Day 116 was bizarrely poetic. Or poetically bizarre. And not just because I was an HBS grad participating in his second strike.

To that point in last year’s Writers Guild of America’s 148-day strike against the big media companies, I normally picketed at CBS Radford because (a) it was the studio closest to my home, and (b) it hit the Venn diagram of parking, shade, and bathrooms. I’d occasionally keep things fresh by scheduling a “picketing date.” Today was a reunion picket for the staff of Truth Be Told (Apple) at Disney. What made it so bizarrely poetic is that Disney was where this freshly minted Harvard MBA had begun his entertainment industry career.

I’d long dreamt of living a creative life. I was always the kid in the play. The HBS Show. Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals. One of the great 14-year-old Tevyes in a summer-camp production of Fiddler on the Roof.

Disney was my foot in the door. While churning out budgets and quarterly projections as a finance executive, I took a sitcom-writing class at UCLA Extension. I loved it. The woman I was dating encouraged me to take the chance and pursue a career as a writer. Over the course of one week, I resigned from Disney, proposed to her, and commenced dragging my now-wife along for this nearly 30-year journey as a TV writer.

After a series of up and downs, cancellations, and firings—routine stuff in Hollywood—I was fortunate enough to land on a string of successful shows. It became an endless series of “pinch-me” moments. Walking to my office on the iconic Paramount lot. Meeting with an Oscar-winning legend to play my dad in an original pilot I’d written. Standing at the urinal next to Tony Soprano at the Emmys.

But in the last few years the world has changed. The push to streaming. The entry of tech companies. Disastrous mega-mergers. It’s all had a crippling effect on TV writers and our ability to make a living. An 8-episode order on Netflix vs. a 22-episode order on CBS. Smaller writers’ rooms. Nobody below the level of showrunner (head writer/CEO) being kept on for production, denying junior writers on-set experience.

Another critical issue: the disappearance of the money paid for reruns, or residuals, as companies kept series for their own streaming platforms rather than sell them to local stations in syndication. Residuals arrive by mail in green envelopes, nicknamed “greenies.” In lean times, greenies allowed me to pay my mortgage and feed my family. Many young writers starting out today have never even seen one.

Not to sound precious, but I was striking for future generations. Writers in earlier eras did the same for me so I could enjoy health care, a pension, and greenies. Hence, the duty to pay it forward. Hell, I was paying it sideways to that struggling junior writer in line next to me.

The strike was physically and emotionally exhausting but ended with a fair deal. Yet the larger entertainment landscape remains unsettled. The next contract negotiation comes in 2026, and nobody wants another strike. I’ve been blessed to live the creative life I’d dreamt about and make a career out of it. So if necessary—and if parking around Disney remains plentiful—I will again answer the call. And it would be no less bizarrely poetic. Or poetically bizarre.

Leonard Dick is an Emmy Award–winning writer and producer with numerous credits, including The Good Wife, Lost, House, and Truth Be Told.

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