Hmm. I asked a few people in discord, and someone said it might be because I was upvoting my own comments that it drains the reward pool. I am still new and not understanding the concept of the reward pool... hmm. May have to do some more research. In any event I sent him a wallet transfer of .001 steem with a message on it so hopefully I get a reply.
If I am doing something negative in terms of affecting a reward pool I had no idea. I thought I knew everything about SteemIt but this is a new term to me. :)
It's commonly acceptable to upvote your own posts. I do it with every one of mine. There is a big debate out there regarding upvoting your own comments.
Upvoting your own comments has some people up in arms. Ready to deploy bots to downvote this behavior. There is a common rewards pool and if you simply upvote your own material, and have a good chunk of steem power, you can make a good ROI on your investment and deplete the group pool.
That could easily be the reason for your situation. Nobody can tell anybody how to act on steemit, but they can downvote.
How can you tell if you've been downvoted?
If go to the end of your posts, before the comments, you can see the number of votes on your post. Click on upvote icon and you will see who voted. Most will have the plus sign next to the names, rarely you'll see a negative sign. It doesn't happen often, unless you're in a feud with someone or offended them. It will reduce your payout as well, determined by their vote power.
THANKS!