Excellent OP and thread.

You have learned a valuable lesson and shared it with us, namely that you can't ALWAYS fire out a continuation bet or you will be quickly losing more than the amount necessary to make them profitable if you are playing with anything other than mindless donks. This would be the perfect spot to check behind. To make a non-readable continuation bet here you have to pot-bet because of the draw heavy board. It has to appear you are pushing out draws or you might as well just put your cards face up and hand over your money.