You capture nicely the ups and downs we all have here.

A way to minimize emotional impact is to have your eggs in different baskets. Meaning: don't write just for the money. I guess that's the opposite of running it like a business, like your friend suggested. My approach is to choose a topic I'd like to learn about, and write about it; so steemit becomes something like a university that pays you. That way, even if you don't get money, you've still learned something and indulged your passion. That's just an example of putting your eggs in different baskets so that all won't be lost when a single basket fails. Other approaches could be to join for the community, to read and learn from others' posts, to learn about cryptos and invest, etc. There's a lot of horizon-expanding that can be achieved with steemit.