In my humble opinion (IMHO)...Steem power is influence. The higher your steem power, the better rewards for curation and for those you vote for. Curation rewards are given in SP, so you just get more and more. It's an exponential growth pattern. The more you have, the more you will get which is what you're facing now. You are just starting out and are in the negative. Everyone starts with 14.5 SP delegated to them, and it decreases until they eventually get 15 SP total. This mean, you will vote and create content until and not only will it seem like you're only getting pennies, it'll feel like you're not making any progress either until you reach 15 SP and that delegation is completely gone. At this point, you will finally feel your growth because each reward you get will increase over time. This is because of SP.
I'm sorry for what you're going through right now, but it's something that is just going to be for awhile. You can bear with it or you can send yourself 14.5 STEEM, power up, and then you will start feeling rewards. Unfortunately, you have to spend your own money to do this. So you rewards will always feel like you're still trying to overcome the 14.5 SP.
Further, if you choose to purchase SP, do not get it from an exchange. Only by Steem from exchanges and don't put them in your exchange wallet. Put them in your steemit wallet. Once you have steem in your steemit wallet, you can power up your SP. If you purchase SP from an exchange you have to pay fees for the SP as well as worry about the exchange rate. SP should be the same value as Steem, but I've found that exchanges do not go by that and you can sometimes lose money trying to buy SP from an exchange.