That's more or less what I'm thinning, though I'm not there yet. Still need to understand what persists on my server etc. Ideally I just want a portal/gateway to centralize connections to the outside world. This would let me control my own credentials and have a single login (notwithstanding additional protocols)
I'm not interested in persisting much data.
I worry it'll become a headache though. Already I'm finding compatibility issues in the fediverse - when I tried Jerboa, my first toe in the water here I realized it didn't work with lemmy.world because of minimum version level. Obviously it'll iron itself out in time, but it does highlight that running an instance is not absolutely set-and-forget.
Thanks for responding!
I wonder about the odds that Google would buy reddit. Not saying it's a good thing, but it could be a strategic play for them.