You go freelance because you can’t find a viable route into the industry, or because you can make more money freelancing than you can in entry-level and junior roles.
You get to a point where the work you’re producing is then occupying a mid-level role: full-time shifts as a writer or editor for a digital magazine, cover stories perhaps, longer features, regular work in some reputable places, and you have maybe outgrown or find the pay and quality at others futile.
At this point, you sort of max out your earning potentials, you may also burn out through lack of sick pay, holiday pay, etc.
Perhaps then you feel, you know, as life goes on - you want to progress. And well, you can’t.
That’s where you’re at now.
Why you can’t progress further as a freelancer:
You’ve got your place there, you can pitch new magazines but generally that pulls you back to square one in terms of acceptance rates.
Pitching bigger pieces and/or to more established publications requires you to stunt your current workflow and income to do so, which is stressful especially without any guaranteed results.
Why you can’t get staff roles that suit your skillset and ambition:
You’re in a position where you’re too senior for most writing jobs (and too general for many reporting anyway, given you write about everything you can find a story within, which is a great skillset but not what they want) and so you don’t get them; or you go for a role where they prefer to hire through their own ranks (and mates, cynically, you think), or prioritise staff because of “office culture” whether you’ve done shifts or not.
You also have a lack of experience in editing and commissioning apparently, even though you have to self-generate ideas and have experienced more editing styles than a staff writer ever would.
If they have the sense to decide overqualified isn’t a thing, you might likely be looking at a pay cut in order to take a staff role, which isn’t the end of the world if you can freelance on top of it still, and might be able to work up again eventually, but this can feel like a backward step.
Spiritually, you can also quickly run out of steam in terms of not having anyone to provide guidance, constructive feedback, security, etc.
Consequently, many like you have looked toward commercial and communications work instead.
This is why there are practically no working class people writing long-reads, owning columns in national newspapers, or occupying senior staff roles.
You wonder what’s next, if anything.