I feel your pain, frustration, and trapped animalistic unemployed energy. I've been freelancing for 4 years. Medium pays bupkis--even though I've amassed thousands of followers--and I'm so traumatized by Upwork I finally gave up. I long ago accepted that due to my age (old) and location (flyover), I'd be hunting for relatively high-paying p/t no-benefit gigs. Finally, I got hired seasonally for a job with a decent salary. It will cover my monthly $855 health insurance bill and I'll have a little left over. Of course, it exists in The Other Economy, in highfalutin Boston MA, where the wage scale is so divergent from our local Dollar Store economy, it might as well be another country. The full-time health insurance mess is truly a form of torture. I wish you Godspeed and good luck.