For anyone interested, I wrote a 3-part series over on Pantheon Crafters called "A Crafter's Journey". I did it partly because I wanted to explain why I have some of the attitudes I do about some of the stuff we debate around here, and partly because I want to get other people to talk about their journeys as well. Here are the links if you'd like to read them:
I won't repaste everything here - I'd honestly hit the word limit a few times over if I tried. But I hope it's at least interesting to some of you, even if you disagree with some of the things I say sometimes :)