Addicted to sidelines - help!

Well, not necessarily sidelines per se, but slightly inferior openings as such - at least from the standpoint of modern computer analysis. As Black, I've been playing the Philidor/Lion for quite some time now, and I've also dabbled in the Old Indian Defence and some Dutch transpositions after 1... d6. As White, I've been mostly playing 1. d3 and 1. Nc3, both with interesting transpositions into either Reversed Lion systems (with the former) or various 1. e4 sidelines with the occasional Veresov/Jobava London (with the latter).

Now, I've invested quite a bit of time into putting in the practice with these openings, as well as trying to refine every move order as much as I can, and I've consulted some books of those as well; however, I think my chess might be suffering from a prolonged form of sidelineitis, meaning that I've been avoiding mainline theory like the plague due to not wanting to be outprepared. I'm all for having pet lines and knowing them in-depth, but sometimes my opponent just plays solidly and I end up having no practical chances of taking over the game.

All in all, the longer I play, the more I feel like my chess is suffering. I feel like I'm stuck in a dying corpse of my past chess knowledge. Maybe I'm not combative enough to compensate for the fact that I can't play fanatically anymore, so I feel like I lack the strength to relearn chess and start playing better openings and whatnot? At this point, I really don't know if the openings are even my real problem anymore. I wanna play some calm low-effort chess, but then I complain about my poor results.

TL;DR

It's like I'm fixated on certain opening structures so much that I lose interest in the game if I don't get positions I find desirable and understandable, regardless of how bad they might be for me (as long as they're not outright losing). I don't know what to do. Chess is starting to have diminishing returns for me.

But I'm not worried about enjoying sidelines - I'm worried about enjoying them less and less because more and more of my opponents play so solidly against it that I can hardly do anything but grovel in passivity! Maybe it's to be expected in Philidor/Lion structures, but still, at some point it just happens that I can't quite formulate a plan if I'm not fighting a mainline! It's kinda similar to the King's Indian Defence, in the sense that your opponent can choose many variations against it and you can reliably launch a direct kingside attack only against some of them.

Yeah, I know I'm kinda impatient as a player. I wanna be able to make my positions active if my opponent refuses to do anything much, but one misplaced Knight and/or one passive Bishop ruins my chances of fixing that.

Refuted isn't good. Playing sidelines is okay

Okay, after losing another game less than a minute ago, I think I'm ready to start actively whining.

I keep not being able to deal with the fianchetto variation of the Philidor! I have this old Foxy Opening video on the Philidor as a whole, but it keeps bothering me that I don't have the proper feel for those positions!

Now, I don't know if my opponents keep looking at my games and just picking that variation (rightfully hoping that I won't be able to handle it), but when that happens often enough, I just don't wanna bother with the opening as a whole. I don't see how I can get better when I have the wrong attitude towards the game.

Reviving this topic because I almost made it again without checking. 😆 I feel like my chess logic is suffering because avoiding theory-heavy openings requires avoiding natural moves at early stages, so if I go deep enough down that rabbit hole, I start losing track of what it means and/or feels like to have a 'healthy' position.