RE: What the hell was I thinking?

A lot of adventurers of spirit here. I'd like to help you and I can give a few pieces of advice:

It's a long-term thing this blockchain and all your interactions here. Be yourself and if you are consistent, you will grow. Slowly most likely. But it does not matter. Try looking a few years from now.

New accounts bump into the RC or Resource Cost problem when posting and commenting. The less SP or Steem Power one has, the less interactions with the blockchain are possible and the RC recharges about 20-25% per day. So try not falling a lot below 75% in general. The start is so slow but almost 6 months after mine I have absolutely no RC problems. I can't go below 90% and I interact a lot.

Do use steemworld.org/@yourusernamehere to check your status and see all the interactions like comments, mentions, votes, rewards coming and RC / Voting Power... any changes, soon after they were made.

Your first SP claimed after a week or so won't increase your SP total, because Steemit is currently delegating about 15 of your 15 total SP and they will undelegate the ammount you power up. So changes will come after you exceed 15 SP total. Then RC will grow.

So, post and comment sparingly and with more quality in less words/ images, etc. Even following people drains your SP so don't rush following at random.

Also, to be able to freely interact, join communities on their Discord servers and chat with them. That's the way to gain more visibility.

For writers I would recommend following and joining the @freewritehouse and @bananafish first. If you're into fiction, @gardengnomepubs, too.