Hey welcome to Lemmy, second comment here :)
Wanted to say that I relate to the "productive procrastination" that PKM stuff like Obsidian can cause. I'm coming back to it again after Notion didn't work for me.
If I were to give one piece of advice to new users it would be to start small! Figure out exactly what you want to achieve with the software and then try to meet those needs with as little complication as possible. There are thousands of incredible community plugins out there but don't feel like you need to master even one to be successful.
Above all I agree with being proud of yourself for just writing things down, and accepting that your setup doesn't have to be perfect.
Thanks again for the comment!
Personal issues aside, do you have a source on their releases historically containing malware? Been a long time but I don't remember encountering any issues.