Well done!
You just perfectly explained the BEST way to kill personal expression in your own work: cater to other people.
What do you choose? YOUR personal vision, or create the other persons vision? Are you trying to cater? or are you trying to speak?
It matters little whether other people comprehend what you express, you shouldn't dumb down your work to be accepted by people who have no clue what art is for.
Selling it??? You need to listen to Marko's Podcast interview with Dita Kubin and find out what the real world of art is outside the prism of CAPA (who I even wrote an article for about this very subject) and juried contests.
I think you are confused between fine art photography and sellable photography.

As I used the Group of 7 analogy earlier, they sold nothing for years!!! Were they artists? Yep.
Your last paragraph ACTUALLY explains what true art is... but that seems silly to you... again you need to listen to the Dita Kubin interview. You will only end up sacrificing your own voice to be "accepted". This is conformity, the very antithesis of art.