspect that is new to me, comes from the angle of aging;
I m turning 50 this year.

It is clear to me, personally, that I m speeding up my aging, by engaging in all these technologies that I did not have at home until I was over 30.
My personal computer stood for doing freelance work, and for doing my book keeping, and writing formal letters which I would then print and post.
I could get files to other people, by copying them on a floppy disk.

I loved my computer, and probably more passionately then, than I did later. For a long time I only had laptops, because I needed to move them around. So I had these slim, sexy laptops, that made me feel very Sex and the City, even though I never had an Apple and they were a plain grey.

Maybe because my laptop was offline, much like a book, I could love the way it felt, and the way the keys clicked. Could love opening and closing it.
It was not talking back, or asking anything of me, and I put them back in a drawer afterwards. 

I would say that now, in 2022, I am tied to my tech as if we are a disorganized and pretty dysfunctional family, where we compensate by constantly checking in on each other.
We rarely if ever lose sight of each other.

Where I used to relate to my laptop as to a well-dressed articulate friend, that you like but will never fully embrace. There would always be a respectful distance. 

In my late 20s I also got a mobile phone, but rarely used it. The phone was a backup tool, for when I traveled and missed a train or something.

In my early 30s, I got an internet connection at home. Up until that point I had used university, work places, business connections and internet cafes, to do my emailing. 

So with my computer offline, and my mobile phone rarely used, the only pieces of technology I frequently used either played media or they were a tv, or a phone.
The tech were not interactive. 
From the moment I got internet at home, two decades ago, that changed. And from there it has been a slippery slope, until now I am in this panicky  unhealthy relationship with my phone and my computers.

On the verge of turning 50, for me it is clear I need a digital life makeover.

So I am redesigning my life, and creating a framework that will hold for the next 50 years.

I ll be less online. One day, I want to look around in my house, and feel the same calm and maybe even hint of boringness, I felt in the year 2000.
Without the world pulling at me through every screen. 

I look forward to thinking of my mobile phone as just a helpful device to text a friend, if I ve missed the train.

I look forward to spending the rest of my life, just like I spend the first 3 decades;
In the relative quiet of the 20th century.

Stranger things have happened.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

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This World Between Worlds blog is an element of “Rock Star” [phase 2]

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

3 YouTube channels*
1. English YouTube *: “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube *: “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business *

The headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

* Filming will resume soon. I m struck by a cold, and avoid talking as much as possible.

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

🌍🌎 📚🛒
online bookshop

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

 

I almost amputated the wrong arm

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

When I say I almost amputated the wrong arm, I mean I once again caught myself wanting to terminate a healthy part of my life, without noticing it was actually a response to introducing a not healthy part.

It all started last weekend, when I ordered a new laptop so I could start  a new business that was not hinging on my writing or my yoga. It would make me money, buy me time to develop a new yoga career, and also give me an identity until the more abstract and artistic things I really wanted to be known for, took off.
This was business coaching.

I have been contemplating my own art and business career as a coachee for almost four years now, I was an entrepreneur until 2020, have a degree in business, binge on marketing like others on Netflix (although I sometimes also binge on Netflix) and there are few things that excite me more, than when my entrepreneur friends allow me to think with them about their business.
The number of hours I have spent on thinking about business, money, and how entrepreneurship is the absolute best tool for personal development, for financial freedom and really for creating Rock Star Freedom as a whole, exceeds the number of hours I have spent on my yoga mat.

Business coaching was not just an acceptable business model to support my art; It was an exciting one. And one I knew I would never get enough of.

That was until I noticed I wanted to practically burn my yoga, delete all my yoga channels, and erase 25 years of yoga from my existence.
It all started getting very destructive, very quickly, the day I unpacked the new laptop, and I also heard what a pain-in-the-ass hassle it would be to organize yoga events.
And it was also the first time I realized I would basically be working for peanuts.

It was an understanding that real life events for the consumer market will always be way less profitable, as well as a lot more vulnerable physically, as well as mentally, when compared to giving one-on-one business coaching to entrepreneurs and artists, who would be making their investment back in coin and not in an experience.
And I would get to keep it all, didn’t have to pay anyone any fees, had zero travel time, didn’t need to plan months in advance, didn’t require tech support, no new wardrobe, it was age sustainable, and business coaching didn’t have intimidating physical requirements.
Plus it was pandemic-proof and didn’t suffer from impossibly high costs for heating or real estate.

But becoming a business coach in a global world was not just a solid choice, to support my artistic career(s);
It was also an affirmation that I was better off forgetting about art altogether. Because from now on, every hour on my yoga mat and every hour I would write, would cost me between €100 and €125. 
It proved how easy making money was, and how pointless art was.

For one whole shockingly unproductive week, this stuff festered under the surface, already doing its destructive work. But I didn’t know it.
I thought my lethargy was because I was adjusting to the idea that my new laptop would soon arrive and my new business would finally start.
A silence before the storm. Not that I was silently finishing off my yoga career.

It’s Sunday night here. Because I had such a bad feeling about wasting the past 7 days, I went grocery shopping to win back time for the upcoming week.
And while I made my way around the supermarket, I thought about the schedule I had made with all the things I needed to do to attend to all my businesses. And realized that practicing yoga would just have to be cancelled.

I was allowed to do all my yoga ON camera, so that yoga was productive. But with all the work I absolutely wanted to get done every day, something had to go, and practicing yoga was not making any money, so out with that one.
And once I decided that, I realized I would never develop my idea of Rock Star Yoga events, which were real life yoga classes or events, with rock music.

Without a daily yoga practice, I would not feel confident enough. Yoga events would not be what I wanted them to be, unless I practiced and developed them, every day.
I was a bit sad that I was now not going to have yoga events, but since I realized brick and mortar businesses in many industries, were really no longer part of real big boys economics anyway, and they do come with high costs and liabilities, the step to also delete yoga performer/entertainer together with practicing yoga, was a tiny one.

And then I wondered: Do I even want to teach yoga on video, anyway?
Or had I merely been suffering from a Messiah complex that I thought people needed my yoga to “get” it?
And before I was in the final section (pet food) I had decided, that although I had a lot of explaining to do, business cards to redo, and that it would be humbling to say the least, to quit my yoga career and abandon all my plans;
It was indeed for the better.

Without a daily yoga practice, without yoga shows, and without the hours every day it would cost me to make yoga videos;
Being a business coach and having 2 or 3 calls a day, indeed seemed way more manageable.

I was happy I had decided to take that late-night trip to the supermarket and had been able to reflect on the previous week, and learn its lessons.
Tomorrow I would end all things yoga, and my new life as a business coach would begin.

Until, as the title says of course, I realized that the real dream was never to be a business coach.

I didn’t hop up and down at the Bon Jovi concert in 2019, had that life-transforming experience where I knew the pieces of my life were falling together and that my purpose would very soon reveal itself, because I had a vision about business coaching.
I had one about Rock Star Yoga.

And although it has gone through different phases and different shapes, and it’s still not in a final form, I did know it STILL was YOGA – that was the core.
Not writing, and not business coaching, although they are part of what I have done and will keep doing.

My desire for a recognizable business model that would also give me an identity, had almost killed the thing I really wanted.
Which is to be a daily yoga practitioner, to have 2 YouTube yoga channels and to ultimately teach Rock Star Yoga events or shows.

A new Dutch series just started on Netflix, Dirty Lines. It’s all about how money and business success can make you forget who you are.
And I think when we’re talking about telephone sex, we understand that it is something that is done only for money.
That there is no purpose or meaning behind it, just money. And that you have to be very careful not to lose yourself.

But it’s when your business has the hallmarks of a respectable business, and when it would in fact be, someone else’s dream business;
That’s when you have to worry!

Those are business models and businesses that are way more difficult to identify, as the life-destroying paths that they are.
And will make you give up your most unique, creative expression.

The dirtiest lines are the ones that look the cleanest.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds to stay updated and to receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right. 

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

3 YouTube channels
1. English YouTube “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business
The headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

.
NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

 

Categories art

Sometimes it snows in April | “Rock Star” is finally here!

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

The title of the legendary Prince song proved to be true, although the polar exaggeration of the weather forecast still made me think that it was at least a partial April fools day joke. I definitely did not see the 5-7 cm of snow, we had been told to brace ourselves for.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t magical.

And it invited the thought:
“If it can snow in April, anything can happen.”
And really, in my case, anything already had…

As if touched by a miracle, all the loose parts of my artistic expressions, and all the embarrassing gaps they had been causing, fell together into one smoothly oiled creative installation.
I titled it “Rock Star”; a project that began in 2019 with toying with, and writing about, the concept of Rock Star Yoga.
I ve called everything I ve done so far, phase 1, and I m now entering phase 2.

Rock Star is not built with a preconceived idea of success or failure. I will not abandon or tweak if it doesn’t perform according to the rules of worldly success. Although I did  wake up with an unexpected donation on my PayPal, so it seems to be bearing fruit just from energetic turnover alone!
But in general, No.
This assemblage is like a work of art, to observe, consume, participate in or ponder over. What is its meaning? What does it tell us about art? About business models? And are we given a glimpse of the future of yoga?

Although absolutely daunting in its number of moving parts, I will start working in Rock Star,  and you will be able to start seeing the first expressions this week.
See the wheels make their first cycle.
The first flags being planted.

What you will see will depend on how many of my outlets you follow.
I m also really looking forward to taking my yoga on the road, and to my first paid offer to rock your business.
You can find the full list of public and paid ROCK STAR elements below.

Prince wrote “Sometimes it snows in April” as a eulogy for Christopher Tracy, a gigolo played by Prince in the movie Cherry Moon. 

One of my core messages is that creatives and artists have tendencies to self-sabotage, because what society views as success in life and business doesn’t accommodate to the natural cycle that is creative work.
But creative and artistic energies, and personalities, are really not that complicated to deal with once you understand them. They need change. They crave to be in a never ending game, where they can keep playing forever.

Blowing things up, is nothing more than a primal expression of a deeply embedded need to be in an forever changing game.
We blow it up, when it’s the only way to change it. 

Sometimes it snows in April, was written and performed with Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of backing band The Revolution. [ credit source ] 
“‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ was really the pinnacle of our relationship together,” Lisa says about that collaboration. “And when we wrote that song, it was just the three of us sitting together in a room. I really loved it, and I had hoped that we would follow that trail further.”

But it would turn out to be the last album of Prince and The Revolution.

Sometimes it snows in April
Sometimes I feel so bad
Sometimes I wish that life was never ending
But all good things, they say, never last

If you re a creative you will not deliver your best work if you keep repeating yourself. You have to lean in to change, decay and have to remove yourself from any trails that are from the world.
And not the artist’s.

When Prince moved away from the collaboration with The Revolution, even though they were successful and it could have lasted them for decades to come, he did it because he knew standing still is an artist’s biggest enemy.

That the really good things, the exquisite things, the things that still move us to tears 37 years down the road;
Should not be built to last.

They should be, like snow in April.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds to stay updated and to receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right. 

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

Public Rock Star Offerings: 

3 YouTube channels
1. English YouTube “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business
De headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

Paid Rock Star offers: 

I BOOKS
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
See below this post for more delivery options

II Rock Star mentoring (Zoom)
at Business, Artist or Rock Star level.
Starts May 2022

III Live in-person events 
starting summer 2022:   Rock Star Yoga sessions in Nijmegen
starting summer 2023:   Rock Star Yoga shows in The Netherlands, with the possibility of expanding to Europe

 

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

Categories art

Watch Warhol on Netflix | YouTube Warhol Playlist

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
Andy Warhol

In celebration of the Netflix series The Andy Warhol Diaries, I have published this playlist with Warhol documentaries. It was originally set to “private” but I can imagine there will be more people wanting to know more.

Warhol YouTube Playlist [ created August 2021 ]

I ve loved Warhol since the 80s, and actually got the diary around 1989/ 1990, as well as a box set with drawings of cats “by Andy Warhol’s mother” That box is one of the stories I learned the whole background story from, in the older documentaries you can find in the list.

Sadly, I donated the books, purging my book collection. It must have been somewhere between 2002 and 2015, when I often had semi-permanent housing, caused by moving to another part of the country where I did not have a place to live.
And then another round began when a relationship ended. 
I needed to find housing again, and often had temporary leases.

During that time I got rid of all my art books, with the exception of the Keith Haring ones. Mainly because they were smaller.
But I got rid of all the others. Which at the time seemed, or maybe was, a small price to pay to keep volume manageable.

But every time that hardcover first edition Warhol Diaries comes by in the Netflix series, the black and silver, with the orange letters, exactly the one I had received as a gift and that had been mine;
I cringe.

The new Netflix series talks a lot about how little Warhol was appreciated as an artist, during his life.

But I think it took me until now, or maybe summer 2021, before I finally caught up.

Whatever happens, whatever life throws at you; Keep your art.

You will miss it more than everything else.

Suzanne L. Beenackers

The Andy Warhol Diaries 6 part mini series is on Netflix

NEW: Rock Star Yoga Studio

My YouTube plans: After the war in Ukraine started, I set aside my plans to start teaching Rock Star Yoga. But my English channel is active & Dutch channel will start this week.

I will start making yoga videos this week.
New videos + new channel trailers soon! 

Subscribe to:

English channel, (yoga) + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (talk)

Nederlandse YouTube 
nieuwe trailer en de eerste lessen volgen deze week

I would love to know which parts spoke to you!
You can share in the comments, or include a note with your donation on Paypalme 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds and receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

YouTube Rock Your Business
YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs 

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

Also by me:
my personal Twitter account
Rock Star Writer
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)

 

Categories art

My Best Life Is Ahead Of Me

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
2021 04 07 Being Free
caption from Lenny Kravitz: “Being free is a state of mind.” photo Karen Gault 2021 04 07

Suffice to say I was in need of some strong medicine.
Something to take the edge off, realizing how many talents, skills and joys I not so much “lost”, but that I no longer have access to, since the start of the pandemic.
Some of them which a comedian illustrating how complicated or impossible things are once you have kids, would qualify as:
“Things that you don’t even consider to be things will become nearly impossible.
Like leaving the house!”

Me leaving the house is not hampered by children not knowing where their shoes are, but by things like not sleeping, waking up sick every morning, and having social events being punishable by migraines.

But indeed;
Things that you didn’t even know were things, like sitting indoors in a group, and knowing you could be paying by ten days of quarantine for this debauchery.
Things like that.

I now understand how older people go from no longer driving at night time and quitting cycling out of fear, to hardly crossing the city border, in a very, very short time.
I get it.

But I have decades ahead of me.
Decades I do not intend to spend frickin’ tiptoeing around my health.
And I ALSO do not intend to spend them mending what was broken or recovering from what took me out.

I want it over and I don’t want to study, look back, nor give having had the mobility (as in travel) and resilience of someone sick or geriatric, attention ever again.

These lines of thought are not new, but what I have found is that I have been lacking vision of what I am working towards.
Only what I am moving away from.

And I mean on a personal level, because on a professional level I do know what my future looks like, and although it allows me free choice how I want to work, and I could do it all online;
I don’t want that.

I want to be free to travel the world.
And not just on a good day.

So that brings me to the second part of the decision;
I also want to get rid of the “good” habits, and of the truckload of unfulfilled resolutions, that I think I should have in place to “get well”.
Quotation marks means that about a decade ago or something, I saw a Dutch meme somewhere along the lines of:
“You’re back on your feet when you can do all the stuff that’s bad for you”.

In other words:
I do not want to micromanage myself out of this health crisis, only to then have to go to bed early, watch my caffeine intake and be careful with workload for the rest of my life. 
So that IS a decision I made today: No more tiptoeing and micromanaging. They are banned.

I also remembered how inspiring Lenny Kravitz is, and that’s why I used his picture with this article.
He lives in the Bahamas and frequently posts to social media, but gave a longer interview with Men’s Health last year.
Lenny Kravitz’s Guide to Immortality
Contrary to me, he does have a very strict diet and works out three times a day to support his physique, but that doesn’t prevent me from being inspired by what he says about aging and working out with his trainer:

“We always have a goal in front of us.
My best shape is not behind me. It’s in front of me right now.
We keep moving that bar as we get older.”

Lenny Kravitz Men’s Health

And although just like Lenny, changing my physique is definitely part of what I am going to do to bounce back from these past 18 months, and use those months as a springboard, it wasn’t so much the physical aspect of the quote that struck me most.
It was its potential to be not just body changing, but life changing. 

And then and there I made the decision, that;
Yes, I was gonna bounce back from this.
Yes, I was gonna stop micromanaging my health.
Yes, I was committing myself to a new career and a new body.
But mostly?

I would go on knowing that my best life was not behind me. 
My best life was not in 2019 before the pandemic started.
Not in 2007 when my new life as a single started.
Not in 2003 when I started my career as a yoga teacher.

And it wasn’t even in the early 90s when I was a radiant rock fan, who went to concerts fearlessly, alone, and who one night found herself in a hotel bar with Lenny Kravitz kneeling beside her and asking her her sign.

It wasn’t even then.

My sign is Leo.
My shoes are on my feet.
And my best life is ahead.

 

Suzanne L. Beenackers
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The Baby Koala Relationship; The Miracle Fix For People Who Love Each Other So Much Their Wee Little Hearts Just Floweth Over

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
 
female-koala-and-her-baby-1332217_1280

from a small guide:
The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala (October 2021)
This revised blogpost is its conclusive and most important chapter.

Chapter 3
“The Baby Koala Relationship; The Miracle Fix For People Who Love Each Other So Much Their Wee Little Hearts Just Floweth Over”

I’ve been single for 15 years, and before that I was in relationships for even longer.        
But one thing I never did, was working ON those relationships.
They just happened.     
And that was fine.

But when I noticed a dynamic where I was let’s say “not chosen”, by men I would love to spend my life with,    
AND I saw them happily heading for other women and other relationships where I could immediately see, I was not gonna do all that,           
I started thinking….

Although my intention when I became single 15 years ago had been to create an exciting love life with (a series of) multiple men, and not to improve on my relationships because they had been extremely good,
I found myself in kind of a post-doc trajectory on this journey of becoming good at being single.

A post-doc trajectory of what kind of relationship would follow on that.

After finding out exactly what made for a great life as a single, filled with love, affection, and some heartbreak too of course, but really great and exactly what I had been looking for, I was now PhD-ing on the next level of that.

If a man wanted to go next level with me, what did I have to offer?

If it was not everything I saw around me, where – in my opinion – the women were working their butts off to make the relationship work and the men were just hanging out in their lives until they got sick of it and then they behaved so badly they were basically thrown out?

What was the alternative?

If I didn’t want to be in a relationship where a guy could be so passive he didn’t even have to show up to break up because even that was something I (the woman) would do:       
Then how to start?

And it was on that quest that the Baby Koala Relationship emerged.

It is so good, that once you’ve read this article, not only will you want one;         
You’ll also totally be okay if the man or woman of your dreams chooses somebody else, because your desire for a non-koala relationship may have entirely evaporated, and you can easily let him or her go. 

I mean we’re always happy for them right?        
In an altruistic, Christian way of knowing that they should follow their heart and wishing them well.    
But in this case I mean that you’ll actually think:            
“Thank God, he or she did not choose me!           
Because I want a Baby Koala Relationship and that’s not what he or she is offering! Now at least I have a chance of getting that.”

The Baby Koala Relationship is so good, that you’ll wholeheartedly want that or nothing at all.

 

BASIC DYNAMICS

The Baby Koala Relationship consists of two people:

– one baby koala (daily form)   
   / adult playmate when having a date with the caregiver. The submissive.

– one caregiver (daily form)       
   / charmer and strong lover when having a date with the koala. The dominant.

You can compare it to the top and the bottom in gay relationships, or the dominant and the submissive in S&M relationships. It’s an agreement between two consenting adults, on the basic dynamics of their relationship. It simplifies their lives and adds tremendous joy to being together because it eliminates or greatly reduces the amount of necessary communication.

You can now also see, for whom this relationship model is NOT satisfactory, and that is for people who want to communicate about their relationship.                
For whom the tuning in to the dynamics of the day        
– who’s the strong one today? Who’s the selfish one? What needs correcting? What needs adding? What’s something to look out for? –
is the glue that holds the relationship together.

The Baby Koala Relationship does not have glue, the material cannot tear, and once attached to each other you cannot break it apart by refraining from daily touch ups.            
It’s sturdy as hell.          
It’s like two different parts that are a perfect fit, and screwed together with bolt and nut.

This is another great analogy: A Baby Koala Relationship can be UNscrewed, and then attached in another Baby Koala Relationship. And you can do this as often as you like. 
Whereas if you glue things together, and then take them apart, both parts could get damaged easily.

 

DAILY LIFE

The everyday life of the Baby Koala and the Caregiver, revolves around the daily care of the Baby Koala.            
The Baby Koala, perhaps unsurprisingly, blossoms when it feels loved, and there is clarity.      
Life must be predictable, and you must ask the Baby Koala simple questions, the same way you do to a toddler.

For example:

You’re on a holiday with your Baby Koala, and the Baby Koala is typing furiously on their laptop. Or they are drawing or painting. You can see that they are deeply submerged in their art.         
But it’s been over three hours since the Baby Koala ate, and you want to go on a city trip in the afternoon.

You now say:    
“Do you want cheese on your omelet?” 

These 7 (!) words, are all the communication you need to tell the Baby Koala:  
– that you’re going to lunch       
– and when you’re going to lunch           
– that it’s time to wrap up

If after lunch your Baby Koala says they want to finish something, you can agree on that. Or, alternatively, you can offer to take the city trip by yourself and leave the Baby Koala with its creative endeavors in the afternoon.

Baby Koalas are not companions who join you for your pleasure, but they’ll gladly join if they’re free.   
You must give them a choice though.    
So the key to taking care of a baby koala is to offer choice, but do not ask open questions about the day to day things.

This sounds like easy communication but it illustrates a caregiver should not ask a baby koala things like:        
– when are you finished with your art   
– when do you want to have lunch         
– do you even want to have lunch           
– what do you want for lunch

But:      
“Do you want cheese on your omelet?”

And then the baby koala will answer,   
“Yummy lunch! Yes! I am SO hungry!”  
or “Yummy lunch! No, thank you no cheese. I’m SO hungry!”

The baby koala is the most appreciative partner you could ever imagine.

SEXUAL LIFE

The sex life of this couple is separated from normal life, although this does not have to mean that they plan it.

It is possible that the dynamics shift, during everyday life;        
Where one changes the dynamics to mature, exciting, playful, as an open invitation to see if the other joins.    

Another alternative to setting a date night, would be to use Whatsapp, and send a sexy message.         
These messages are initiated by the caregiver, and are sent because she or he picks up on a vibe or feeling, a hunch, with regard to the baby koala.  
Or because he or she is inspired to make a sexual suggestion.

However, and this is super super important, sex is never suggested by the caregiver because he or she wants sex or feels entitled to have sex.
The reality is this:          
Sex is just an expression of the caregiver taking extremely good care of his or her baby koala.

–>>>>  A caregiver is therefore a man or woman who wants to conquer his partner time and time again.

And a baby koala is someone who wants to be conquered, over and over again. <<<<<-

So to say daily life and sexuality are “separated” means that there is no flirting or sex when they are in baby koala/ caregiver mode.

However “sexy” dates, time when they come out of this mode, are MANDATORY!          
But not for the reason you think.

For a safe baby koala caregiver relationship to work, it is very important that they both stay in check with their own sexual adventurous nature.

So when a couple has a date night the purpose is to support each other in their sexuality.          
What turns them on, what things would they like to try?             
What did they see on the internet that gave a physical reaction?             

Date night can mean that it looks like a regular date, where there is flirting, and the attention is very much with each other, ultimately leading to sex.

But the purpose is much broader;

Sexual time for this couple, or date night, means that it are the moments when both can be in their true sexual power, and can grow in their desires and what they want out of life. Including their sexual lives.

Date night, or the sexual moments are when the two partners claim their individuality, their true strength.     
And are comfortable acknowledging that they are ultimately both free beings.

They say the reason sex is so good at the beginning of a relationship, and often withers away after that, is because sex needs separation, in order to be good. If the two are already one, there cannot be good sex.

Date night and the sexual moments are there to honor and celebrate separation, and the strengths of two adults.

 

NON-EXCLUSIVITY/ SEX WITH OTHER PEOPLE

 

  1. FOR THE CAREGIVER

I don’t think it needs any explanation that in particular the caregiver is entitled to their nights out, and other partners on the side!       
Constantly paying attention to what the baby koala needs in terms of food, sleep, and if it doesn’t get overstimulated;
That really requires some downtime when you can be your adult self.

In order to do this, there must be clarity towards the baby koala about when the caregiver is gone, for how long he or she will be gone, and when he or she is coming back.    
And there must be a protocol the baby koala should follow when the caregiver does not return at said time.

In terms of Whatsapp conversations and so on, with other partners or interests, it is very important not to bring those dynamics into the relationship with the baby koala.      

Great emotional hygiene is asked of the caregiver:         
They can have other partners, but the daily attention must be with the baby koala.

When the caregiver returns from their time with other people, it is soothing for the baby koala if it can take care of the caregiver.           

Again; The way children make breakfast for their parents.          
So don’t expect the baby koala to have conversations with you, helping you articulate your feelings or such.     

But if you say that you will probably be tired when you get home, and ask the baby koala to help out preparing the lunch and letting you take a little nap in the afternoon, you will find him or her eager to take care of you.

Be specific in your requests, and the baby koala will take care of you with the same love and devotion that you have been taking care of them.

 

  1. FOR THE BABY KOALA

The dating life of the baby koala looks entirely different to that of the caregiver.              
It can best be compared to the way children have play dates:   
Anything can happen, and these dates are about growth as much as they are about pleasure.

The caregiver supports the baby koala in his or her path of growth, which requires flexibility and wisdom.         

You could say that the growth for the caregiver is much more in supporting the baby koala with his or her sex life, than through experiencing their own.

Baby koalas are emotional melting pots where all kinds of expected and unexpected stuff can happen.
They may run home crying and need immediate support, or they could text you that they would like to stay a few extra days.

As predictable and reliable the caregiver needs to be in communicating his or her out-the-door sexuality;         
That is how all over the place you can expect the sex life of the baby koala to be.

And again, emotional hygiene of the caregiver is what is going to save the day. Be clear. Do not project your own emotions on the baby koala, but think about what is healthy for him or her or be very clear on your boundaries.

For example: If the baby koala wants to stay on his or her date longer, but you are stressed out because you have been on call for your baby koala for 24 hours, you can tell or text the baby koala:        
“I’m so happy you’re having such a good time!  
You can stay, but I will not be able to meet you then when you get home.           
You can also make a new date with him or her next weekend.”

 

THE FOUR TENDENCIES

There is a book and a system from Gretchen Rubin. It is called “The Four Tendencies”, and it divides into four groups. It’s about how you deal with expectations.

There is:

– the Upholder, responds to outer and inner expectations

These are people that keep their resolutions but also their obligations to others.

– the Obliger, responds to outer expectations.

An Obliger will meet expectations of others, but not their own. This is why they need to create accountability, in order to do what they want to do for themselves.

– the Questioner, responds to inner expectations.

A Questioner will be more likely to do what they set out to do because it is important to them, and not what others expect.                
What they need to do before they can meet the demands of others, is to internalize these external expectations.           
This means asking questions and collecting data.           
As soon as they know Why, the expectation is internalized and they will have no trouble meeting them.

– the Rebel, responds to neither outer nor inner expectations  

How to handle the baby koala is similar to how to handle a Rebel, by what Gretchen Rubin describes as the three C’s:

– clarity              
You communicate without judgement, double layers, but most of all without expectations

– choice              
You give them the choice between staying longer or postpone to next weekend.

– consequence 
You tell him or her you won’t be home if they stay away longer.

I think the caregiver of this relationship, would be an Obliger; 
The baby koala gives the external accountability the Obliger needs, but will never take advantage of Obliger’s tendency to give too much.

It is much harder for an Obliger to not fall into the trap of giving too much, when he or she deals with Questioners and Upholders, than with a Rebel or a baby koala.  
And a Rebel or a baby koala can shield the Obliger from the expectations of other people.          
Because now the Obliger can politely refuse:    
“I can’t do it, I have to take my partner home.” (a baby koala)

The positive complementary relationship between Obligers and Rebels is described in the book:           
The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.           
And if you want to know if you are an Obliger, Questioner, Rebel or an Upholder, you can take her test on: https://quiz.gretchenrubin.com/
Or search for videos on YouTube about this model.

 

CONCLUSION

As I come to the end of this post about this relationship model, I realize more than ever there is so much to be said about this relationship.
So many good stuff, about all the problems and traps it avoids!

And I could write just as much about its limitations. About all the situations where this model is not going to work.      
I knew this post could only be broad strokes, but I think it will be enough for the ones whom it is for.    
And they will have a place to start.                        
And thrive.        

 

Suzanne L. Beenackers
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The Sex Gratitude Journal

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
loveandlust_lock
A sex journal (not a gratitude journal) may be a better start. Buy at https://www.harvard.com/book/love_and_lust_a_sex_journal/ (the not-$100 on Amazon price)

 

If there is something I regret decluttering, it’s a journal I never quite found the right purpose for.
It was called Love and Lust, and it was written by Susie Bright.
Even though I loved its red cover and journaling cues, every attempt to use it stranded after a few weeks.
Upon which I cut out the pages I had used, I archived them, and stored the journal until I was inspired for a new project.

.
But after this week, not only would I have known the perfect way to use it, which is to turn it into a sex gratitude journal;
I would also understand that journals like this do not have to be used, in order to have value.
 
That journals like Love and Lust are valuable just for reminding you that life is there to be lived FULLY.
.
Something which can NOT be said of regular gratitude journals.
But let me explain.
.
dankbaarheidsdagboekThis week I bought a Dutch gratitude journal.
It was an impulse purchase at the checkout, simply because I could not resist its faux leather teal cover.
Maybe because there was a teal colored faux-leather gap in my life, now that I had moved the Deluxe edition of a Christian book “Fervent”, to my pile of books I would be selling.
I had loved the teal faux leather Fervent Deluxe cover.
But although my work is deeply rooted in unconditional love, acceptance and turning the other cheek;
A Christian I am not.
.
And without having left the premises, it created this gaping hole for the next faux leather teal colored book, with which I would get an equally ambivalent relationship.
.
Because when I was home I opened my gratitude journal, still unpacking my groceries. In between stocking my spare box of kitty litter at the bottom of a cupboard, and putting two large containers of strawberries in the fridge, I mentally started going over the damage of not being able to do the rest of my day’s planning.
This journal needed immediate work.
It was a stationary emergency.
.
So I got to work, starting by selecting a magazine to use for clippings. Which one would I choose? A yoga glossy?  A magazine for slow living? 
And then I noticed a sex magazine I bought years ago.
.
It had been one of the magazines that wanted an interview with my alter-ego, who writes a lot about sex. Only to then reveal the real request was to photograph me half-naked.
When the magazine came out with my peers who had accepted the offer, I had bought it.
.
I figured this lacy, sexy, magazine, was the right man for the job!
And got to work.
.
For 90 minutes I cut and pasted. I covered two pages of how you can make tooth brushing into an experience of gratitude. Pages with 30 tips on how to be more grateful . Pages with 100 tips how to be more grateful! 
Good Lord! How many more boring tips could this author come up with?
.
I covered every time it asked me:
What I had learned.
How I could see the bright side.
How I could stay still and let a meditative state of wonder fill my heart.
.
And I covered them with drawings from threesomes, tongues, leather coats worn by naked women.
I covered them with women wearing red lipstick, wearing a captain’s cap, wearing a black military-style cap.
I covered it with women running free, naked, over the beach.
.
The book came with a sticker, and after cutting off the website’s name (something about positive thinking dot nl, I think) I studied the text that was on it.
You will be surprised how far you can still go, after what you think is your limit.
.
I took the seals off and stuck the sticker on my two pages with S&M inspired goodies.
Surprise me, indeed.
.
And as I worked I wondered why this was so important to me.
.
Why was everybody satisfied not just leading a mediocre life,
where they were not just putting up with it, not just allowing it
– because those were things I DID understand and fully sympathized with! –
.
But why were they actually CULTIVATING it?
..
That was question number one.
.
But the other question was:
Why was I absolutely, wholeheartedly, not having any of it?
.
Why was I certain I would be finishing off my very soul, if I allowed for tooth brushing to be the gratitude highlight of my day?
.
And then it hit me:
“Oh! Wait a minute! This journal is for people who are not artists!”
.
People who do not live to CREATE.
Instead they live to do two things.
.
Either build, which is creation but it is bounded creation.
Building is creation within the limits of what you can control and then controlling it.
.
Creators ride the wave, having some idea of where it’s going, but ultimately accepting that it could kill them, have them, hurt them, but they ll be damn’t if they didn’t ride it!
.
Builders will only ride the wave if they know where it will take them.
.
Or alternatively, these non-artists, non-creators live to sustain.
.
Their dominant is a sustaining energy.
They make sure that relationships, property, companies, people, stay in good shape by nourishing them, cleaning them, maintaining them. 
The sustainers are the glue that holds the entire world together.
.
When people say that the world is falling apart, what they mean is:
The sustainers can no longer do their work.
.
And the reason the sustainers cannot do that, is either because the builders build too much, too much to be sustained. Compare it to customer service, which is the sustainer side of manufacturing/ creating software or products. Or they can no longer do their sustaining work because resources have become too scarce.
 
But the artist is not part of this part of society.
The artist does not belong to either the builders, nor to the sustainers..
The artist’s first need is to create.
.
And there are only two sources of creation in this world, only two things the artist can turn to for inspiration . The two sources who create as well.
The artist can turn to God.
Or the artist can turn to sex.
.
The artist, however, cannot turn to tooth brushing.
.
As my gratitude journal came together I realized that this should be my sex gratitude journal. And that this probably did not just go for me, but for everybody who is a creator.
.
We are under constant siege from the builders trying to make us part of their plans to build. And we’re threatened by the sustainers pledging that since we are so resistant to making a life’s work out of being of service to others;
If we can please stop creating such a mess?
.
Can we please stop our disruptive, creative work?
.
Your sex gratitude journal, is where you write three things every day, that were spontaneous, not planned. Things that took over your life, your agenda, your hands, your mind, your body.
.
Three things that swept you off your feet with urgency.
Three moments you were overtaken by God, desire, sex.
Three moments when you remembered who you ARE and what you came to do here on this earth.
.
Three moments when you realize that the answer to the question
– if you could just be more of a builder
– or more of a sustainer
– or if that’s not possible, if you could please stop adding to the mess?
.
That the answer is always the same.
.
No.
 
 

Suzanne L. Beenackers
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