If someone said ‘I really admire your passion for self exploration’ in a genuine conversation, I would think they were on drugs.

It’s in an SQL database, I think, but yeah, pretty much.

Mail is the single thing that I absolutely refuse to self-host. Been there, got the scars.

You could try setting adguard to listen on all interfaces?

I wouldn’t make any storage accessible to the internet without VPN.

Might not be technically what you are asking for, but you really can’t go wrong with Synology for this stuff.