Oh boy... that is a long tale to tell. ^_^;;
Short version is this: roughly 20 years, on and off. Got my start as a dumb kid writing terrible fanfiction who wandered into a competitive combat RP forum, got my butt kicked, and somehow managed to convince some fairly badass writers to teach me their word-ninja ways. It was a pretty aggressive forum where quality, writing style, and tactics were constantly getting compared and evaluated -- keep in mind, this was the heyday of DBZ and such, so things were a lot more "power level" driven and a lot less adventure/story focused. It was also the 90s and most of us were, predictably, young and confused back then... I doubt anybody back then really knew any better, honestly.
Since that point I've kinda been all over the place for various stints of time. AnimeLeague, back when they still did miscellaneous multiverse RPs, was one of the big ones. I've been on Kingdom Hearts and Soul Eater forums, original medieval fantasy, scifi, and superhero RPs, a pretty broad spectrum. You learn a lot from meandering across the "RPverse", not least about yourself. One thing I've discovered is that the more you know, the better you get as a writer, the more you realize that even the best of us have only just scratched the surface.
So... I guess that's your 'motivational thought' for the day. That, and "always have a landing strategy", but that goes without saying.
