Thanks for your comment and nice thoughts, Caro!

To your point: when I started on Medium, I heard about the Ascent and other big and appreciated pubs. I wanted to get in to validate my skills. So, I have submitted multiple times, and each rejection made me want it more. They eventually accepted one of my stories, but the viewership — at least compared to other stories published in smaller publications — was quite modest. In conclusion, I prefer not to waste time waiting weeks to have a piece published by a big publication because it doesn’t help me. If it doesn’t bring more followers or reads, then it doesn’t meet its purpose. But I need to stress this — it’s my experience — for other people it could be totally different. What helped me grow as a writer on Medium, were the small pubs — around 2–5k followers where I could make a difference instead of losing my story in a pile of stories by top writers are treated as columnists (see Tim Denning who is a “local” in The Ascent, The Entrepreneur and The Writing Cooperative).

Hope this helps.