Setting up an instance wasn't too bad with https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/mastodon, considered using a provider but they are all quite slammed right now. Main important thing to me was that I am using a domain I control so I can migrate later if I need to.

Did one extra layer of added fun to get the bare domain for usernames without actually hosting my Mastodon instance on that domain https://jacobian.org/til/my-mastodon-instance/ ... We will see if that breaks anything...