Hehe well are you on FullTimeBot's white list? FullTimeGeek manages FullTimeBot which form the curation team. I noticed an increase in upvote rewards, but recently I noticed an increase in upvotes themselves, and FullTimeBot (you don't pay for it, it's very much like a curation team) you gain upvotes every now and then on your latest post.

Could also be that more people are becoming a bit more active these days, as they are spending less time outside, since it's getting colder. November and December are pretty busy times on Steemit,so it could also be that.

Maybe it's also related to the hardfork. Hey, we'll take it, eh? ;)