That's ok. I don't have any problems with anything you said. It's all very realistic advice given the situations of steemit.

"Of course nobody with high SP cares" - This is where my frustration comes from. Everyone talks about quality and "adding value" but I often feel they only want to support those who directly support them. I feel I've missed a lot of chances by helping those who need it more, rather than trying to use my upvote to make nice with some larger accounts. When all is said and done, success at steemit is all about auto-vote, if you get on a few big users auto-vote you are good to go. I spent a lot of time criticizing this and actually missed a lot of chances to get on a lot of people's autovote.

I often feel I'm not capitalistic enough for steemit...

I have a niche but it is one I created with other minnows without the support of any one with substantial power and without much monetary support to offer anyone. I was mistaken in thinking that there would be those with power who would like what we were doing enough to consistently support it. There are some who support it, but usually in passing. I felt I needed to do this because I really didn't feel myself in any of the other niches, I don't really agree with the way a lot of them do things, or in your case, it's just about different interests.

Your success comes from the fact that you contribute quality AND you fit into a niche that already has a substantial amount of power behind it. I totally understand if you don't frequent my blog, we have very different interests. There are powerful users who write about similar topics to me but most of them don't really spend much time looking at smaller users posts, even those who leave great comments, at best they have a few friends whose posts they check out, at worst they just post their own and auto upvote whoever is likely to give them good curation rewards. I could list those people but I won't.

As far as my own articles, I don't take offense because I have lots of good material that you haven't read. It's hard to be consistent though when so much of your high quality material goes unnoticed and you still manage to get a $9 payout on drunk posts about cat pics though.

Your advice is all greatly appreciated. I don't think there is anything I haven't heard before, but at least it's a reminder that my idealism and insistence on doing things my own way may be holding me back....which makes it even more frustrating but might be something I need to hear.

It's really hard to figure out....it really changes every hours... I mean, look, I got a $10 payout on this post. It's not bad, I'm obviously not a total failure at steemit, I just wish I could be as succesful as you guys without changing myself and how I do things.

Thank you so much for reading, even just once, it means something to me.