Hi @stellabelle, and welcome back (I'm thinking you're "back?")!
Yeah, maybe engagement is a little lower at the moment... not feeling it personally as I am fresh off doing @merej99's "Community Engagement Challenge" which was a pretty monumental effort by 40-some very active Steemians to not only publish a lot of high quality original material... but also to genuinely engage with as many people as possible through a pretty frenetic commenting schedule.
As for getting onto the "Trending" page, that always strikes me as pretty arbitrary. UNLESS you're making a system/hardfork/announcement type post. I think it's just a matter of persistence and publishing clean attractive content with value. Last week, I wrote a post for my smaller art gallery account... at the end of the day, the post had 7 upvotes and about $1.00. Next morning? It was a top 10 post. Point? I have NO CLUE why... but it was cool!
Yes, you sure have a LOT of initiatives going... and thanks for all you do! But don't burn out...
Thanks for your welcome and updates! Yeah, I think I may have too much going on, now that I'm starting a SCHOOL! I love changes, though, and new projects, and I'm definitely a starter, not a finisher......wow, i found that engagement challenge....amazing initiative by Meredith.
I can't believe she managed that whole challenge BY HERSELF! Freakin' Energizer bunny on speed. We (meaning Meredith and a few of the core participants) are tentatively looking at the possibility of making it a quarterly event... it was a lot of fun, and we had a substantial number of "I wish I'd known about this" comments.