For a long time, I thought life was about choosing a side. You were either in control or you weren’t. Ambitious or free. All in or completely out. I kept swinging between the two, chasing structure until it stopped me living, then chasing freedom until it stopped me building.
It took me years to realise that the real joy isn’t found in either extreme. It’s in the in-between. The quiet middle where you can live freely but still feel grounded. Where you can live and build at the same time. Where you stop trying to control life or escape it, and finally start to experience it.
I’ve lived in the in-between for as long as I can remember. I was quite literally born between two ways of being. One French, the other English. I thought it was normal until it wasn’t. Until I had to fit in, AKA school.
School made me realise that being “different” wasn’t exactly ‘cool’ at all. My French side, the scarves my mum would put on me, the softness, the sensibility, didn’t quite fit the mould. People would say, “Say something in French,” and I couldn’t tell if they were curious or mocking me. So I started to hide it. I made myself more English. Easier to understand. Easier to belong.
I didn’t outwardly express my french side, but it was always there. In my sensitivity, my taste, my way of seeing the world. It would be there after school, at dinner time, whenever I was in France with family, where I could just be without explanation.
Looking back, I think that’s where it started, this feeling of not quite knowing where I could feel authentically myself. I think we all feel that sometimes. The quiet confusion about where we truly belong, and who we need to be to feel accepted. And most of us spend years, maybe our whole lives, trying to find the balance between the two.
The Need to Get It Right
I’ve always felt french when I’m in France and I’ve felt english when I’m in england. But only in recent years I’ve fully allowed myself to feel both at the same time, and I can’t quite explain it. But what I have learnt is that not everything needs to be explained and not everything needs to be controlled (trust me, I am still learning that too)
That tension between sides didn’t just stay cultural. It started to show up everywhere in my life, especially in my need to control things, to get them “right.” The need to belong quietly became the need to perfect.
I was diagnosed with OCD when I was 13. It was my way of trying to make sense of everything. My brain was always looking for patterns, reasons, control, anything that made the world feel a little less uncertain.
My need to get things “right” became extreme and I completely lost my sense of self in the process, as well as my ability to make my own decisions and to trust myself. I’d analyse every thought, every feeling, until it made sense. It was completely exhausting, not just for me, but for the people around me.
The Illusion of Control
What I’ve come to learn is that control only gives the illusion of safety. It quietly drains your freedom. And in chasing certainty, you lose connection with the very thing you’re trying to protect, yourself.
So how do you stay connected to who you are whilst still living, growing and evolving? How do you hold freedom and ambition at the same time?
The Decision That Changed Everything
Controlling everything didn’t work for me, so I flipped the switch. I started to think there was more to life than having everything perfectly laid out, and when the cracks started to show between controlling everything and life having other plans, I saw chasing freedom as the only other option. I had followed everything to a T, and had never felt so disconnected. Something had to change.
That’s when I quit my perfectly stable graduate job in London to be a chalet girl. No plan, just a gut feeling to go completely against everything I’d been told was the “right” thing to do. Within a week I had watched chalet girl the movie, applied to be a chalet girl, handed in my notice and moved to the French Alps. I didn’t have time to think, let alone overthink it. And that was still to do this day, one of the best things I have ever done. It wasn’t about escaping my life, it was about feeling like I was actually in it. It was a spontaneous decision, but it was also an intentional one.
It was more than anything my way of proving to myself that I could actually live my life fully without feeling out of control. Because for the first time, I was in control. It has become the foundation for how I live my life now; I just go for it and I always back myself to figure it out. Whether or not it’s the “right” thing to do, I know for certain that I will always learn something.
The Art of Living Intentionally
I’d tell anyone the same thing: live fully, take the risk, change your path, taste everything (at least once). Even if it doesn’t look “right” on paper, if it feels right to you, it probably is, and you don’t need to explain it. Let your life unfold by doing things, rather than just controlling things. Plans are good yes, but follow them loosely, focus on what feels right and follow that. I don’t care if it’s cringe but trust me, being yourself creates opportunities you can’t plan for.
Disclaimer: Do not do the thing just because TikTok told you to.
And just so we are clear, this isn’t to say to blow everything up. To move across the world just because you saw a TikTok about it. Living intentionally is knowing what’s for you and what isn’t for you. Knowing what’s trendy and what’s Trendie (there’s a difference). It’s having structure to your decisions but always leaving room for spontaneity.
It’s an art for a reason. It’s something you perfect over time, it’s subjective and not something you can buy like a membership to your dream life (sorry). Because what alignment looks like for me might not look the same for you. That’s the whole point. It’s subjective.
For me, alignment isn’t about choosing one side, but letting both coexist. My French side reminds me to enjoy the moment, and my English side reminds me to create the next one. They fuel each other. That’s what alignment really is, the ability to hold both without losing either.
It’s about designing a life that feels like yours, but one that you can actually sustain. One that holds your freedom and your ambition. Your fun side and your serious side. The side that loves staying in and the other that loves going out.
The Real Luxury
What makes it Trendie is that it’s yours. If it was just trendy, it’s likely someone else’s.
That’s the art of living in the in-between.
That’s what I call Tasteful Hedonism®: Living fully without losing yourself. It’s hedonism with taste, knowing what’s for you and going towards it, and knowing what isn’t and realigning.
If you can master that, you’ll realise the real luxury was never in what you own or what boxes you tick, but in how fully you live your own life.
Take this as your reminder to let your life unfold by doing things, rather than just controlling things.