Even if you publish it yourself it can be curated so don’t worry about that. I do think you have a better chance getting curated if you publish to a publication, but I could be wrong, You can still submit the story to publications but what I would do would be to delete the story and paste it into a new story so it has today’s date — most pubs put the stories in according to date so if you submit an old story it will be buried at the bottom of the pub.