Title, Tagline and the Journey of this Blog (Blogging 101) by Rick London

• Note for blogging101 co-bloggers: This blog’s title is Blogging 101: Why Am I Here and it’s tagline is “Art, Autism, And Amnesia”
• Note for all other visitors: It’s just another blog from me. 🙂

 

I feel honored to be a part of the WordPress 101 Blogging University project.

My name is Rick London and I am a 60 year old autistic author, songwriter, cartoonist and gift designer.  I am married to my best friend @LeeHillerLondon (who will also be taking the class) as well as the Branding 101 class of which I hope to be a part.

I mention the autism as I was not diagnosed until age 60, about 3 months ago.  I have much to learn about writing, though I’ve been doing it for about 32 years.

I guess I am best known for launching Londons Times Cartoons (LTCartoons.com) in an abandoned tin shed in rural Mississippi in 1997.  It became Google’s #1 ranked offbeat cartoons and offbeat cartoon gifts, a ranking it has held since January of 2005.

I have published about 4500 cartoons but written many more than that. It is a team effort. I create the concepts, write the cartoons, and assign them to one of my three team illustrators. I then design the gift items digitally.

Finally, I have decided to go public, just this year, with the fact that I was a neglected/abused autistic child, never diagnosed, but obviously very different, and hidden away, isolated from my other two siblings in an attic bedroom.  I was scapegoated.  I am public not for sympathy, but because I now know how prevalent such family dynamics are, and I’ve already been told in my last few months of blogging about it, that my story has helped several families.

I have written all kinds of “flights of fancy” and slayed some dragons.  It was my wife’s idea to “get back to basics”, and this seems the perfect place to do so.  When I’m back to basics I am centered, and open to learn.  And I hope to accomplish those things.  Thank you.

 

This Blog Hurts

Last Friday Lee looked at the weather channel webpage and saw that snow and sleet was about to rear its ugly head in south-central Arkansas (that’s where we are).

For her, that meant a short solo hike yesterday in search of exotic birds that seem to land and stay awhile whenever we have one of these storms (and she got a beauty of a closeup video of cedar waxwings). If you’ve not seen it, please do yourself a favor. http://hikeourplanet.com.

For me, it meant changing my physical therapy appointment (for arm and back injury) from Monday to another day, which I did (on Friday).

So yesterday I got a call from the physical therapy office. The voice on my voicemail said, “We’re going to have to postpone your appointment due to weather conditions”.

Click To Enlarge

I thought to myself, “I  wish when I worked in corporate America we could have had such a laissez–faire attitude towards our work (in other words, not do it but get paid).  Alas those were the days of responsibility and duty.  Today are the days of “I’ll get to it when/if I can”.

So I called back in a huff letting them know I’d already called on Friday, aware of the upcoming bad weather, and already changed my appointment which obviously was not recorded. I’ve not heard back.

So what is my point?  Well my injury, and rest-assured, I don’t do things half-baked….this is a full-blown killer pain starting at my fingers and moving its way back and forth to my upper and lower back.  I’ve had some interesting injuries in the past, but this one by far is the worse.

So again, what’s my point?  I wondered how in the hell I’d be able to type a blog…..and there ya have it…..a blog!

By the way, Lee is helping me with my exercises, and I go to physical therapy tomorrow…that is if they remembered to post the appointment.

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Rick London is an author, cartoonist, designer and musician.  He is best known for his 18 year old Google #1 ranked Londons Times Offbeat Cartoons & Funny Gifts