Welcome back : )
Please don’t be disheartened by the perceived drop off in interest. This is the way tech industry hype cycles work. Every time the fediverse gets a big boost of interest (as it did in 2016 for example), it never drops back to being smaller than it was before that boost. A lot of people dip their toes in and move on to other novelties, but the increase in awareness remains. Some will go back to the DataFarms, remember how awful it is there, and wander back.
Anyway, this drop off in tourist numbers is actually a good thing for us. The people who stick around through these ‘winter months’ are the ones who really grok what we’re trying to create together, and want to contribute to its evolution. Whether as software developers, testers, documentation writers, community developers, usage evangelists, and so on.
With the tourists moving on to the next hype cycle (IoT! Crypto! BlueSky! AI! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), this allows things to calm down. Both in the fediverse itself, and in the development communities around it. Allowing both the veterans and the new recruits to get to know each other, and get on with our work.
Exactly 
You may not have been around in the 1990s when people thought the web was a passing fad, but I was, and they did. I remember MTV billboards that said “www.thenetsucks.com”. Pretty sure the joke is on them 