It seemed like only yesterday that 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 be stressed out the rest of the day and night.

After a major coronary, 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 which, since I was not yet forty years old, was a big blow to my ego.

Now I was a person with a label. No longer was that label “corporate executive. It was “disabled”. I did not buy the term. I bought a cheap computer 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 an entrepreneur within a few years, and a disabled one at that.

Then I built the largest and most visited independent offbeat cartoon site on the Internet with eight stores.

Somehow, I felt I still had something to prove to myself so I learned a new skill online, Internet business and technology at a very good accredited college, finished nearly four years, and am on break. I was on scholarship by the way. And I am disabled. Go figure.

I told my local social security office of my new business and education activities and even applied for their PASS program. They simply ignored my suggestion that maybe a disability is not a disability at all. If one really wants to do something, just do it, disabled or not.

After becoming “disabled” and achieving success nevertheless, I have discussed this with many other so-called disabled persons, and have discovered many similar stories. I am certainly not a hero nor even unique. Some have gone on to accomplish things that are beyond my scope.

What is the point of labeling? What is so productive about labeling? I still have not been able to figure it out. 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.