I wanted to reply on this much earlier, as I feel I had a more cohesive thought while I was at work than I do now, but I digress.

My whole point is:  I feel your pain.  All of the writing I've posted on Steemit so far was created after I made my account.  Some of the pictures may have existed, but the writing is all new.  I too see few comments on my work, and I'm pushing myself to create the best writing of my life, in the most original context I can manage.

The last time I did this much work creating content was in the earlier days of DeviantArt.  There, I massed a decent enough following of a few hundred people, and out of those I would get maybe 15 comments per post, but this was enough to drive me on.  Not every comment was from the same person, and a total of maybe 50 people out of a few hundred considered it worthwhile to comment.

On steemit, you can show "support" merely by upvoting.  This takes some of the pressure off of someone by giving them the feeling of "well, I upvoted, so they know I care because I gave them my upvote".  We both know that the comments are what drives us, but as a currator sometimes the feeling of SOME recognition (by giving an upvote) is better than none, which may be true to an extent.

I sometimes wonder though, if the comments would be better than the cash.  Sure, I'm being paid more here than anywhere else I've ever posted, but at the same time, I'm being paid 10 cents or less on most of my posts.  Is that all my writing is worth?  Maybe.

The age and popularity of the platform must also be taken in to account.  On sites with millions or billions of users, niche groups are easily formed and found, with hundreds or thousands upon thousands of supporters.  On steemit, it's harder to find dedicated users who spend time in a select number of subgroups, and instead everyone is kind of shotgunning both their content and curation in hopes of finding the niche that works for them.  For me, my most popular content has been DIY and general blogs, but my preferred content is fiction and music.  So I move back and forth, a couple posts for me, a couple for the masses.  And so it goes.

Overall, I suppose my statement is:  Dont give up.  If nothing else, be proud of the fact that you are creating, for that already puts you far ahead of many who are to scared to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and then the courage to post it for the greater judgement of the entire planet.  It's a big deal, and you've gotten this far.