Preparing for a new work world in the dark: Meet Marcus

Marcus was thriving in his job at a shipping company in Vallejo when he woke up one morning to total darkness. The doctors were shocked to diagnose him with glaucoma, saying the eye disease usually appears more gradually and in older adults.

At 37 years old, Marcus went from being a successful “professional box handler,” as he liked to joke, to the next day becoming completely blind and resigning from his job.

“It was like, bam! Everything I knew was lights out,” he said. “But I’m the type of person where something might be hard at first, but I’m not going to give up until I get it.”

Marcus began working at the shipping company in 2016, and within six months was named a supervisor. He received an award and bonuses. Multiple people told him he was the main reason they stayed at the company. Despite rising through the ranks, many of his coworkers did not know his title because he was always out on the line with them.

Five years later, Marcus was blind and applying for disability because he could no longer do his job. His coworkers were shocked and saddened.

“It was a big adjustment period,” Marcus said. “I would wake up in the morning forgetting I was blind at first. But sitting depressed was not going to do anything for me. I’ve always tried to give positivity into the world, no matter what I’m going through.”

He began working with the Department of Rehabilitation and eventually was connected to Society for the Blind, where he began taking classes online in summer 2023. He finished assistive technology classes earlier this year and is now taking braille.

“I learned how to type without vision, and I was like, how come I didn’t learn how to type a long time ago?” Marcus laughed.

He said braille was harder and that learning to read by dots was frustrating at first.

“I had to switch my mind from visually seeing the letter to feeling a dot and associating it with a letter,” Marcus said. “I’m now going through it pretty quickly and am able to read.”

Despite taking remote classes, he says he immediately felt a sense of community at Society for the Blind.

“Everyone who would call me would tell me some of their story, and I would tell them some of my story,” Marcus said. “It opened up a whole new community for me. When you’re visual, you know there are blind people, but you don’t know about their life. This is a whole new learning experience with things I never knew existed. With some things, I’m even faster now than I was when I was visually capable.”

Throughout his journey of vision loss, Marcus has maintained his sense of humor, which has surprised his friends and family. He even jokes with his friends that every date he goes on is a blind date.

Now 40 years old, his end goal is to find employment once he finishes classes at Society for the Blind. He does not yet know what industry he will apply to, but he is trying out various fields to see what feels like a good fit.

“Society for the Blind has been a great help and provided great insight on my life,” Marcus said. “A whole new world has opened up for me.”