What is this madness, Help!?

My account has been acting really weird when it comes to upvoting. I'll tell you more in a second, but first, my question. How can I set my upvote to half power? Is that even an option? Okay, I have seen my upvote actually decrease a few balances. How the hell is that fair? Maybe I should change my name to "thecooler"! Then, I've also upvoted when I had only a penny of voting power, but somehow it gave over three dollars to Hive account@papapepper. It's all over the place. I'm not going to upvote at all today, so I can hopefully let my steem build. Maybe I should take a longer break. Well, anyone else experience any bizarro stuff like this? Please help or add your confusion in the comments.
(Special thanks to Hive account@walkingkeys for introducing me to giphy.com, and teaching me how to post a gif!)