Greenberg: Life one year after the lay-off
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Yesterday was the first year anniversary of Steve Greenberg’s lay-off with the Ventura County Star. Steve reflects what went well and not so well reinventing himself as a freelance artist.
So here I am, a year out of work. On the one hand, Iâ??m pretty much a full-time editorial cartoonist again (other than whatever illustration and graphics assignments I scrape up), something I hadnâ??t been since the mid-1980s, and draw nearly every day. The quality is good. And I am pretty much my own editor. There are editors on all the publications and web sites I contribute to, but itâ??s not like the old days of trying to run sketches by editors in person; Iâ??m very self-directed now. Iâ??ve become an online cartoonist, a niche cartoonist and an alt-weekly cartoonist. In some ways, my visibility has never been greater. I can set my own hours, can run errands anytime and have time to visit my parents (both 87, and needing much more assistance from me).
On the other hand, here in my mid-50s Iâ??ve never worked so hard for so little money. Iâ??m home alone working most of the time, which the dog and cat do appreciate. There are days of battling boredom and depression. The market for outside jobs (when Iâ??m able to look again) is wretched. And when youâ??re a freelancer, as my friend Scott Shaw wrote on Facebook, youâ??re essentially always on deadline.
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