A few years ago, I was exploring Instagram and found this guy that was into both photography and woodworking. Sharing the same passions, I smashed that follow button and didn’t think much more of it. But as Matthew’s posts began to infiltrate my scrolling sessions, I noticed a couple of things:
- Matthew had recently suffered a spinal cord stroke and was a T-10 paraplegic as a result.
- Matthew’s work (both in the darkroom and the shop) hadn’t suffered a bit from it.
After a year or so of following along anonymously, I approached Matthew just to let him know how inspirational he was. I just couldn’t get over the fact that a young guy could suffer from such a devastating injury, pick his damn self up, and get on with it without much regard for limitations, excuses, or any of the other unavoidable obstacles in his path.
I mean… Matthew’s Instagram account so consistently pumps out images of incredible photography and beautifully detailed woodworking, that it’s really easy to forget he’s doing all of this shit confined to a wheelchair. Every now and then, he’ll post a image of a downed drill press (those things are hard to move by yourself when your not in a chair) or a an update after his latest surgery, to remind you… and you relive that little shock all over again:
“Oh shit. I forgot he’s in a chair. How the hell did he even do that?”
Anyway, I got obsessed with watching Matthew progress both in work and life. Over time, we’ve gotten to be internet buddies and last week, he mentioned something that agitated the hell out of me – He’s been living out of an ill-fitting and incredibly heavy chair since his stroke. And while he had lined up a lighter weight option with a custom fit, his insurance wasn’t willing to pony up.
I’ve called bullshit. A few of his other pals have as well…
And to correct this nonsense, we’ve set up a Gofundme page with the goal of raising enough money to get Matt the chair he needs. It launched this morning and we’ve already raised $7,235 of the $10,000 needed. All we need now is a small push to get over the top and I was hoping you guys would help me make that happen.
You can see the Gofundme page and contribute here.
