I think we are all asking ourselves these same questions right now. I guess one question is where is the audience? Like you, I started out blogging. For awhile I had a nice little audience, nothing major but enough to feel worthwhile. Many Medium writers who have an established audience are moving to Substack, but there is no promise they will follow them there. I feel the boost kind of killed the way my own audience was growing the first two years I was here. Suddenly it was feast or famine, and for whatever reason it fed my articles to people who seem to like them well enough but don't become repeat readers. My "echo chamber" of friends here keep me motivated to write in the quiet times, the dull times, the unboosted times. Without them there is little point here for me, esp. as boosts are reputedly harder than ever to get and not performing. I think there is a lot more going on here than what we have been told, but it's all a mystery we aren't privy to obviously. The AI is a bigger problem than they are letting on in terms of the money imo.