I'm posting this from Pleroma instead of Mastodon, but I think this is good enough for me.

The two are pretty different, though. Lemmy is a link aggregator and Mastodon is a micro blogging platform.

By switching to lemmy you'd lose some of your desired functionality (IMO).

Maybe consider checking out kbin? It supports both link aggregation and microblogging, so it might be right up your alley.

I started with my self-hosted Mastodon instance but quickly realized that just added noise. Self-hosting Lemmy was pretty simple and now I run both.

The resource needs for a small Lemmy instance are quite low and practically nothing compared to my Mastodon instance.

Setting up Lemmy is pretty straightforward, especially if you use the recommended ansible method. You could do a brief self-host and if it works for you keep it around.

I keep separate accounts, my head is still locked onto twitter/reddit UI setup. The formats would make me confused on the same account.

IIRC you can post and see top level comments via mastadon but nested comments will be unavailable to you. If you really like to dig into the conversation you'll be missing out on some stuff just using mastadon.

I think it would make more sense to have a lemmy account if you primarily spend time on lemmy.

Just because you can drive a car backwards doesn’t mean you should. It’s more efficient forward! But what ever floats your boat 🛶