Great post @katrina-ariel!! "An octopus playing whack-a-mole." Haha, yeah that pretty much sums it up! I don't have anyone on auto-vote, and here are the disadvantages of this for me: I like to vote at 100% and my voting power is all but dead right now because of this (and what good does that do?), but I keep upvoting and commenting like it's an addiction lol! The other problem with not auto-voting is this: it's hard to remember everyone I want to support and I fear they see this as a slight if I'm not around for a while, because some stop visiting my blog. I guess that might just be the natural way of things with manual. If I upvoted automatically, at a small percentage, my voting power could rise again, and I could show all the wonderful people I love my support, even in a small way. Sounds great, right?
That said, I'm just like you. Maybe it's my need to be in control? Maybe part of me thinks it takes the humanity out of Steemit? I don't know. Maybe I'll look into it in the future, but not right now. Manual curation just feels right!! :D
I hear you. I'm sticking with manual curation for now at least. I do keep my voting power above 80% — something I read my first week in Steemit and have stuck to. If it drops too low, I rest it. As for people not visiting your blog if you haven't interacted, I think that's typical of social media as a whole. Interaction begets interaction. But you know, all you can do is what you can do each day. Take care of you! :)