Wednesday Spill: Cartoons, The Business

I’ve never been comfortable identifying this cartoon life as a business. Not sure why. With The New Yorker cartoon department closed for two weeks, I suddenly have an extra few minutes to think about such things. I just looked up “business,” and here’s what I found:

Business

1. a person’s regular occupation, profession, or trade. 
2. the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce.  

Well, okay…#1 fits perfectly. Being a cartoonist (for me) is a regular occupation. 

But #2 threw me, specifically the word “commerce.” So I looked up “commerce.”

Commerce

1. the activity of buying or selling, especially on a large scale. 
2. social dealings between people. 

Well, #2 is confusing. So let’s forget about #2. #1, as applied to cartooning, has at least one belly laff: the part about “large scale”…cartoons are small scale. It’s rare that a cartoonist needs a forklift to move a large container of cartoons to or from a loading dock. “Selling” does happen of course. If selling didn’t occur then what I’ve been doing these past 45 years would probably qualify as a hobby (I’m not looking up “hobby”). 

As long as I’ve been associated with it, The New Yorker has taken off at least two weeks off during the summer. Makes sense to have a break. My problem (although I’ve never considered it a problem) is that I don’t like interrupting the daily fun (note I did not say “routine”) of sitting down and working on cartoons. And so I continue on, as if there was no break at all. Business as usual.