Character counts... Really? Well Indie, that's why I recommend that people get off of mastodon and onto something else like #Friendica or #SoapBox - #Fediverse is Fediverse and it's only the UI and the feature sets that differentiate between the various platforms.
I'mma leave you with a big list to peruse and explore. I gather you're a bonafide gearhead, otherwise you prolly wouldn't have stood up your own "mastopub" server ;)
I ran a small mastodon server a few years back, with about 1200 users. Took me a year to get everyone off of it so I could move to Pleroma at the time v1.0 was released. Everyone still supported OStatus at that time.
Haven't checked your IP so I dunno if you're using a managed hosting provider or if you're self-hosting, either way, good going ?
In the list below, there's a fully managed hosting service that does Soapbox, 5000 character count limits out of the box and you can change to whatever you like in your admin panel.
If you're self-hosting, then when you upgrade, know that you can switch to one of the more forward thinking mastodon forks with higher character count limits. I dunno which is which, I don't follow mastodon anymore.
So you say your self-employed, what sort of work if you don't mind me asking?
And my fav Bible verse of all time is Lev 19:10. What's yours, if you have one in particular?
You also say that you haven't celebrated Christmas in 20 years. Are you Jehovah Witness?
Yeah, maybe too personal of questions there, but I'm generally impressed when folks run their own instances, and your profile gives s join date of August, so that's well prior to all the shenanigan people fleeing positive changes over on that deprecated legacy silo. I typically lump them in withc the y2k chicken littles that thought elevators would stop working on 01 Jan 2000, lolz.
But no judgement there, yeah, well maybe a little ?
Well, at the risk of having bored you to death already, I'll close now, hoping to be afforded the favor of your reply.
Here's that list. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Welcome to the #Messurrection, my own little planet in the Fediverse. What you will see here: 1) my random jabberings; 2) Christian-based commentary; 3) Bible verses; 4) conversations; 5) quotes; 6) etc.
Most everything that isn't conversation/jabberings, I will attempt to tag with #TheMessurrection - though it may not always be possible (due to character counts and my crappy memory).