The morning before my 25th birthday, I finished packing up my car, took one final look around my room, put my keys in the ignition, and drove south across the state lines, headed for my new home.

My big imagination has always served me well, but I try not to let myself put too much stock in little synchronicities and “signs” that may or may not be from the universe. The universe is impossibly big, and in the grand scheme of things, I am impossibly small, and I don’t think that the cosmos care too much about my quarter-life bumbling. …

I didn’t want to get out of bed. Again.

I hadn’t really wanted to get out of bed for a month. Maybe two. Maybe it started when the dog died back in September. Come to think of it, it definitely started when the dog died.

But I did get out of bed. Forget the morning routine, forget the meditation, forget writing down the things I was grateful for. …

When I decided to start freelancing full-time at the beginning of this year, one of my friends asked me if I would really be able to support myself without a traditional 9–5. He wasn’t being rude — he was honestly just curious, and although it’s becoming more and more common for people to start their own businesses or go freelance, it’s still not the norm.

But as the daughter of a successful small business owner who didn’t come from money himself, I didn’t necessarily share the same worries about self-employment. My dad started his own local construction business in his late twenties after bouncing from one random job to another, and although construction is generally a more lucrative career path than freelance writing, having his example to look up to and being able to ask him for advice has boosted my confidence throughout this entire journey. …

Sometimes, what I wonder what my parents would have published if their career paths dictated that they should share their personal lives with the Internet in their twenties.

As much as I love them and look up to them, I have no doubt that we would have gotten a good laugh out of it. After hearing stories from their pasts and kind of marveling at the fact that both of them became responsible, wonderful parents today, I’m sure it would be extremely entertaining.

And that’s part of my frustration with being a young and relatively inexperienced writer today. Because on one hand, I know that I need to be persistent, to take myself seriously, to write articles that I’m okay with having my name attached to for years to come. On the other hand, I also know that in a few years, I’m probably going to look back on almost everything I’ve written at this phase in my life and laugh. …

Yes, I’m aware that from an ethical perspective, this is slightly sketchy territory. But from a financial perspective, it’s sometimes necessary. And I know I’m not the only freelance writer who has done this — I suspect that most of us have taken on assignments that we’re a bit unsure about and just hoped that the resources we pulled together made for a solid article.

Honestly, it’s not usually a big deal. My research skills are solid, and I know how to find reputable sources to back up my claims. Plus, it makes for some interesting conversation topics — I love when someone mentions some obscure fact and I get to say, “Oh wait! I wrote an article about that once!” …

Sharing my life online is an ongoing process of examination: examining myself and giving others, strangers I’ve never met and never will meet, a front row seat to anything that I’ve felt was worth chronicling for the world to read.

Sometimes, this feels like an exercise in empowerment — I used to shake before hitting “publish,” wondering if I should take it all back, worried that I had said too much. What would people think? Would they pick me apart? Now, my words flow freely, I publish when I feel like it, and I don’t get a pang of worry every time I notice that someone has commented on my articles. …

It’s easier to see the changes here, where the houses sit just above sea level and everyone has a memory of their first floor flooding and their belongings in black garbage bags after Sandy. It’s harder to deny that something is occurring, faster than we could have anticipated, something that makes the humidity weigh heavier on our shoulders and the leaves hang on to the trees in the fall and the fall itself become a brief interim between summer and winter rather than a long, stretching season of its own.

But the isolation and the solitude and the otherwise idyllic scenery makes it even more tempting to go on as normal, to say that we don’t need to worry about the news, that we have our little oasis, that “the next big storm” will come eventually, but just look how beautiful that sunset is over the bay, look how the dune grass sways peacefully in the breeze, look at the way the waves catch the light — can’t we just enjoy this while it lasts? …

Fear of putting your work out there. Fear of getting criticized. Fear of rejection.

I’ve been thinking about fear a lot lately. Months ago, I wrote about dealing with self doubt as a writer. I wrote about freelancing through anxiety. I wrote about my own fears of criticism and my fear that work simply wasn’t good enough. I’ve been working through that, slowly but surely, and publishing more essays that I really believe in, being open to constructive conversations and disagreements instead of worrying about criticism.

And in the midst of all this reflection, I finally figured out the root of those fears. …