It Starts

I won’t start from the start, mostly because this is a blog and not a novel. But, I do have to take y’all back into the vault a little bit. Unbelievably, it was less than 5 years ago that I was sitting in a small (albeit nice) internal office of a large law firm in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the kind of gig that many young attorneys and/or would-be attorneys see as the golden ticket: the big firm job in the fancy building…but not too big. Big enough to make your bank account happy, but not big enough to steal your soul as soon you walk in the door. You see, what they don’t tell you in law school is that some forms of the legal profession go Dr. Facilier on you without thinking twice. Sometimes it is all at once, sometimes it is in little pieces, but the result is always the same. Years have passed. You’ve missed weddings, birthdays, anniversaries. Social interactions are forced. Sleep is in small doses. You suddenly realize exactly the deal you’ve made. Your existence is wholly tied to the placement of periods and commas, and all for a few more numbers to the right of the dollar sign.

So what does this have to do with Disney? Well, in short…Everything!

One day, something magical happened: my husband and I were invited to join his family on a trip to Walt Disney World. It took some convincing (and particularly enchanted timing that made the escape from clutches of “big law life” for a few days possible), but I agreed to go along. I had never been to a Disney park, and mostly I just assumed it would just be a giant playground full of children. (I suppose you could argue I wasn’t wrong…but I digress.) Why would I, a childless millennial, want to go there?

On the very first day of my very first trip to a Disney park, we visited Epcot. As we entered the park, Spaceship Earth was a “walk-on” (which is Disney-speak for “no line”). So, we hopped aboard my first Disney attraction. Fast-forward 16 minutes or so, as we exited the attraction, I noticed a guy out of the corner of my eye. His mannerisms caught my attention, but he was far enough away that I didn’t give him a full glance.  As we got closer to where the guy had been, he caught my eye again. I don’t know…there was something animated about him, something I couldn’t ignore. So I turned to look at him and he was just standing there, smiling from ear to ear. He looked like a kid and a grown up, all at the same time. A beat later, I realized it was my own reflection.

I hadn’t seen that guy in years, but I kept seeing him over and over again during that 5-day trip. Those moments still make me emotional when I think about it. I often credit Epcot, and that trip, with being the catalyst for change in my life because it was one of the first times I was able to see that I was losing myself in my profession. On a subsequent trip to WDW, this time at the Magic Kingdom, staring up into the sky through teary eyes as the “Happily Ever After” Fireworks show assaulted my senses, I had another catalytic moment. That is when I decided it was time for a change.

I include this story in my first blog because it is what brought me here. Leisure Mouse is the persona, the alter ego, that identifies the things in life that create smiles and makes them the priority. It looks at all that is shiny in an effort to find out what is gold. Leisure Mouse digs into all the noise and finds the magic. Because, at the end of the day, we could all use a little more pixie dust in our lives.

I hope you enjoy this space. We will cover it all: parks, attractions, music, movies, gadgets and rumors. Leisure Mouse won’t always have the latest info or the best trip tips, but it will always try to find the thing that makes it all magical.

All fairytales have a beginning, and this is ours.