{"id":98,"date":"2005-05-14T08:44:32","date_gmt":"2005-05-14T16:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rustinjessen.com\/2005\/05\/12\/a-mushy-little-reflection\/"},"modified":"2005-05-14T08:44:32","modified_gmt":"2005-05-14T16:44:32","slug":"a-mushy-little-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/a-mushy-little-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mushy Little Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some events this morning made me take a step back for a few moments and just reflect on life.  It sounds totally corny, but its true.  So I opened a little window here and I&#8217;m just going to let my fingers fly across this keyboard.  I should probably warn you that I&#8217;m in a odd mood (at least for me) so the words to follow may be overly mushy and filled with an almost naively positive outlook.<\/p>\n<p>On May 15 I will be celebrating my 24th year on the earth, and the beginning of my third year with the mouse.  As I&#8217;ve said so many times before, my life now is a night-and-day difference from both what it used to be, and what I pictured it to be when I was young.   Well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 scratch that, it&#8217;s exactly how I hoped it would be when I was young, but very different from those &#8216;adjusted&#8217; dreams that everyone settles with when they realize that life can be hard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Life:<\/strong><br \/>\nEverything I do is shared with a really wonderful girl.  Janey and I both have a different story about how we met, and we are both sure we&#8217;re right\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but we also both have fairly un-reliable long term memories.  Who knows if we will ever remember the real chain of events that brought us together.  I can only say that if those events hadn&#8217;t happened in just the way they actually did, I would be an empty shell.  She&#8217;s the reason I work hard, she&#8217;s the reason I want to be better, she&#8217;s just my reason.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Family:<\/strong><br \/>\nI miss my family very much.  Being 600 miles away from them isn&#8217;t easy at all.  We still have a great relationship, but phone conversations don&#8217;t have the same feeling.  I&#8217;m so thankful for every one of them, and I appreciate every bit of attention that any one of them has every paid me.  Little brothers are a pain, and sons who don&#8217;t follow rules are embarrassing and frustrating.  But in the end we all come together with no hard feelings.  We are a safety net for each other that I think all of us have landed in at least once.<\/p>\n<p>My parents led us by example to invite others into the family.   When I was growing up, friends and loved ones were always welcome to visit, and there was always enough food for them to stay for a bite to eat.  Even now with all the husbands and kids and other relationships, my family never ceases to amaze me.  There&#8217;s more people to keep track of, in more places then ever, but we still feel close.   It&#8217;s nice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Job:<\/strong><br \/>\nI love what I do.  I love who I do it for.  And I really really love why I do it.  And to be completely honest, I can say those things about every single position I have held since making the move to Disney.  I have loved them all for different reasons, but in the end it comes down to those three points.  If it were somehow possible, I would work every day in a new spot somewhere around the parks.  I care a great deal about every guest that visits us here, and I love to help make those great stories that they will tell their friends when they get home.  I&#8217;m as geeky and passionate about the magic now as I have ever been.  I am the eternal optimist when it comes to the mouse, though I&#8217;m very quick to point out where we can improve.  There is a laundry list of people that I have met in my time here that I couldn&#8217;t have dreamed.  Everything from composers who have touched my life with their music, to performers who made memories for me when I visited Disneyland as a kid.  It&#8217;s pretty amazing just how small a world it really is.<\/p>\n<p>What I actually do for a living now is easy to explain, but sometimes hard to understand.  I create\/develop\/plan\/execute unique entertainment events.  Everything from a birthday party with 5 guests, to a multi day event for thousands.  I never do &#8216;cookie-cutter&#8217; events, rather I create new stories and experiences for everyone that comes to visit.  It&#8217;s more fun then any person should be allowed to have on a daily basis.  It&#8217;s a dream come true just to be here, but to have landed in a perfect seat for me.  There are so many more things I would like to try though\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6  stay tuned for more on that. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>I guess that&#8217;s enough for now\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6  Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some events this morning made me take a step back for a few moments and just reflect on life. It sounds totally corny, but its true. So I opened a little window here and I&#8217;m just going to let my fingers fly across this keyboard. I should probably warn you that I&#8217;m in a odd &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/a-mushy-little-reflection\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Mushy Little Reflection<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rustinjessen.com\/old\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}