Searching for opportunities

I’m quitting my job.

Yup, it’s official, I’m quitting. You’re the first to know. I haven’t told anyone else, not my wife, my boss, coworkers, no one. I’m sure my wife will be shocked, maybe even a little worried, but when she hears my plan, she’ll love it.  

I’m quitting and moving to Florida. I’ve got everything covered. I’m quitting so that I can get a job at the Happiest Place on Earth. Yes, Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando.

I’ll take any job, but I have my heart set on one job in particular: driving the Disney Monorail. (The park’s monorail system built in 1971 is one of the most heavily used monorail systems in the world with more than 150,000 daily riders, surpassed only by the Tokyo Monorail in Tokyo, Japan, with 300,000 daily riders and the Chongqing Rail Transit in China, which has over 900,000 daily riders.)

Making my pitch

Unfortunately I don’t know much about driving a monorail. I’ve never driven one. I also don’t much about train systems period, but it sounds like a great job right. Everyone’s happy to be there, happy to be on vacation. Everyone’s excited.

Yes, I know Disney doesn’t always have a great reputation as a place to work and like any retail or service provider, the job may not be everything it’s cracked up to be on paper. And oh yea, I’m sure they see the occasional tear or temper tantrum from kids young and old not waiting to leave. But for every grouch and grump, you’re still in the land of sun oranges, right?

Hatching my plan

I’ve actually been thinking about this plan for some time. When we visited Disney when my children were little, on our next to last night, we took the monorail, instead of the bus, back to our hotel.

The monorail driver looked so happy. We started talking to him and asking him how long he worked for Disney. He told us that he had a job as a senior-level marketing executive, but got tired of it and threw it all away to start a new career. My wife and I joked that we were going to submit our resignation letters and get jobs in Florida. She would get a job in some souvenir shop. Goodness knows there’s enough of them in Florida. And I would get a job working on the monorail. We didn’t need to be rich, we just wanted to be happy.

Real life versus my make-belief one

Of course, life got in the way. When we returned from vacation, I took a promotion leading an ever bigger team and we quickly forgot about our funny dream. So all these years later, I’m finally throwing in the towel.

Okay, maybe not quite yet. The Florida summers would drive me crazy. I need the four seasons to give me some perspective on everything I’ve been given. The whiney kids wanting just one more toy, one more drink, one more of this or that would send me over the edge.

Other plans

Instead, how about working as a caddy in Augusta? Now that would be fun.

Or working as tour guide in Italy. The sites would be out of this world, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, Mount Etna, the small village of Positano along the Amalfi Coast, and a million others.

Or training others learn to skydive. I’d get to skydive as much as I wanted. (Okay, I’ve yet to parachute myself, but I know I would love it.)

I hear too that U2 is going on tour this summer and need some help with back-up vocals. Now that would be a fun, once-in-a-lifetime job.

Okay, okay, I just need a vacation day, a mental health day to be exact, and I’ll be keeping my day job for the time being.

Will I take-up a new career in the not too distant future? Who knows,  but right now, I’ll keep on the path I’m following. There’s no Mickey Mouse, but I’m still pretty happy.