I signed onto Metabunk back in July but just stumbled across this thread. Better late than never.
As for my past and pathway here, I grew up in the heyday of the space program and was interested in anything space-related, including news reports of UFOs. In my early teens I explored all the woo du jour: ESP, ancient astronauts, bigfoot, alien encounters, etc. Reading books by Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov when I was in high school clarified my thinking on a lot of popular ideas. I discovered books by Randi, Gardner, and later, Shermer, Klass, Shaeffer, et al. Aside from my library of science and skeptical literature, since the 1980s I've been collecting UFO books, magazines, pulps, and comics with flying saucer covers. The more garish the better!