It seems to be de rigueur to make a post when transitioning up a level in the notional hierarchy of Steem, so I thought I might as well make one when moving the other direction.
(If you want to support someone for going the "right" way, check out 
For most of the time here I've been a dolphin, but the more I learn about Steem the less I want to be holding my own Steem Power. I've been thinking about making a big mathy post about that, but this isn't it. The short version is that the more I understand the system, the more ways I learn to turn liquid Steem into more Steem in ways that are much, much faster than holding it powered up.
(And no, curation increases wouldn't change that. Unless you can find a way to give 1200% curation.)
The original idea was that in return for giving up the flexibility of doing what you want with your coins, by locking them up in Steem Power, you would get a certain amount of control over the distribution of inflation. This was a good idea - it's still a good idea - but like many simplistic economic theories, it hasn't held up terribly well in reality.
The main issue with it is that the flexibility of holding liquid Steem turns out to be worth way more than the inflation rate. Prices of leasing SP have stayed low while doing things with the liquid coins, like vote buying, running a market maker, conversion arbitrage, or just trading out for BTC doing the most obvious market moves, can make so much extra Steem that you could lease back everything you had powered up with just a little skimmed off the top.
Leasing 5000 SP costs about 22 Steem/week right now, which means that if you want to vote that high you have a choice between powering up 5000 Steem or leasing it and having 4978 liquid. If you can make back the 22 with that 4978 - a 0.44% weekly return - it's clearly more profitable to hold liquid Steem than powered-up Steem. That really isn't very hard. (And you make back 10-15 of that 22 in curation anyway, so in the long term it's even easier.)
At the same time, the cost of being locked into Steem Power has been going up, in my estimation. In recent months we've seen generally more movement towards top witnesses organizing changes in secret and then springing them on the userbase; while none of them have gotten as far as implementation, I feel like it's only a matter of time. Say what you want about Steemit Inc.'s slowness, but we've always known what was coming well in advance. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of public governance rules, and unwilling to bet on Steem not being drastically changed in thoughtless ways in the next thirteen weeks.
All of those things mean I'm less interested in ownership of Steem Power than I've ever been. When I want to vote, I'll be leasing; otherwise I'll be keeping my holdings liquid and working with them in that fashion. Next week my power-down will hit its halfway point, and I intend to let it keep running.