Mint 21 is not any heavier on my hardware as far as I can tell. As for not doing a backup, well, it’s not a great idea, but it’s better than eventually using an unsupported version of your OS (and 99% of the time the upgrade will go fine, especially if you didn’t do any weird changes that might mess with the process).
What about using commas? “The monkey who, I’m wondering, can see my ears”.