I used to have this problem. I learned my personal fix is whether what I do will align with my own values and how much I'm willing to let go.

I like originality, own strength used to build something and etc. That's the appeal. The thing that you can be proud to call your own. That's ideals talking.

But originality doesn't necessarily sell or get you results you want. There are outliers. Stories that inspire you to be creative despite the mainstream being like the climate you describe. But your story may not be an outlier and that could be the reality.

So you look at others and figure out they're not really creating much value but rehearsing the same lines sold under different packaging as content. But it sells. It gets results, and it gets repeated because there are tangible results and an existing market that caters to those results.

Your creativity may be good on paper but it doesn't get to put food on the table. A morbid optimism is if you dedicate your life around it and become stubborn, you'll be famous but awarded post humous like the old masters and their works. No recognition until dead.

Following through my ideals in making content gives me a sense of integrity but it doesn't reward me the way I want. It is in conflict with how everything else is rewarded. So I negotiate. I can excuse a little bit of this and that but never the whole. You're still you behind the mask of what the market wants until you can afford to be you when you finally become unchained the basic needs to survive.

I am a physician but that's my job. My current calling is something related to the field of arts but I don't have the financial security to engage in it at the moment. So when I can get my career stable, I'll wear the artist hat more often and become unchained. And this will likely be my guiding principle in writing as a profession (if I ever do become a writer), I write for the market I cater to because that's what puts food on the table, but it would still be a side quest.

For those that can't adapt to the times, they will get buried and names forgotten along with the ideas that never left their heads. It's a tragic outcome for brilliant ideas because their owners failed to see beyond their rigid ideals.