That more or less summarises my perspective. Thinking back to when I started out here, 18 or so months ago, I was just looking for a simple WYSIWYG blogging platform with a built-in potential audience, for a very modest monthly fee.

I got that, and still have it.

I couldn't face the hassle of set-up and/or chasing engagement either on older-school platforms like Blogger or Wordpress, or new kids Substack et al.

Medium does that job just fine.

I think it struggles at the next level. You can see that it has the potential to offer you so much more as a writer, and sample that on occasion, but then it fizzles out, or changes direction.

Those pivots I think mean that it will always leave many users (and staff) dissatisfied with where it is and where it's going.

The Boost probably overpromised and underdelivered. The numbers could never work out, just thinking about the number of views it would need to generate for each story, multiplied by the volume they were talking about expanding too. And the money they were paying out. I started a pub, got accepted onto the programme, and within 3-4 months had 20 stories from that fledgling pub accepted for boosting.

That was excessive. They weren't all worth it, and I wasn't worth $900 as a part-time amateur editor.

The party was bound to end, and the hangover begin.

I wish I never saw the sunshine, as the song goes.

Dealing with the comedown frustration meant - for me -stepping back and writing much, much less, because it's hard to justify the input required for what now seems like a crapshoot. But just putting 3 or 4 'proper' pieces in smallish, boosting pubs per month, maybe getting 1-2 picked, plus a few off-the-cuff blogspurts posted with no expectations of reads outside a small circle of Medium acquaintances?

That feels OK, if distinctly less stellar than the glory days of May-June, when this really did start feeling like an alternative source of income and creative satisfaction.