That is true as well. A kind of circle gets created - some I am upvoting regularly and they upvote me regularly. That said - I upvote only what I like so the circle gets created by mutual interest in the blogs of each other.
I find that curation thing not very helpful for the community to be honest. I would rather see some other mechanics to keep people active. But I am not doing the rules and the game gets played and maximized by those rules - always.
I personally also think some things could be improved. Although I find it very difficult to oversee the full picture. So I might change my mind in the coming weeks as I learn more.
At this moment I think it's almost impossible to receive any curation as new steemonian. And even if I do, in absolute terms the value is close to zero. However I'm trying to gain as much curation as possible now, just to see if I fully master it. I think it could be possible to earn up to 1% curation per week. In your case that would be around 1,000 SP. Almost ten times higher as you receive now. And that makes me wonder if you never feel like just upvoting to gain a bit more? I think there are lots of people that can't resist to do so.