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# Controlling the creative effort
- URL: https://postmarq.org/im-done-playing-the-game/
- Published: 2026-11-03T22:13:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-04T05:47:55.000Z
- Description: Why I'm pulling my work back from the feeds and spending this season building something I own.
- Author: Dave Contreras
- Tags: Bookmarq, The reroute, #level-2

*Part 2 of The reroute. Start with part 1:* [*I'm done performing for the feed*](https://postmarq.org/im-done-performing-for-the-feed/)*.*

*In Dave's words, from his daily Bookmarq sessions, shaped with* [*Marqer*](https://postmarq.org/about/)*.*

For years I played by the rules of my industry. Post the work. Grow the numbers. Learn the next tool before someone else does. Keep improving after hours, because if you stop, a smaller and cheaper team is waiting to take your place.

I'm done playing that game.

Marketing and media are being redefined, reshaped, reengineered and repurposed in real time, and I'm standing in the middle of it. From the inside, it's smoke and mirrors. The fight doesn't end when the workday does. It follows you home, and lately it has left me disappointed more often than not.

I've had real highlights in my career, and I'm proud of them. But somewhere along the way I started giving my best work away. Photos, videos, ideas and pieces of my life went onto platforms that anyone could scroll past, judge in a second, or take. The more freely I gave it, the less it seemed to be worth. And now that AI blurs the line between what's real and what's made, a feed is a harder place than ever to show who you actually are.

So I'm taking the leverage back.

That doesn't mean disappearing. It means choosing where my work lives. Postmarq is mine: my words, my photos, my name on it. Nobody's algorithm decides who sees it. The people reading it right now are people I chose, and as this grows, I'll keep choosing.

I'm using this season on purpose: slowing down, sharpening my craft and my storytelling, and building the things I believe in, like Postmarq, my YouTube, and my comic. When the dust settles and the smoke clears, I want to be standing on something I built myself.

This is my gut reaction to a system that kept leaving me empty. It might not be the perfect route. But it's mine, and I'd rather be proactive than keep losing an uphill battle.

Next, I'm running my own job search through a Check Marq: the records, not my gut, to see whether what I'm feeling holds up.

*Have you ever felt like you were giving your best work away? What did you do about it?*