yeah figuring out how to balance a feed of interesting things with the rest of life is really tricky. Mastodon has been a quieter and slower paced feed for me, but with the influx of new folks (who I have excitedly followed, as well who have swelled the local timeline) I have to work on building some better habits (which will likely include unfollowing some and checking the local less frequently).

I really hope that Mastodon will keep at least that feeling of being a cog in surveillance capitalism away. I agree that one still has to manage their scrolling habits, but this seems at least a halfway sane alternative. 😀

For sure! There are wonderful community members here. I moved away from twitter and google (although got pulled back into gmail recently through the community lab 🤦) because I didn't like the nagging knowledge that my interactions were being tracked and optimized in a profit-driven (inconsiderate) way by companies with powerful computational tools. There is a piece of mind that I found here that I didn't have on Twitter; that I didn't know was possible on social media.

I know, it's hard to completely evade those companies, they do have some very practical tools (I also still have some ties to Google).
I still remember how the internet felt back in the late 90s, I'd love to get that back. As you say - peace of mind. Maybe this place can mimic that a bit.