I actually took a break from Medium for a few months. Had no idea Medium had changed their payment plan and required 100 followers. I had to google it to find out, and came across this post. I only have 68 followers, but have several stories that have generated over 20k views. Weird. I'm here to publish stuff that interests me and to do some quality writing. Annoying that I had no idea of the shift even after poking around on Medium for a week to find out what the heck is going on.