but the issue is that my VPN is blocked now, and a self hosted invidious or piped won't help with that, right?

If I’m not mistaken this is incorrect, when you self host Invidious you also must host their companion tool to help skirt around YouTube’s blocking system.

https://docs.invidious.io/installation/#linux

You have to run this command on the same public IP address as the one blocked by YouTube. Not necessarily the same machine, just the same public IP address.
You will need to copy these two parameters in the config.yaml file.
Subsequent usage of this same token will work on the same IP range or even the same ASN. The point is to generate this token on a blocked IP as "unblocked" IP addresses seems to not generate a token valid for passing the checks on a blocked IP.

Documentation here is a bit outdated but I assume this is how it still works, just automated without the need to manually run their commands.