Thanks for sharing your experience - I have both for free as well, and I started with Notion. The problem is that Notion never stuck with me because it's hard to create pages/links at the same speed that you think / not as flexible, and I think Notion is better suited as a knowledge base with collaborators. Strong agree on the sidebar point, I don't use queries but am a strong user of references and embeds.
For years, I experimented with paper, org-mode, text notes (Sublime Text, TextEdit) to manage my thoughts and life. What I ended up with was folder after folder of disorganized notes, files like daily.txt, todo.txt, log.rtf that ended up disgusting me.
I would so strongly recommended everyone reading this to check out Roam Research (https://roamresearch.com/). At it's core, it's a collection of text notes in the cloud. Just open it up and start typing your thoughts down. No folders or hierarchy. The key enabler is that is that you can link together different pages. Roam Research helps you make so much better sense of your thoughts - I use it personally to plan out goals, projects, brainstorm research, track meetings/dates, and keep a daily log of everything I go through. I can't recommend it enough - even my dad started using it everyday after I showed him.
Just try it out and starting typing a few notes. It'll start off as a simple graph for text notes / documents, but there are so many more powerful features to discover, too.
EDIT: Roam is a cloud-based service, notes are not end-to-end encrypted. It doesn't bother me, but if it bothers you, there are many open source, offline-first alternatives that the community has created (emacs-org, Foam, Obsidian, etc.). I am in no way sponsored by Roam, I don't know anybody at Roam, I don't run any of those bullshit Roam courses, and Roam is expensive as fuck, but let me tell you this: there are so many features and UI optimizations that make Roam have the best user experience. Don't compromise your time and user experience.