Greg, one of the main things I have got from this forum is that every man is different in his recovery from surgery. None of us can compare ourselves to a "norm".
Most likely this is how it is for you - though at 8 months there is the chance of further improvement. I have come to accept that although I don't leak at night I can during the day. I don't much if I am static, but I prefer a reasonably active lifestyle so I always wear a pad and occasionally need two. I can usually rationalise in retrospect why some days are more leaky, but it doesn't change my behaviour, I do what I want to.
Curiously for me, leakage is rarely while I am actually doing some lifting. What seems to happen is that such activities - forcing the surviving sphincter to work hard against the raised abdominal pressure - make the sphincter tire later in the day and leak. And while some activities that do that are predictable, like gardening, others are ones that you don't think of at the time like bracing yourself to reach in a particular direction when doing some decorating.
Good luck! There is lots of life after surgery.