Which version of yourself are you holding back? 🧩

This week, instead of sharing an article, I have some news (I know this publication is called a newsletter after all 😜).

I've really enjoyed writing the last 11 articles over the past few months about elegance, perfectionism, aesthetics, and all the rest—but it's time for a change of gears.

It's been eight weeks or so since I moved into my new apartment and started my new job, and I'm very glad to say I'm slowly starting to feel settled in this new phase of life. Learning the ropes of the job has been intense—to say the least—but I can finally say I'm getting into the rhythm of things. Week by week, I can feel my life stabilizing, and as a wonderful consequence, I also have more mental bandwidth for other exciting projects.

Finding the time to write these newsletters has definitely been a challenge, but I've felt it necessary to keep writing them. The reason is simple: these cultural topics are near and dear to my heart, and I love thinking and writing about them. Keeping that going, even to this minimal extent, has helped me stay in touch with my identity as a writer—to keep the thread alive no matter how many other engagements I have.

That said, I've decided to deprioritize writing these long-form newsletters for a while. Not because I love them any less, but because there's a more leveraged way to spend the limited time and energy I have right now.

You see, besides my identity as a writer, there's another important identity I want to stay more connected to going forward: the one of a performer. Yes, I love performing in whatever shape or form, and it's been like that for as long as I can remember. I was unbelievably shy as a child and well into my adolescence, but that has never stopped me from feeling completely at home on stage. 😅

Whether it's singing, playing instruments, teaching, public speaking, or live translating, I thrive throughout the whole process of preparation and execution. I feel like my nervous system is just naturally wired for that kind of work, even though I know I still have so much to learn about what makes a truly great performance.

So if not the newsletter, which medium lets me practice my skills both in writing and performing? YouTube, because every video requires a well-thought-out concept and script, and someone to present the ideas on camera.

Of course, performing in front of a camera never matches the thrill of performing in front of a live audience, but it’s still fun enough. So with that said, I’ll be focusing on the art of creating videos for the time being; and once the timing feels right, I'll bring some form of newsletter back to complement them.

Fortunately, I’m not starting fully from scratch at this point either. I’ve been making videos for around ten years, with probably the mileage of at least a hundred videos behind me. From now on it’s more of a question of zeroing in on the artistic and intellectual direction of the videos—a prospect I’m very excited about.

The details will sharpen with time, but what I know is that I want my videos to revolve around the ideal of elegance in performance. Now that I think of it, it’s quite a throwback, because my 2023 Bachelor’s thesis was literally an analysis of elegance in three televised performances from the 1960s—one each from Maria Callas, Caterina Valente, and Barbra Streisand.

Anyway, to close this week's ponderings, a few questions to leave you with:

• Which identities matter most to you, and are you actually living them?

• Is there a version of yourself you keep holding back?

• What's the best thing that could happen if you finally let that version out? What’s the worst thing that could happen, and would it really be the end of the world?

I invite you to subscribe to both of my channels for future videos. This is my main channel, where I've already shared some videos on elegance-adjacent topics—though they don't yet reflect the new direction I'm taking:

And on this secondary channel I occasionally share my favorite songs that move me, make me laugh, and make me fall in love with life again and again:

Thanks for being here, and I hope you'll stay with me for this next chapter. 🥳

Have an elegant weekend!

Bisous,

Elle