But what if I don't want to reach my own?

This. Voyager won't even break out of the Oort cloud for another 30,000+ years at it's current velocity of 17km/s, and it'll be long dead by then. That's if it even makes it that far, assuming it doesn't collide with anything or have its tragectory altered by passing massive objects.

There also might be a city of gnomes at its core...

The equivalent of an ant biting your shoe 🤣

It'll be paper towels next time

Exactly. Who's to say we could even perceive them with our laughably limited, primative senses if they're advanced enough? If they're millions of years ahead, there's absolutely no reason for them to contact us. At worst we're being monitored for study purposes, since any civilization sufficiently advanced enough would be able to create what they need instead of mining it, and any civilization that would make the effort to contact us probably wouldn't end well for us.

So far. Can't rule out that there could be equally shitty civilizations out there that shoot first and ask questions later like we do.

We just had two years of scientists telling us how to minimize the pandemic. I doubt people will listen if/when aliens show up. It'll be the same shit with a different problem.