If Social Security Says You Are Disabled, Is That “The End”?
In most of the 1980’s, I was living in Washington, D.C., working in corporate America, waking up at 6 am, rushing with my coffee while I brushed my teeth and put on my pinstripe suit and yellow power tie, and drove to work, arriving before rush hour. Only to to experience panic and anxiety until daybreak.
Then came a myriad of health issues including, but not limited to, heart attack, a burst appendicitis, a dysfunctional vagus nerve (requiring an implant) and a myriad of other health problems, I was put on the corporate sidelines, and, doctors said I would not be working again and I had only been working less than 20 years.
I was now considered officially disabled. I did not buy the term. I bought an old used pc and learned all I could about the Internet. I learned how to be a cartoonist and writer. I learned how to outsource and license the manufacturing of my image products. I became a successful E-entrepreneur within a few years, and the government still treated me as if I was useless to society. After all, I was disabled which can carry a lifetime stigma.
So I built the most popular offbeat cartoon site on the web and twelve licensed image specialty stores. Told social security. “Sorry you are disabled”.
So I went back to college and even received a scholarship, completed 3 years but had to drop due to health reasons. It was not an easy college, a small (known to be difficult) private school. I made good grades. Still, I was disabled. I was beginning to realize what a person’s opinion, simply a label, can do to affect another human being’s life.
I let the government know of my activities, yet they simply ignored my suggestion that maybe a disability is not a disability at all. If one really wants to do something, it can be done.
Which brings me to the whole issue of labeling. What is so productive about labeling? I have been ten times more productive as a “disabled person” than when I was “fully functional” (pushing and signing papers mostly), in corporate America. It is truly something to think about.
