A few years ago, I moved to a country that consistently ranked near the top of lists of the best places in the world to live. These rankings usually measure safety, income levels, the quality of healthcare, infrastructure, and all the other things that really do matter. So it seemed perfectly logical to me that if there was a place where life was supposed to be wonderful, this would be it.

But not long after moving, I started noticing a strange disconnect. Although many aspects of my life had objectively become much easier and more convenient, life itself didn’t feel better. I kept thinking back to periods when I had had far fewer opportunities and much less comfort. And what seemed especially strange was that those memories held a warmth that this place (supposedly one of the most comfortable places on earth) simply wasn’t giving me.

I could have put it all down to nostalgia and the comforting idea that things used to be better. But one question wouldn’t leave me alone. What exactly had made that life feel so good? And what am I missing now?

After all, I had moved somewhere that was widely considered a great place to live, expecting better conditions to automatically mean a better life. It had seemed logical. More opportunities, more convenience, more safety. Should not that be enough to feel happier?

The more I turned this over in my mind, the more I began noticing things I had never paid much attention to before. How people behave around me. How streets and public spaces are laid out. What I see and hear on an ordinary walk. How I feel after a trip to the store. How much effort the simplest tasks take. What is considered normal here, and how that compares with what I’m used to.

I had not given any of this much thought before. When I felt good somewhere, I simply lived and enjoyed my life, without trying to understand what made it feel that way. But after this move, I wanted to look more closely for the first time.

Gradually, I began to understand how much my idea of “good living conditions” had left out. You can live in a comfortable apartment and never have a moment of quiet. You can walk through a well-kept neighbourhood and never find a place that makes you want to linger. And you can find yourself somewhere completely ordinary, with nothing remarkable about it, and suddenly think “I feel so good here”.

These were the things that caught my interest. Why does one space make you want to stay, while another makes you want to leave as soon as possible? Why is something perfectly ordinary in one place and unthinkable in another? What do we learn to put up with over time, and does that mean it stops bothering us?

Crème de Sens grew out of these observations.

At the heart of this blog is a question: what actually makes everyday life feel good?

I want to understand how our surroundings, culture, habits, and individual choices come together to shape how life feels. To write about the places, people, things, and unspoken rules that set the tone for an ordinary day. About what brings us joy, what wears us down, and what we only notice once we’ve experienced a different way of living.

At first, I couldn’t understand why life didn’t feel better in a place where it was supposedly better to live.  Now I am interested in something much broader. What goes into making a life I actually enjoy?