Was it worth it, Laurel?

Amongst her other dirty laundry laid out for all to see in this week's Advocate, one Laurel Touhy - if that even is your name - professes that she chooses the freedom of freelance over such failed ventures as full-time work and long-term monogamy. But we've freelanced (and fucked around) a bit ourselves, and know how much (little) it pays. So we're mystified as to what compelled Laurel to spill her guts about such deeply personal shit as her past cheating, her boyfriend's retaliatory Facebook and bank account terrorism, and how weird it was (is?) sharing a home with him in a lousy real estate economy. Ohhh... this is an article about the times we live in.

Actually, there's probably a lot of humor, pathos and insight to be mined from such experiences, but Laurel lacks the grammatical prowess to pull it off, and a paragraph or so into her story I'm basically lost by her artless shifts in tense from present to past and put off by her trivialization of parenting (a nu-journalistic cliche in itself) via cheap shots about gluten-free diets (er, some people really need them) and redundancies like "cohabitate together" and "Today, I now believe in." Um, obviously.

What could essay writing for the Advocate possibly pay? $150? Less? Maybe it's not about the money and she just needed to get this off her chest. We hope it was worth it, but wouldn't save this one for our portfolio.