Divesting from "social" media: Self-sabotaging or shapeshifting?

Let’s just say that I have felt quite discouraged lately. The question I’ve been sitting with is whether I just have a tendency to self-sabotage, or whether a constant feeling of failure is inevitable when we are trying to reorient growth, redefine “success”, and shapeshift into more regenerative, authentic, and life-affirming ways of being with the world.

From my reflections, I realized almost every time I gained mastery in some way of “working” to make ends meet while pursuing my interests in advancing discourses on sustainability, I became disenchanted with the “way” it worked and would decide to pivot how I show up—to be in deeper alignment with my values.

Earlier on, just when my conscious lifestyle blog started taking off, I became dissatisfied with its limiting, individualistic focus and the blogging and traditional media business model. As I envisioned that path forward, it was crystal clear to me: The larger a media platform becomes, the higher its operational costs and advertisement rates, and the less likely that smaller, independent makers and brands would be able to afford that larger “reach”. In other words, mega-corporations with massive marketing budgets are able to “reach” way more people (and sell more) by way of 1) buying endorsements from public figures and influencers and 2) running ads in the most established outlets.

So what, then, if I understood sustainability to require a decentralization of power and a scaling down of production systems? What if I felt strongly about wanting to champion the independent makers and the local artisans and workers who may not even have a brand name or digital presence?