How The Internet Levelled The Playing Field For The Disabled
I am a 53-year old man who has been declared officially disabled for almost a decade now. I never really cared much for labels, but if our society deems it important for governmental reasons to put one on me, then, indeed, that’s me.
My career-life had been spotty at best. Though I mainly worked in sales and marketing, I took low to mid-level jobs in large city media just to have a challenge. Sales was boring for me, and eventually media became so too. It got to where I could not even smile at the boss coming into work every morning. More and more co-workers noticed my ‘depression’ I was finally called into the office for my expected pink slip.
I started studying depression on the Internet because I was home a lot. It did not take me long to discover a disease called ‘TRD’ or labeled by the psychiatric community, ‘treatment resistant depression’. I was one of the few lucky ones who received the only treatment for it, a vagus nerve implant.
You see, TRD is actually not a mental illness, in and of itself, but a faulty vagus nerve, of which I had, will mimic the signs of depression, lethargy, etc. After I received the treatment, my life took dramatic changes. One obstacle, a majori coronary just before Christmas in 2001 shook the ground from under me. But I recovered rapidly by changing my eating habits and exercising regularly.
Though I have played ‘catch-up’ for the past near decade, working day and night on my projects and college, some people continue to label me disabled, which to me, is a good thing. It reflects more on them than it does me. If I’m disabled, what on earth are they? I am happy to say, we live in enlightened times and most are not that way.
But some are and I guess will always be so. I cannot change them, nor do I want to, if it gives them comfort and a feeling of superiority. I have found that the Internet has levelled the playing field.
I say that a bit facetiously and with a bit of sarcasm, because, during my ‘depressed state’, I was keenly aware of the discrimination targeted my way, though those who were being discriminating were not aware of my awareness. I guess they thought people with depression or any disability don’t have any type of consciousness when actually we are, for the most part, super-sensitive to the environment around us.
My darkest days were when I left the corporate world never to return. I felt like a horse being put out to pasture. I felt it was truly over. I didn’t have a clue at the time it was only the beginning, finally, probably for the first time, a real beginning, a real chance to live.
I am not certain if one would call me a ‘master of the Internet, certainly not a guru by any means, but I have gotten much insight into how it works over the past few years. Penniless, I launched Times Cartoons which in less than a decade became the most visited offbeat cartoon site on the Internet (and still is).
It’s Alexa rankings grow daily and by the end of this month we will have had 9 million visitors within the past two years. That may not sound like much but for a cartoon site it is. Most cartoons on the Internet last from 3-6 months and the others are gone within a year. Every day, or nearly so, I receive an Email asking me what I would charge for a full SEO campaign.
Then I decided to monetise my cartoons adding various gift stores from niche shops to huge mega-stores featuring 100,000 products. They have been profitable from the start. Affiliates on Amazon sign up through one of my manufacturers, 3drose, and they sell a big bulk of my merchandise. Weproduce all sorts of products with my cartoons on them; greeting cards, t-shirts, jogging suits, mouse pads, coffee mugs, beer steins, wall and desk clock, baseball caps, and, you name it, we make it. All this is due to research on the Internet and making phone calls.
Oddly enough, a disabled person, and that person is me, can write a clear-minded, professional email, talk on the phone professionally, create a social network and blog professionally, and write articles, hopefully professionally.
The old boy network, who was once so involved in labelling stigma attached to depression and/or disability is has zero power in my life. I don’t know who their new scapegoats are and don’t care. I have no excuses anymore not to succeed. I deal with people who want me to succeed, and it helps them succeed. I love helping others succeed, especially others who have been what I’ve been through. And there are many.
I am a ‘living room-industrialist’. I come up with a cartoon concept, I make a call, its on a product, and jobs are created.
Disabled people, I was told, were not necessarily as intelligent as the norm. That’s okay, I just finished three years at a top-notch accredited business college online, at age 52. I am 53 now and will complete my coursework next year and if all goes well, my masters. I will use the Internet once again. Why waste time with people who are more concerned with ‘labeling’ me so as to put parameters on my limitations, than those who know me just as a person and helping me succeed.
I am not saying a depressed or disabled person should hide behind his or her computer all day, I spend a great amount of time my day being and working with people, handing out business cards, going on talk shows, and doing as much as I can in the public. I teach free Internet workshops to the elderly, many of them shut-ins.
In the past week, I have opened three new online niche stores featuring my cartoon products; Justfunnymousepads, Justfunnycoffeemugs, and Justfunnygreetingcards, not to mention two weeks ago when I created the first cartoon maternity shop mirthgirthbirth.com and of course my ten year old cartoon site that I started from scratch, londonstimes.us .
Labelling is a bad thing. Have you ever noticed that a person with a mental illness or physical disability is the only person labelled by his illness or disease? If a person has MS, we don’t say ‘She is MS!’, or if a person has diabetes, I’ve yet to hear, ‘There goes Mr. High Blood Sugar!’.
But if a person has depression, it never fails, ‘He/she’s depressed’ or ‘has depression’ or ‘mental illness’. That usually puts an end to the conversation as the stigma remains and many don’t want to know much more. That is unacceptable.
It might do them good to go to some of the famous people with depression websites such as http://www.geocities.com/coverbridge2k/artsci/famous_people_depression.html , or http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/illstandbyyou/famous.html . I am always surprised to see my name on each of the pages. There are hundreds of them; simply Google ‘famous people with depression’.
My name generally appears below Abraham Lincoln and Greg Louganis. Of course they were depressed and couldn’t have accomplished much, could they?
About the author:
Cartoonist Rick London has overcome many obstacles, and has some of the most visited humour-based websites on the Internet. His latest funny gift store is Just Funny Greeting Cards Disabled cartoonist Rick London opens yet another niche shop, cartoon greeting cards