It sounds like you fell victim to RC Blowout, and that put you in RC Jail. It happens to just about all of us as we start our journey on Hive.

Ultimately, the fix for RC Blowout is having sufficient Hive Power. However you end up getting it, the minimum amount of HP you need to avoid RC Blowout is within the sweet spot between 15 HP and 30 HP. I'm still trying to confirm this, but that's my guess.

The surest way to get more HP is as everyone else here has said: engagement. Making posts usually consumes @ 20% of your RCs, so it's OK if you just post when you can; but definitely upvote and comment and reply. Once the HPs start building up, everything you do has more impact (even voting power, which starts at 0.00 but progresses enough to where you begin to see curation rewards).