But I cannot pay the bills with months between blocks - I just am not that large or have pockets that deep - sadly. I am also at my lowest hashrate ever right now, having just around 64 TH total. I hope to be back over 100 TH before the end of the year and hopefully up to 200 TH by the halving.
That's right, and the only way to regularly get payouts is to be with a bigger pool. Back to size we go. I didn't say miners are doing the wrong thing by sticking with size, it's just a catch 22 that makes small pools even smaller. There is no way to make small pools work in the current climate any more. No one is going to move to a small pool unless they believe in the principle and don't care about the risk, and only small miners can do this. The only way to start up a new pool is if you already have a mining conglomerate planned to dump their hashrate there so usually the pool and the miners are the one entity.
The small personal home miners are dead, completely and utterly dead. The remainder of you guys that are doing it are unbelievably persistent and I salute you, but nothing can rescue mining from this situation any more, except for bitcoin falling to below $100 again causing all the big miners and mining companies to go bankrupt. None of us want that to happen to bitcoin's value (except all-in shitcoiners and forkedshitcoiners, although they don't realise that if bitcoin dies, all shitcoins die even more.) That's why, to be honest, I'm surprised I still have miners on my two pools. If you all left, I'd quietly shut them down without any regrets, but I'd feel bad for the people on ckpool.org that have been hanging in there waiting for the next block. But bitcoin has been good to me, and I'm maintaining them as a service back to the community if you want me to continue.