This certainly is how a freelance tech writer feels on a bad day, though mostly we write articles like this and then think better of trying to get them publishe

This certainly is how a freelance tech writer feels on a bad day, though mostly we write articles like this and then think better of trying to get them published (I certainly have done this). I can live reasonably well in a paid-for apartment in Eastern Europe with the casual pieces and (mostly) regular clients I have built up in the last two years since I moved here, where I now live with my girlfriend. But it would be a hard prospect in a full-fat western city. I mitigated some of the problems by specializing in hard subjects like machine learning, NLP, and other subjects in or near AI. However, when I started to hold out for bylines and refuse ghostwriting work, frankly, my (also freelance) architect girlfriend carried the monthly can for a while. It's tough. I was a full-time editor of tech blogs in the UK, something I could probably still walk back into, but the economics don't support it. It's tougher yet if you turn down PR work as a freelancer, which is 95% of what is on offer.