My problem with RSS is that I tend to subscribe to too many things and then it's too much. Also I wanted a solution that was free or self hosted, but I realized it's much better if someone manages the complexity for me, so I just ended up going with the paid hosting for miniflux (https://miniflux.app/).

Now I've just subscribed to a few things I care about, I open the website from time to time, quickly mark as "read" stuff I'm not interested in, and when I have more time I just go through everything that is still unread, because it's been "filtered in". Seems to work!