Today marks a milestone my friends never expected, but which I inwardly worried might come. One year ago, I joined the ranks of the laid-off, and began a journey of uneasy new directions.

Actually, there have been quite a number of interesting new directions since then — plus some major setbacks — all out of the blue.

Two days after the historic election of Barack Obama, the E.W. Scripps Company mandated across-the-board cuts for all its newspaper properties, and my employer, the Ventura County Star, complied by axing 44 jobs, 17 of those in the newsroom. As the sole remaining editorial artist (as well as cartoonist), I thought my position was safe, especially since I’d just received a glowing performance evaluation. But since their pages and sections were shrinking, as were their revenues, they decided an artist was no longer necessary. I was given until the end of the month.

2008, until that point, had been going pretty well. I had been doing some of my best editorial cartooning (some of which went “viral” online and got wide exposure), self-published my first book collection, came in as runner-up in the Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition (behind one Pulitzer-winner and tied with another), and felt secure enough for my wife and me to buy our first house.

Suddenly, it was as if I’d been on a long journey on a bus, and then that bus abruptly pulled over to the side of the road, forced me out and drove away… leaving me in the middle of nowhere.

My wife took me to dinner that evening and made sure I had something alcoholic to drink. And then I granted myself a few weeks off to let the dust settle, catch my breath, and try to figure out my next step.

I officially became a freelancer; I already had a weekly freelance gig going for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, so that would continue. As fellow editorial cartoonist after editorial cartoonist got similarly axed across the country, the ranks of “freelancers” grew. But with newspapers everywhere hurting and laying off staff, where could we all sell cartoons to?

The local alt-weekly newspaper, the Ventura County Reporter, hadn’t mentioned the Star’s layoffs and perhaps wasn’t fully aware of the situation, so I began some casual email conversations letting them know I was out, and asked about doing some freelance illustration work for them. They invited me to come in for a visit, gushed about how much they liked my work (I was highly visible in this market, of course), but expressed regret that they lacked the funds to make much use of me. Sigh.

In Des Moines, Iowa, longtime editorial cartoonist Brian Duffy got laid off, and the local alt-weekly there offered him a regular space to keep cartooning. I mentioned this to the VCReporter (hint, hint) and we ultimately figured out a way for them to use me, contracting me to do local cartoons for one price and paying me another price to do national cartoons on alternate weeks, which I could place elsewhere as I chose.

In that same month of December, out of the blue, CartoonStock Ltd. in the United Kingdom contacted me, looking to expand the number of artists they represented. They happened to see my work online somewhere and liked it. They basically offered to sell reprints of any copyright-free work I had, splitting the take with me. It wouldn’t be much money, but it would bring in something for little extra effort.

My friend Daryl Cagle, who hosts this blog, offered me a similar setup on one of his affiliated sites, again bringing in some extra revenue for not much extra work.

Job hunting was getting nowhere. My skills had become finely tuned for the production of newspaper graphics and illustrations, landing me jobs on one newspaper after another. But with the entire newspaper industry in semi-collapse — or at least not hiring — those skills became a mismatch for anything out there. Specifically, nearly every art-related job out there was for one of three areas, none of which I was qualified for: apparel design (mostly T-shirts), packaging (and collateral graphic design) and video games. And employers could be very picky in this ultra-competitive job market, so a marginally-related artist wasn’t going to get anywhere.

My cartoon career with the VCReporter began with a bang: a big cover story written by me about the state of editorial cartooning (and myself). I’d considered freelancing back to the Star, but decided that, since they found me expendable as a staff artist, it didn’t feel right to give them back my cartooning piecemeal at a cut-rate price. Plus, the alt-weekly offered a fresh start and a whole new area of publishing.

Also, by not being in the Star, I was free to approach their biggest rival, the Los Angeles Times. The Times, which had cut its cartoonist years earlier, ran no local cartoons, and I made that my mission. I drew cartoon after cartoon and sent them off, then called to push the concept. They told me they liked the idea — in principle — but asked me to submit proposals instead of emailing finished cartoons. Fine. I hit them up three or four times a week, to no avail. Finally in late March, they bought one, a state one on Arnold Schwarzenegger and the budget deficit crisis.

I’d arrived! I was in the L.A. Times! But as it turned out, for only that one time, despite scores of attempts.

With piles of unused local cartoons, and the Daily News not biting either, I offered them to a prominent local news blog, LAObserved.com, which was delighted to have local cartoons. Overnight I became the most visible person doing cartoons about L.A. and surroundings. Movers and shakers and media people all seemed to see LAObserved. It wasn’t bringing in money, but the visibility could open the door to other freelance work, which has happened, albeit to a small degree. Those cartoons even got on TV a couple times.

Another thing came out of the blue. A startup web site out of The Netherlands was being created with international editorial cartooning and short documentary videos as its focus. The Video Journalism Movement, like CartoonStock, just happened to see my work online and liked it. They pay in Euros, but what the hell, it’s still money. I was the first American cartoonist to join in.

Not everything has been a triumph. Nobody would hire me, even part-time. Almost nobody would interview me or for that matter, even acknowledge my applications. My main source of income was state unemployment benefits, and combined with all my freelancing I was, at best, bringing in half my former income. “Multiple small revenue streams” is the new business model, and living more modestly is the new day-to-day operation.

Then in mid-September, WHAM. A retinal detachment temporarily blinded me in one eye. The vision is very slowly improving since surgery, but is distorted and non-binocular. I am still drawing, and well, but slowly and requiring a lot of Photoshop work, and the state EDD checks have been replaced by state disability checks.

So here I am, a year out of work. On the one hand, I’m pretty much a full-time editorial cartoonist again (other than whatever illustration and graphics assignments I scrape up), something I hadn’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 it’s not like the old days of trying to run sketches by editors in person; I’m very self-directed now. I’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 I’ve never worked so hard for so little money. I’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 I’m able to look again) is wretched. And when you’re a freelancer, as my friend Scott Shaw wrote on Facebook, you’re essentially always on deadline.

I’m very blessed to have my wife, Roberta. She has a good job and is extremely understanding… not all that long ago our situations were reversed, and she was on a job roller-coaster and relying on my healthcare benefits. And I have my family members, friends, professional colleagues and people in my religious circles offering support. I really don’t know how I would’ve gotten through this past year alone, especially when the eye problems hit. I really don’t know how so many of my fellow citizens get by in these tough economic times.

Overall, my spirits are OK. The cartooning is as good as ever, the eyesight is slowly improving and I have all these new, mostly unexpected ventures. And I have absolutely no idea what next year will look like for me.

But I guess we’ll all find out together, dear blog readers. Stay tuned. Or make that ‘tooned.