I had heard a few people much more knowledgeable than myself on such matters state that the initial drop after the HF19 was expected, due to some sort of backlog or undistributed rewards. It may have had to do with the "whale non-voting experiment", but I may be mis-remembering.

Incidentally, I enjoyed the posting ritual as you described it. I am also checking and re-checking grammar, aligning post times, etc. It's quite a lot to keep track of, but necessary if you spend large amounts of time on the content of each post.