I want to write for Disney for every reason you hate.

I’ve been doing a bunch of creative writing lately. From stuff on this blog to stuff that I’m doing to school to drunken poetry that I write in bed, I’m always writing. Writing is becoming one of the most important things in my life.

Since I stopped going to Bridgewater State for school and have been taking classes online with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), I’ve had a bunch of time to contemplate what I want to do with all of this. Yesterday, for fun, I looked up internships in writing at Disney – it’s something I’ve done sporadically ever since my college program – and I got really really really excited at the prospect of going back there for the first time in a long time.

There was a show writing internship that was posted on their LinkedIn account that caught my attention. For the first time I qualified for every requirement. I would have been in my last semester by the time the internship started and I could have finished school there because all of my current course work is online. I was enticed.

The further I read the more excited I grew. I wanted to go back! I loved my college program. I would love to do a Professional Internship. I found out who I was at Disney and understood the person I wanted to be. Day after day I worked in the Magic Kingdom and watched the unmistakable joy of family after family as they traversed the park. I wanted to help create that joy. I walked around that park picking up trash (I was a custodial intern) and it was one of the most positive, life-affirming things I’ve ever done. Between acting silly or stupid to make the little kids laugh or striking up casual conversations to how people got to the park, I learned little life lessons about humanity that have changed everything about me. It was exhilarating.

I got to the end of the application and my world crashed back down to reality. It was due in February. 

It’s my fault. I hadn’t really checked writing jobs/internships outside of Cape Cod in a while. Last fall I was fully engrossed with football and the beginning of this year has been dedicated to finishing my degree at SNHU on a strong note (3.85 GPA right now, btw). It wasn’t my priority then.

The previous 378 words have been fermenting in my head since this happened on Tuesday. I’ve been trying to make sense of it. I used to check those internships all of the time. I was relentless about it. And in no way is this post an omission of guilt at the fact I stopped doing that. I had other stuff come up. That happens. I think this is more of an assertion for what I want to work towards in the next year. I want to write for them. I want to write for them and here is why:

• I want to write the little bit of material that you look at during a two-hour wait to get on splash mountain that makes you laugh,
• I want to write the thing you think about while eating a fried turkey leg that makes  you bear your kids’ transformation into crack candy addicts and the fact your wife keeps asking how you are going to pay for all of this,
• I want to write that screenplay that pretentious college sophomores ridicule but secretly loved growing up,
• I want to write for them so college comp 2 teachers can read horrible essays by said college sophomores about my awful writing,
• I want to write for them because of all the hope, all the music and all of the monologues that me feel something – that still make me feel something,
• I want to write for them because I want to inspire generations of little kids to think and play with their imaginations because they can create a world that doesn’t quite suck like this one can at times.

I’m sure I will receive a comment or two about their alleged roles with Nazi’s, how they portray women or various races or even the rates they pay their employees. I’m not going to speak to any of that. I sympathize with all of those arguments but this, for me, comes from a purely idealist, I can make the world a bigger, brighter place – truth, beauty and love aspiring – good always beats evil and they sing songs while doing it area of my heart. The place they created.

So, to end, I think I am going to make a proclamation. From now on, every day, the first thing I am going to do in the morning is search Disney writing internships. I want to go back there. Hopefully that happens.

Despite what anyone thinks.