I feel your pain @zen-art, as a newer Steemit person than you I had this dilemma too. I too felt a lot of guilt I wasn't giving enough back especially as a certain dolphin started taking an interest in my posts and was giving much more than my paltry $0.00 or $0.01 was contributing. That voting bar was going down way too quick and seemed to recover ever so slowly.

I was fortunate enough to be in a position to invest some $$ into the platform so I have the slider now. Even so, I will tell you it still goes down too quickly! I really don't know what the answer is, you just cant please everyone can you?