Oh, I've had articles significantly up voted on Steem before.

Uhm, I didn't know it. I'm glad then that you have had more articles with decent and deserving earnings my friend. :)

If nothing else, it ends up paying for more hardware for writing.

Oh yeah! I hope that through that awful amount of cash earned, you've also been able to purchase the best voice dictation hardware and a kickass Speech-to-Text Software to help you out a bit with your posts and comments without have to sweat too much. LoL