even with those who have been here a while, it feels like there is a lot of "going through the motions."

Yes, I've noticed that too. It appears to be common practise to work hard and put a lot of effort in until the autovotes are favourable... and then unfortunately, the incentive to try hard mostly disappears. The importance becomes the daily post - like with voting bot delegations. A few users in particular that were once extremely interesting, just aren't any more 😟

I do expect we'll see more activity, if Steem continues to rise. I just hope some of it is worthwhile...

I hope so. I always feel a boost when there's a new wave of enthusiastic users the come on board. I do fear that with the main steemcurator account seemingly dedicated to "Learning Challenges" now, these users won't get the boost that they need to continue but we'll see. I'm possibly underestimating the "Social" attraction for new users - perhaps because that's also hard to come by.

I should probably try to avoid feeling too negative about the direction of things at the moment (from a social viewpoint).

On a more cheery note - is there a change that you'd like me to implement that would improve your experience here? Community enthusiasm for my work (with a few exceptions) feels like it's waning somewhat.