It’s been three years since I started the blog on jennifertrijo.com and a lot has changed in both my personal and professional life. I’m loving living my life on my own terms. I’ve had the good fortune of interviewing dozens of creative people who are also living life on their own terms. Their stories have enriched my own.
The eve of a new decade has prompted me to reflect on what I really want to achieve in 2020. Usually, I make a list of resolutions and most years I’ve managed to stay true to some of them.
This year, I’m forgetting the list and committing to one resolution. I’m removing the mental clutter and will focus on a single resolution for 2020.
My mantra for 2020 will be ‘lower your expectations, not your standards’.
After considering the projects I’ve been involved in over the past year, I’d have to admit that the ones I enjoyed the most were the ones that I’ve approached with an open mind and open heart. My expectations were not great as I was preoccupied with getting the job done well.
I struggled during the past year, particular as I was with how things ought to turn out, then becoming disheartened when the result was anything but. Thankfully, my resilience remained intact and my late grandmother’s favourite words, ‘que sera’, rang in my ears, as they often do.
This year I brought Jasmine into the world. The past four and a half months of learning how to be her mother have tested me, and simultaneously completed me. This perspective afforded me the necessary self-care to continue being a freelance creative, entrepreneur, and mother. I’m not trying to save the world, I’m trying to make artists’ stories more visible, and do what I love.
Lowering my own expectations doesn’t mean that I don’t have goals; I simply don’t have unrealistic expectations attached to these goals. I have the self-discipline to set and stick to budgets and schedules, and I surround myself with people who are genuine and who energise me. I’m going to maintain the standards I have set for myself and allow everything else in my life, which I can’t control, to just be.
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many people will be celebrating tonight. How ever you choose to spend the final hours of 2019, may you be well and enjoy every moment. I will greet the new year fresh with an early night’s sleep, pending my daughter’s consideration for her parents. See you in the next decade.
