Lots of random unaffiliated people end up on .ml and it's not as serious as you're worrying.
If you want to switch, "switching" is mostly a matter of creating an account on that one and just using that, as far as I understand it.
But I'm pretty sure Lemmy has an account settings feature that lets you export and re-import things like community subscriptions, etc.
Try not to get frustrated, it only feels this way at first. Congrats on leaving the corporate hellscape.