RE: WHY ARE SOME OF STEEMIT BEST WRITERS LEAVING? ARE YOU FEELING IGNORED? WHAT CAN WE DO TO INCREASE RETENTION OF CREATIVE WRITERS? DO WE HAVE ROOM FOR SIMPLE SOCIAL POSTS? HOW CAN WE BALANCE BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA AND CREATIVE CONTENT?

Good post, @joseph.

Speaking one Joe to another, I constantly remind myself that it's BETA. A lot needs to shake out still.
OTOH, obviously it serves everyone's best interests to avoid crippling mistakes. So, what can be done to head those off? I guess identifying them first, which you are pursuing.

As the site matures, I would expect this to become more intuitive and our posts to be filtered better, either through blockchain based platforms such as Reprint (Steempress) or other import sites that help make the articles more accessible according to topic. These sites can then offer other services and goods directly, and retain their reader specific content, including Steemit published articles.
I would expect the voting to level out over time. Yeah, right now it's pretty lopsided. But there are steps being taken to help level that out. Hopefully they'll have greater impact over time.
IMO a sad state here is how some whales have abandoned the platform without so much as leaving their SP influence for curation guilds. They walk out complaining, yet enjoying their power down without giving anything back (or they are audacious enough to think that their content is THAT valuable).
I've had to slow down on my content creation, but that's just life. I'd love to write a good article or two every day. But the time invested takes away from other pressures in life, so I've had to slow down. While I don't expect greater payouts, if they were present then I could devote more time to it. Of course, if I devoted more time, I'd probably get more followers and my payouts would go up. But the going is slow enough that I just can't stay focused on Steemit except when I have time to set aside or if I can get better payouts.
I guess I don't really have a lot of questions to add. It is what it is. I'm here and plan on continuing to try to make Steemit better. This includes working with a couple others on projects, promoting some that are going on and attempting to implement one of my own. As @donkeypong pointed out, there are tons of great new efforts being worked on today. These will help mature the site and bring new options. Some of these will help address the complaints that many bloggers have, especially in regard to long-term presence. Right now I can't really develop much because I'm relegated to either having my feed exported to a WP (or similar) site or letting it get lost in what's a bit of a jumble of posts.

Happy Birthday!!