I’m on a cusp of some kind, folks. A creative discombobblement of uncertain duration has me thrown off-stride. Once I’ve completed cover art for a print version of my webcomic series "Mark the Art Guy," that Adobe-commissioned venture will begin receding into the past. It’s been a challenging commercial endeavor, and Adobe has deep enough pockets to have made it rewarding. But it’s been a real time hog as well, commandeering the lion’s share of my working hours ever since I was invited by a charmer in the software giant’s marketing branch to undertake it back in March of 2006.

That was roughly a month after this blog went online. Since then, as fate would have it, I’ve enjoyed an uptick in freelance opportunities on top of the long-running Adobe gig. That’s been a welcome change from the previous several years of comparative drought, so don’t take anything I say about its ramifications as a complaint. Between the payments from Adobe and the fees from other clients, I’ve been able to take comfort in better bank balances for a while. That’s been an unfamiliar sensation.

There’s been a downside to that income boomlet, though. I’ve had frustratingly little control over my own time, which means that the "real" part of being an artist—"following my muse," to use a term that has a grandiose ring but nevertheless cuts to the bone of my tender psyche—has gotten short shrift.

And now summer approaches. That almost always means a slowdown in freelance assignments, so unless something unexpected crops up the way Adobe’s proposal did last year, I’ll have at least a temporary increase in thinking time accompanied by a rise in anxieties over (a) money, and (b) my future.

Some of my time is already booked, of course. I will be leading a two-week comics-creation workshop at BArT, a charter school in Adams, beginning next Tuesday, and there are a couple of other personal projects-in-progress await completion. But hovering over everything is my need to find fresh ways to earn a living even as I toy with freeing my beleaguered muse from her cage—a cage I’ve been forced by circumstance to leave her pacing back andf forth in in for so long it hurts.

Freeing one’s muse! That sounds like a Good Thing, right! Artists should do that kind of thing.

But that muse of mine is one flakey dame when it comes to helping me earn a living. Allowing her to roam about my battered brain, free as a bird, can be emotionally harrowing unless I go whole hog and truly give her free reign. Then she gets spoiled by freedom (don’t we all?) and throws a tantrum if I show any sign that I have more cage-living in mind for her. The bond between her soul and mine runs deep, and I know from experience that forcing her back into hibernation after allowing her some time outdoors will be torture of a high order for both of us.

The ideal situation, of course, is to be paid sufficiently by some publisher, sponsor, or patron (dream on about that last one!) while taking whatever path my muse wants me to take for however long is required. That actually happened in 1990, when DC Comics contracted me to write and draw Stuck Rubber Baby. It had happened before that in 1983, when The Advocate signed me up for what became a nearly six-year stint drawing the Wendel comic strip series.

But it hasn’t happened often during my decades of professional cartooning, and there’s no particular reason to think that it’s going to happen this summer.

Which leaves me wondering: should I be spending what time I do have available at this juncture composing blog entries for free?

It’s hard to know. Color me uncertain.

When our dog Foxy’s suffering from cancer had become too severe to permit further delay, our 1996 Plymouth Neon transported the three of us at from Queens to the animal hospital in Manhattan at 3 AM for what we knew would be Foxy’s last car ride.

After Eddie’s and my move to Massachusetts the red Neon dutifully transported us back and forth many a time between our new digs in North Adams and Eddie’s sister’s home in New York City. In other words, she has served us well.

But over time her breakdowns became more frequent and the repair bills more daunting. The broken air conditioning and recalcitrant radio became the least of her ailments. Smoke poured unexpectedly out of inappropriate orifices, forcing inconvenient changes of travel plans. Persistent noises from somewhere in the Neon’s bowels spelled trouble, we knew. We’ve wanted to believe otherwise, but in our hearts we’ve known for a while that she was fast approaching the end of life’s roadway.

Today — stripped down to her barest automotive essentials and decorated with garish war paint that left her all but unrecognizable (but for the one tiny patch of her original paint job that could be discerned if you squinted hard at her roof) — she met her brutal yet somehow noble demise as a gladiator at the Adams Aggie Fair Demolition Derby.

She was Combatant #49. A jovial fellow named Travis was at her wheel. Travis is a mechanic at North Adams Tire & Service, the garage where, after too many repair jobs to remember, we were finally advised, "For god’s sake don’t waste any more money on this pile of junk!" Or words to that effect.

It’s not that easy to know how to dispose of a dead car around these parts, burial being beyond our means and cremation an environmental no-no. Fortunately Travis’s boss Dan, having grown VERY familiar with our Neon during the long arc of its decline, passed on word to us that his employee would be happy to take the heap off our hands. We learned as we signed the bill of sale in July that Travis was itching to strip down and repaint our mild-mannered Neon in preparation for the August 6 Aggie Fair competition.

Joining in the glorious clashing of willful, doomed chassis before a cheering crowd was to be our car’s last and greatest adventure.

Think of such destructo spectacles as a kind of anti-hospice for cars. With death being inevitable, let’s inflict as much pain as possible on the patient before the soul is released.

And as our society embraces ever higher degrees of mayhem for its amusement value, perhaps we’ll adopt the Demolition Derby model as our preferred form of euthenasia once our loved ones are pronounced terminal.

Let’s herd big flocks of our fragile grandmas and grandpas into arenas surrounded by bleachers so that we can all cheer as the old folks summon their last measures of energy to crash into one another until the last bone is broken and all but one lie dead on the playing field, their souls roaring up to heaven as if powered by petroleum.

Death won’t be painless but it will be quick, and quick isn’t chopped liver when your exit is near. Meanwhile, the last patient left breathing will win a prize: a nice closing note that should make everyone feel warm.

Our Neon didn’t win the prize today, but she did make it into the final round. Eddie was on hand to represent the family during her death throes.

I couldn’t go; I had to stay home and draw comic strips. But Eddie took snapshots.