Just commenting to say I feel the exact same way. I am curious if mastodon is something worth getting into?
I think reddit/lemmy are good if you enjoy following communities. Twitter/mastodon are good if you prefer following specific people.
It looks like Twitter, feels like Tumblr. Since its not very big, people will post the most raw, vulnerable moments in their life, both good and bad. My feed ping pongs between people learning to use Godot to make their first game ever and proudly sharing their work, to a anarchist TTRPG dev struggling with medical bills in the USian Healthcare hellscape. I love it. I am not looking forward to whenever it blows up in popularity.