A long time ago, I had a mstdn.social account and was trying to view a friend’s content on like mastodon.art. I couldn’t see his content via mstdn.social at all, but I could if I just went to mastodon.art. Mastodon.art was not in the list of servers mstdn.social did not federate with. I assumed this was a glitch.
you 100% should give it another try. Maybe you can move your old account to another server?
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/, “Exporting your information”, import that on the new account, then do “Profile move”. Then do the part under “Account aliases”. This should lead to you having your account on the new server, with the old followers and everything taken with you.