I feel that we're on very similar boats here. I am not really focused on Medium as an income; I just write about what I enjoy, been experimenting with some serial fiction stories, just using Medium as an outlet for my out of office writing habit to keep things fun. But yes, it does feel silly to be penalized because of the 100 follower thing. I never expected Medium to pay the rent, and most of what I publish isn't monetized anyway, but they really shouldn't be punishing the ones that drive traffic to their site.