@GreenFire

Indeed!

I've tried to cover this in an article about setting up your own Mastodon site:

https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps

If you start out as a single user server you can avoid most of the problems.

If you want to take it further, you could try inviting family or trusted friends onto the server.

Opening to the public would be biggest step and is totally optional, many servers never do this.