I Did Something I Tell My Students Not to Do

Getting older is weird.

I turned forty-six this past New Year’s Eve and that’s…fine. No, really. Mostly I’m okay with it. The marionette lines. The gray hairs. Being told by a doctor—recently, casually—that I should “keep an eye on my cholesterol.” It’s all deeply rude.

On top of coming to terms with how my body is aging, there’s the parallel task of figuring out how aging impacts my career.

You want to believe that the longer you work in an industry, the more you have to offer. But that’s not necessarily true in freelance writing, which moves fast and rewards constant participation. The truth is, I’m too out of touch to do the kind of writing I did in my thirties— long, confessional tomes about sex, addiction, how whatever experience I’d had somehow related to what everyone was talking about, written in the golden age of the personal essay.

These days, I don’t have the energy to figure out who Bad Bunny is or what everyone is arguing about online. I don’t have the energy to establish myself on yet another social media platform long enough to find out. I’ve lived through the rise and fall of too many platforms to build another destiny on Bluesky, only to watch it crumble. I have kids to raise and bills to pay—mostly with ghostwriting, not selling hot takes for the same rates I made 15+ years ago.

I had a flourishing freelance career for over a decade, but I haven’t really freelanced since I got my book contract. I took time off to write SHAME ON YOU, assuming I’d return to even bigger and better opportunities. Instead, I returned to an industry that had shifted beneath me. I had less clarity about which platforms mattered or which editors still worked where. I had a growing suspicion—since confirmed—that the market itself had dried up.

All of this makes giving freelancing advice—and trusting the advice I have to give—feel fraught.

Which is how I ended up doing the very thing I tell my students not to do.

And somehow, it worked.

Buy my book!

The advice I give aspiring freelance writers is to be strategic. Research the outlet. Send one carefully tailored pitch at a time. Be patient. Wait before pitching someone else.

Instead, I did the opposite.

I had an idea for a story I really wanted to write, so I carpet-bombed every editor in my dusty-ass Rolodex.

The piece was a travel essay—and the only reason I wanted to write it was because, as long as I publish travel essays, I get offers for comped trips for my entire family. My entire family and I enjoy hotel rooms and experiences worth thousands of dollars in places I would otherwise only dream of visiting. Honestly, this is really the only kind of freelancing I’m interested in doing these days.

I knew this wasn’t strategic. And I did it anyway—not because I’d lost my judgment, but because the judgment no longer applied in the same way.

In the olden days, you could expect to hear back from editors at least half the time, even if it was just a polite no. That hasn’t been my experience in the past year. Over the last twelve months, I’ve written a handful of pieces for Insider—where I’ve worked for more than a decade—but otherwise, I haven’t sold a single essay. Not for lack of trying.

I’ve stopped taking it personal.

When you get older, there’s a temptation to cling to the way things were. You can get mad at the world for changing, or blame yourself for not staying the same. But that’s a losing strategy. I can’t be the freelancer I used to be any more than I can have my twenty-something-year-old body back. So I’m learning to embrace what is.

And here’s the irony: by circling back to the kind of writing I truly care about, I’ve ended up closer to my roots than I ever was at the height of the essay boom. I’m less interested in chasing publications, bylines, or industry validation than in writing that serves a purpose—or sparks transformation, for myself and others. That’s what drew me to work with Esalen, to workshops, to essays and coaching that help writers at every stage and season in their lives face themselves honestly and live differently. I’ve always known the kind of writing that changes lives doesn’t always pay the bills, but letting go of freelance writing as a primary income stream has reminded me why I became a writer in the first place.

Some housekeeping:

• There are just four spots left in my workshop at Esalen, Writing for Shame Resilience: Turning Shame Into Your Superpower: March 30 – April 3, 2026. Need a scholarship? Apply here.

• This February 25th and the last Wednesday of the month, come Write It Anyway! This is a FREE online generative writing workshop for anyone seeking to transmute shame into compassion and clarity and give voice to the stories we’ve been taught to silence. Writers of all levels and experiences welcome. To sign up or for more info, email melissa.petro@gmail.com