Your struggle is real and i have lived through the exact same thoughts and moments..
There is one more thing regarding what you said about followers leaving you. If i am being totally honest, i have made followers based on my content quality. When i used to post average quality level post, my followers did not grow in numbers. Believe it or not i had 22 followers for a complete month with zero increment.. however the moment i started making long quality posts, they started to incease by leaps and bounds.
Forget about maximising your profits... this is a never ending loop. You will never be satisifed with the amount of upvotes you get.. the hungrier you’ll get, the farther you will wander off from life.. keep it simple.. rewards will come to you. Take 3 days to post and before making the post, research on it a bit to refine the quality of your post.
And you are asbolutely spot on about comments ;)