@bkuhn The other thing is, how attached are you to x86? I am guessing you would be fine running aarch64; I can't think of anything you do that's x86 specific.
@bkuhn I suspect @novacustom will resemble more of a laptop of today with less work, whereas @mntmn is a better eye to the future, but I don't know much about @novacustom
If you can handle the chonk factor (which given you've run a lot of old thinkpads, you probably can), @mntmn's probably a better fit for your goals once the Reform Next comes out, but it's not there yet, and you might be disappointed with lack of suspend at current functionality