This thread is about what made you an astronomer.
The Why is probably unanswerable, not so the how.
I was among the youngest (in between boomer and gen Xer) who saw the first moon landing and old enough to understand what happened.
In the third grade, I won a reading bee and the book prize were two children's books on astronomy similar to the American DK-books.
Man, was I disappointed, this seemed baby stuff for me.
But of course I still had much to learn: At age 12, I had my first "telescope", a no-name gunmetal 10-30x30 zoom tabletop and immediately undertook it to try to resolve the brightest stars as a disk
One of these days, I did.
Later I found out that this "star" was in fact Jupiter.
At 14, I first bought a 60mm refractor and later a standard beginner's 4 1/2 inch Newton reflector, German equatorial mount, more or less a DST.
However, it was a good one for a DST, and I tried to "specialize" on deep sky objects.
Unfortunately, even with a new 35mm ocular, most, including M81 and M33, eluded me.
Alas, a Tasco 11x80 binoc finally did it.
Another thing I learned: Low surface brightness objects are no good for small telescopes.
I've been hooked ever since I first managed to glimpse M81.
And how about y'all?