First of all thank you so much for taking time to write such a detailed response.
Your words remind me of myself when i started out on platform. For some odd reason, i made it a target for myself to post at least once everyday. Soon i realized that i was running out of ideas and i was putting too much pressure on myself for no reason. There was a point in my life when my 15 months old son (19 now) would not stop crying on certain instances and instead of attending him, i was busy writing posts. I am not proud of it.
So i have kind of learned this lesson the hard way that posting everyday will not get you anywhere. I have come to realize that i have got to stop treating steemit like a ticking time bomb. This platform is not going anywhere and i have to learn to keep the balance between this and my family.. so now i post like after 3-4 days and i couldnt be happier.
Comments, however are a different story. It does not take more than 5 minutes of your time and is totally worth it..
Somehow it makes me feel better to know that others are going through the same struggles. It seems that you've found a solution for yourself. I think one of the contributing factors is a number of accounts that will only vote on content every 24 hours. Therefore, to maximize profits, there's an urgency to post every day. Some of them are subscriptions that cost an upfront fee, so in order to make that cost back, there's pressure to post. I need to get rid of that mentality. I'm still making small gains on posts, so I shouldn't worry about sunk costs.
I think another reason to post more often is that people are generally following so many other authors that the thought is "they'll miss my posts, or stop following me if I'm not producing content." I think that's a lie too... or if it's true, who cares? Like in your example, taking care of yourself and your family is more important than making sure that your steemit followers don't forget about you.
You're right, comments generally are easy to fire off. You can read a quick article and dispense some sarcasm back in the form of a comment. ;)
Thanks for the dialogue!
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 ;)