Day One: Why Paganism?

I feel like this is going to be hard to explain concisely and there's a lot of parts here. First one that does not require an explanation if you've had a similar upbringing, but my family is Roman Catholic. Why wouldn't I seek out something else? I feel like I could unpack my upbringing forever (as could most people, I'd imagine) but I'll say this: my family did not force me to be Catholic and are generally pretty tolerant of other religions (ironically, except paganism!), most of my weird Baggage related to Christianity is from the WASP community I grew up in...which also did not make Christianity very appealing to me.

Another reason, related to upbringing, is that I feel like I was kind of always a pagan. I wouldn't do the thing some witches and pagans do where they're like "I have been practicing since I was 7 years old...", I was doing some witch and pagan shit, but I was not practicing in ernest because I did not know what witches were outside of fantasy media for children and I never even heard the word "pagan" at that point. But I recieved books on Scottish and Irish folklore from my grandparents and always wanted to look for fairies and give them gifts. I also had a deep fascination with ancient Egypt and the paranormal and the interest only got more sophisticated until I was in middle school and learned about Wicca from a friend who was also interested in the macabre. It felt like a natural continuation of what I had always been doing, though Wicca presented unique issues for me, but that might be relevant later.

I also never really bought into the idea of God, my family even describe me as a "little atheist" when reminiscing about my childhood (~7-9 years old) because I always wanted a scientific explanation and didn't like being told that things were the way they were because "God made it that way". I did have a bit of an atheist phase in high school (I was also kind of Wiccan, it was complicated), but ultimately, the idea of many gods made much more sense to me than the idea that one God just does everything and cares about everyone.

The reason why polytheism led to paganism for me, Wicca influence aside, was because of the freedom paganism presents. There are many, many ways to be a pagan and to adapt pagan practices for any living situation. Reconstructionism was a natural approach for me, due to my interest in history.