Hello friend, I confess that I have felt the same as you describe yourself, but I go ahead, I publish a couple of times a week and I tie in different contests. With the contests I don't earn money, but I have gained improved voting power and increased reputation. I am sure that the platform will improve and the steem will be quoted well like the other crypto currencies. We must have a little patience...
thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think a lot of us are feeling this way and I have seen a graph some days ago which showed how the user base has declined over the last year with almost just a couple of tens of thousand active users. Let's hope things will start looking better!