I'm barely actively curating content these days. Look into @curie, they're a curation group worth supporting! Used to be active in it but we've made it in such a way that it's merit-based and there's no special treatment for founders even. So now the newer, enthusiastic bunch of hardworking curators are getting the pay instead.

Feel like a ditz or dunce (or whatever the expression is) saying this, but with my head in the clouds, I'm only just beginning to figure out how curation works. All I know, thus far, is that I was told to upvote posts by others after the 30 minute mark, and that the percentage of my self-votes are decreasing over time...

If you want more curation rewards, just vote after 30 minutes on posts that are near $0. As for me, I just vote whenever..

But, what "vests" mean (past sartorial elegance ;) for the life of me, I've yet to figure out! Curation does seem like a noble, almost altruistic, endeavor and perhaps that is why it's not treated as a highly remunerative activity?

Vests just mean Steem Power (vested form of Steem). Curation takes time, coz people need to sift through spam to find good content. @curie is the only proper altruistic curation community on the platform https://curiesteem.com, in that it doesn't play middleman to reserve funds for founders and all that sort of nonsense. The rewards are all given to contributors (curators). And yeah, I wish more "whales" support such initiative that keeps curation on new accounts going. Nobody really wants to spend time curating when it's much easier to do selfish voting rings and stuff.