I agree with you. I research my posts carefully and when I post personal stories they come from real experiences. As a result I post perhaps one or good posts (my estimation) a week. Sometimes it can be disappointing when you have put so much effort in, to see it disappear in the hundreds of mediocre posts. I have had good rewards on some of my posts but it is not assured. As for curation and upvoting, it is tempting to go for the highest reward but as you so rightly put it, it discriminates against those hundreds of minnows who have so much to offer but never get the chance. What to do about it? It depends on your makeup, split your time, take some of @jerrybanfields advice, after all he is very successful but allocate time to those what need encouragement, after all it was this aspect of Steemit that drew many of us in the first place.