October 20, 2019

We are on our way home from a wonderful eight-day adventure at Walt Disney World. I have taken dozens and dozens of photos, I have pondered a lot and pondered a little, and I’m feeling the most relaxed after a vacation I have felt in several years.

This has been a wonderful vacation.

We are aboard flight UA 1500 en route to ORD Chicago-O’Hare. The flight is quite smooth; flight time is a little over 2.5 hours. It will be nice to be back in Central Time. As an aside, I’m looking forward to the end of Daylight Saving Time in two weeks. I know many folks don’t look forward to losing their “extra” daylight, but my circadian rhythm feels all nice and adjusted when we get back to Standard Time.

My husband and I were counting out the number of visits we have made to Walt Disney World during our 23+ years together and I was surprised to realize the final tally. As a process and technology dork, it’s interesting to see how things have changed over the years and how much things are progressing. Experiences that seemed very cutting edge back in 1997 now feel a little dated. I still adore the “Disney Tradition” and approach to excitement but I sometimes wonder if the average middle American family enjoys the experience as much as I do. I tend to be an outlier in the way I see things. I’m good with my point of view; sometimes you need commentary from a different vantage point in the room.

One of the things that’s becoming more difficult to do at Disney is shutting out the outside world a bit. Without making changes to notification schemes and avoiding certain apps and streams, you can still become inundated with the travails occurring on the other side of those magical walls. While I tweeted and shared our experiences, I didn’t do a lot of reading of news and the like. I’m sure everything is still as off the rails as it was when we embarked on this journey last Saturday.

I mentioned to my husband that I wanted to keep this sense of centered-ness alive for as long as possible. I have a few little charms that will be in my reach at my work desk. I have a few chants I’ll say to myself from time to time.

It’s good to be in a great place.

And it’s awesome to be in an airplane, enjoying the view. Any seat on an airplane is an awesome seat.