I've made similar experiences. I was very insecure about my knowledge, thinking there is nothing I'm good enough at to write about. And with each post I write I get more confident about what I know, who I am and about my writing.
On the other hand sometimes it's also depressing, when there are no reactions on well thought posts I had invested many hours of my time in writing, photographing and formatting.
Then I get frustrated and wanna cry out loud: "what am I doing wrong? Why doesn't anybody read and upvote my posts? What else can I do????!!"
Why do people upvote obviously copied content with non original photos, and don't upvote my content.
But then I try to draw back and stop looking at what I don't have and focus on what I have: the 100+ followers, increasing steem power, increasing reputation, the comments that ARE there, the upvotes I DO get.
And I try to figure out which kind of content gets recognition and produce more of that.
Additionally some bought upvote also boost my self confidence? When looking at my blog. 😀😀👍
The thing is to just keep doing what you are doing and focus on what you consider to be good quality posts. It's true that great posts often get overlooked. I even have a series called "unappreciated posts" addressing that isseu. A lot of the posts that I consider by best earned only a couple of cents. In the end it doesn't matter. Believe in yourself and what you are doing. Keep an eye out for the next round of unappreciated posts so that you can submit your gems....