It could well be that the publication you published your first piece too has been placed in curation prison as it’s called.

Were basically it won’t be reviewed by the curators at all.

With such a large amount of content for the curators to review they place certain writers and publications under this banner, most likely based on previous articles from the author/publication that did not align with their view on how Medium wishes to be seen.

Try publishing work to some of the bigger publications — The Ascent or Publishious for example — this has worked for me in the past when I would get the ‘not distributed in topics’ message instantaneously.

Good luck on your journey and remember, never stop writing regardless of curation.

There is more than one way to get eyes on your work 😁👍