by Rick London

Created on: July 28, 2010   Last Updated: July 30, 2010

When I was in my thirties and even early forties, I was a workaholic. My boss in Washington media never failed to tell me I was a great problem solver and backed his words with raises which I much appreciated. I was certain this was going to be my life until I retired when I might be in my eighties or so. At age 42, I fell ill and was put on the side lines. My unemployment ran out soon thereafter and, though the illness disabled me, I did not receive disability for four more years.

How did I live? It boiled down to being handed crumbs. I had to buy cars that friends were trading in because of their fear of the car falling apart. I bought hand me down clothes from thrift shops and friends gave me some. I was taking care of a stray dog that I refused to give away. I finally had to take shelter in an abandoned warehouse in rural Mississippi that a friend kindly made available to me.

I rarely ate three meals a day, and the best of the meals were beans and rice.  In retrospect I could have done better. I was a late bloomer to technology and the Internet, but I knew the principals of barter. I slowly learned the Internet and put my barter skills into effect. I traded blogging, logos, cartoons, and everything else I was doing for other goods and services. It worked. Just barely but it worked. During that time, I built what I hoped to be my “cartoon empire” though I only had a few hundred black and white single panel offbeat cartoons. One day I received an email from a t-shirt manufacturer in San Diego who wanted to pay $10,000 for the rights to 18 cartoons and I felt I had arrived. My artist partner and I took the 10K, and rested a bit after two straight years of nonstop day and night work.

Today, if you have a computer and can blog and have Internet skills, you do not need money. Yes, you may have to scale down as I did but it can be done. I had previously lived in Foxhall in Washington, D.C and Beverly Hills in L.A so I learned humility in that steel warehouse with no power, no bath (I bathed in the sink), no air and heat, and very few friends.

If you can blog, and have other basic SEO skills, skills you can barter for food, clothing, and just about anything else if you set your mind to it. This should not be your lifestyle for the rest of your life. First of all, the economy will get better….one day. After all, it can’t get much worse. People will be buying and selling again. Right now, it makes more sense for many small business-owners

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